Five Ugly Numbers That You Can’t Ignore – It’s Time to Calculate Hiring Failures – ERE.net…

Your comments further clarify and substantiate why companies like ours are in business. I had this same conversation with an Angel yesterday with regards to companies thinking that 15-20% A Players is success rather than mediocrity.

Scott is right on. Talent acquisition is an organizational capability and should be treated as one. It is easier said that done and requires cross-functional collaboration at many levels, and investments. This is precisely what makes it challenging. Developing this organizational capability is a serious undertaking and requires strong leadership and executive buy-in.

I suspect most large companies have defined processes around talent acquisition (at least on paper) and tons of data and metrics. But do they have a true capability around the hiring process? Process non-compliance, unreliable data, irrelevant metrics, and above all an inability to use the data effectively are not all that uncommon.

Vikram Gundoju
vik@saleswilling.com
http://www.SalesWilling.com

“… improving the quality of hires (aka, ‘dealing with hiring managers unwilling to accept responsibility for their poor choices, lack of judgment, or inability to hire’) are beyond the scope of a typical recruiter’s duties.”

IMHO, outsource accountability for QOH and you are now on a very slippery slope. Why? Because you can always point a finger at ‘the consultant’, aka statements like “That’s the consultants fault.” and “I don’t know – that’s not my job. Call the consultant.”

Another IMHO, if the level of mutual respect is raised with the Hiring Manages, these concerns can be better breached (albeit with kid gloves and no criticism). I may be incorrect, but some of the best Internal (and External) Recruiters I’ve ever met have had the intangible qualities that lead to the breaking down of the walls you describe.

I’m with you on the over-analyzing and over-obsession with metrics that results in measuring the wrong things. However, I still believe in data collection (hopefully automated data collection that doesn’t involve any further data entry) because “what gets measured gets done.” Caveat Emptor, however, the challenge is measuring the right things or you have a mountain of meaningless metrics, right?

Cheers,

KH

Jeremy Eskenazi
Managing Principal
Riviera Advisors, Inc.
http://www.RivieraAdvisors.com

John, thanks for kicking up a storm of opinions in the measurement of staffing process yields. The metrics speak to the fact that most businesses still do not embrace talent acquisition as a process with inputs (candidates and candidate data), value-add components (descriptions, comparisons, evaluations) and yields (quits, terminations, performance variation). Companies with a process mindset, create measurements and process improvement initiatives. Firms who have embraced six sigma, or similar evidence-based decision making have learned that decisions driven largely by opinion are more prone to greater variation, or less predictable results.

Recruiters making decisions largely based upon their expert opinion, leave a lot on the table when it comes to driving business results. A client that recently implemented an evidence-based candidate evaluation (local validation), was able to report a 89% reduction in 30 day new hire separation in one position and a 69% reduction in another. These dramatic improvements highlight the variation in yield of expert opinion based hiring decisions as well as provide a documentation of return on investment from process improvement initiatives.

Thirty day separations would be viewed as waste in a manufacturing analogy: Raw goods that never became finished goods. In staffing process that equates to new hires that never even achieve proficiency.

Waste creates rework. Rework doubles the time and cost of talent in a staffing process. Ouch!

Companies implement different processes for filling various positions. As such, macro-level staffing metrics can be misleading. Averages obscure the visibility to both the best and worst performing staffing outcomes. I advocate reporting at the job level. Companies report productivity at the product level, or line level. Staffing process yields should be measures with similar care.

Write me for a white paper: Staffing Waste: Identify it, Measure it, Reduce it. It will invite you to rethink some of your staffing metrics and maybe even your staffing process.

Joseph P. Murphy
Shaker Consulting Group
Developers of the Virtual Job Tryout®
Joe.murphy@shakercg.com

Cheers,

Keith

I can really see David Lynn’s point about how many angles this could have been viewed in, but I also received from excellent insights from the article itself…this will take me into some new directions as I continue to strive to build the perfect recruiting machine. My take is, hiring is an organizational capability, and should be measured as one. To acheive this capability, you need to have the right combination of engaged and talented people (Recruiters AND Hiring Managers), consistent and repeatable processes, effective tools and driving leadership to create the desired organizational results…in this case Quaility Hires. Too many times I see metrics aimed only at the Recruiting Org and Team, rarely the Companies collective organizational capability, and never the Hiring Manager effectiveness. Very stimulating artilce!!