I agree with you that there is a difference between Recruiting and Talent Management. To manage the talent, you have to ?own? the talent. They have to work for you. Once they work for you, it ceasing being a recruiting issue and becomes a management issue. If employees are poorly managed, under/wrongly utilized, poorly compensated, or not given the tools to succeed, how can you hold the recruiter responsible?

Whether you are a ?captain of the ship? person or not, does not change the effective calculation of recruiting ROI. Most good recruiters have no problem assuming responsibility for their actions or results. It is not a matter of the recruiter having total control of the situation, but a matter of having ANY control of the situation after the employee starts working for the company. I believe that it comes down understanding the difference between taking responsibility for your work, versus understanding your sphere of influence within the company. I simply do not have the ability or opportunity to substantially effect the long term career management of an employee.

An example of this could be the men working in the engine room of a ship. They are responsible for making sure the engines are fueled and well maintained in order to be able to respond to the captain?s orders. However, I find it difficult to hold the engine room responsible for the direction the ship is steered in. They can hardly be held accountable for the Titanic hitting an iceberg. Is it also the recruiter?s responsibility that a new marketing campaign was unsuccessful? After all, the recruiter is the one that hired them.

Now if the hiring manager is not provided qualified candidates and is reduced to picking the best of the worst candidates provided, blame the recruiter. If qualified candidates are not being provided in a timely or cost efficient way, question the recruiter. Simple hold the recruiter accountable for what they have an impact on. The recruiter brings them to the table, what happens after they are at the table is out of their control.

While I am fully in favor of training and educating managers to be able to make the best, most informed hiring decisions possible, it is still their decision. While a recruiter can have input, recommend a candidate, suggest compensation, etc., they still are not the ones with the final decision.

I feel that the best way to measure a recruiters results is by there effectiveness as recruiters! The best recruiters build a database of qualified candidates. They know what these candidates are looking for in their next position as well as in their career. They know why they are looking to leave their current positions and what would make them happy in a new position. They have a good idea about the candidate?s personality and what kind of team/culture they would fit well into. The recruiter builds this database through the most cost effective means possible; personal and professional networking, cold-candidate generation/cold calling, advertising, branding, etc. In addition to building this database, the recruiter is responsible for being responsive to their clients/hiring managers. Working hand-in-hand with the managers to focus and define the requirements and skills needed for a specific position, developing a sourcing strategy for generating candidates, providing guidance in interviewing techniques, etc. All of this takes place prior the candidate becoming an employee.

Granted, much of this is difficult to quantify. Over the years companies have made numerous attempts to quantify recruiting. Things such as; calls per day/week, interviews per day/week, profit margins, cost per hire, candidate source, number of candidates submitted, time to fill, the list goes on and on. There is a reason that a lot of these are no longer widely used in the corporate arena, because they were unsuccessful at effectively quantifying the success of recruiting.

I think that this is the type of corporate thinking that sounds and looks good on paper at the executive level, but in reality, when put into practice on the front lines, is neither effective nor productive. And this relentless drive to over quantify recruiting ends up costing more time and money than it saves or produces.

David

Thanks for your comments.

I know of few corporate positions in our complex business environment that have total control over their role’s output. To me, I have always taken the ‘captain of the ship’ approach where I take responsibility for results, regardless of whether I have total control. I find that it gets you more respect than blaming others. To me it is our job to manage, cajole or educate managers, vendors etc into doing the right thing, so that you get results without formal control. That’s a primary difference between recruiting and true talent management IMO.

I’d be interested in what you would measure as recruiting’s output or results?

John

I understand the sports and entertainment analogies and while both have merit, I personally believe that even the greatest superstar, Michael Jordan, may not have reached his full potential under a different coach than Phil Jackson. Who better to take a young man rich with potential, add him to a team of established players, throw in another player with an ego the size of Texas and a couple of quick-thinking, quicker on their feet ‘background’ players and produce multiple championships?

To David’s point, a superstar for one company might not be a superstar at another company - leadership must assume its rightful responsibility in retention of talent. It is, however, incumbent upon a recruiter to match not only the skills and abilities a person brings with them, but to also match the talent’s soft skills…those hard to define characteristics, attitudes, beliefs and values that make a person a good cultural fit for a particular manager or team.

The best recruiters are not afraid of calculating ROI ? if that is, they have a true partnership with their end users. They know the managers and know which employees will fit best under their direction and within their team. Equally as important, they take the time to really get to know the candidate through the interviewing process and understand how that person will respond to the hiring managers. So it seems to me, the way to attach ROI would be to weight the categories of retention and time to fill equally, make hiring managers and recruiters equal stakeholders in the process; thereby forcing an alliance which will ultimately benefit talent, managers, recruiters and the entire company.

After all, recruiting and retention are like two hands on a piano…the music sounds best when they work together.

You made several good points about the value of employees and the return on investing in them. Several points brought me to the conclusion that the returns you discuss are not, however, well suited for evaluating the recruiting function.

First, recruiters have direct impact only on the initial quality of a match. For the most part, recruiters don?t make the hiring decisions nor do they make salary determinations for individual candidates. Companies of any size have an entire department dedicated to setting up and structuring compensation. This is why there are entire talent management and compensation analysis industries. Even if a recruiter searches and finds the perfect candidate that has all of the skills, abilities and potential that the company is looking for, the recruiter has no impact on the salary, benefits, work location, work challenges, and future career opportunities it will take to woo or keep that candidate .

Second, an employee?s contribution to the company is driven by many factors other than his initial potential when he is hired. A prime example of this is in your movie star analogy. Even a great actor can not save a bad movie. Even though the actor put in a solid performance, it will still be remembered as a bad movie that was not financially successful. Another example of this might be Kevin Garnett, who played for the Minnesota Timberwolves. While he is considered a great individual player, he was never able to lead his team to a championship, or even deep into the playoffs. His individual impact on the organization was limited. He was not a ?game-changer? on an organizational level.

Third, there is value in hiring non-superstars. The majority of a movie or sports teams staff/organizations are made up of role players, they do what they are told to do. These are people you never see on the screen or on the field. Their contributions can not and should not be overlooked, but they have little direct impact on the number of points that are scored or the box office receipts. Their role does not allow them to be an impact player. That is why you see some great athletes traded so often. The teams are looking for the right mix and chemistry to make the team succeed, not just the individual.

Forth, most superstars do not start out as superstars. The organization has to provide them the resources, training, and opportunity to become a superstar. When the Bulls recruited Michael Jordan, he had not yet become MICHAEL JORDAN. They had to allow him to grow, develop and mature into a superstar. Recruiting may not have been a significant factor in Michael Jordan?s becoming a superstar. You made the point in your article that ?a top performer in one organization may be a bottom performer in another.? How is a recruiter to control if a top performer in another company will be a top performer in the new company? It can be extremely difficult to determine who is going to be a top performer and who is not. It is likely that you will not know someone is going to be a top-performer until they have been on the job for a period of time. This then becomes as more about the company?s ability to manage employees successfully, to provide the tools, culture, management and challenges to allow a good employee to become a ?game-changer.?

Fifth, the ability to calculate ROI on every employee is not realistic, even for Goggle or GE. The closest one could get is to measure ROI for the individuals who have direct impact on corporate decisions and direction, which most companies already do through incentives like executive bonuses. It is especially difficult in a team environment to pin-point individual contribution that is accurate enough to base modifications to the company?s compensation structure, let alone an ROI that would drive hiring decisions.

My point is that to understand the return on talent, recruiting is not the investment to be quantified; management is the investment to be quantified. The return on recruiting should be measured on factors that recruiters can directly affect. An investment in good management is what allows recruits to succeed and become game-changers.