ERE.net » Heather Hartmann

Are You Accountable For Your Staffing Metrics?

Heather Hartmann — Wed, 07 May 2003 19:00:00 +0000

At ER Expo 2003 West in March, I had the opportunity to meet many very interesting people. Our conversations ranged from discussions about applicant tracking systems and career’s sections on corporate websites to March Madness going on in the NCAA tournament. But the most interesting comment I heard at the show centered around metrics. Nick Burkholder of Staffing.org had just finished his presentation, “Staffing Metrics for Fame and Fortune.” An attendee approached me and said, “Of all the attendees at this conference, I think I’m the only one that is collecting data and generating management reports on staffing metrics. I’ve talked to a lot of people here, and most of them are HR generalists or work in Recruiting. But none of them are responsible for the data.” This comment stopped me cold. Could this be the real reason why people aren’t measuring their staffing performance? Because they don’t perceive it to be their job? Do they need the title of “staffing metrics manager,” as this attendee had, in order to begin measuring? A few years ago, I was working for what was the consulting services division of what was then Ernst & Young as a recruiting manager. Each week, we received nasty emails and calls from our recruiting operations manager asking us to be sure to update the milestones in our applicant tracking system so that he could generate reports for the management team. These messages were then followed by additional reminders to be sure to get the data in the system. Our national director of recruiting even went so far as to send his own messages underscoring how important this really was and how we needed to comply with the requests of the Recruiting Operations Manager. Each week, these requests fell on deaf ears. It was a never-ending cycle. Why? Because we didn’t know what the data was being used for, except affirmative action compliance, and no one held us accountable. As long as we were getting hires in the door, we were doing our jobs ó or so we thought. What both situations have in common is accountability, or lack there of. And what I would suggest is that most organizations have yet to hold anyone accountable for measuring. During his presentation at ER Expo, Nick told a story of how one senior-level HR manager was recently fired from an organization after repeatedly being told by the CEO that she needed to start measuring. There may have been additional reasons she was let go, but to be sure her non-compliance with the CEO’s request was a major factor in the decision. Judging by the reaction of other attendees at the ER Expo, this was definitely an exception. Most are not held to such standards of accountability. Taking Responsibility for Metrics CEOs, CFOs, and other executives are clearly delivering the message that metrics are important to organizations. Is it in our best interest to hold off doing anything about it until they put our jobs on the line? Instead, let’s all agree to take accountability and start measuring today ó no matter what our title. Not because we’re fearful for our jobs, but because by measuring we’ll improve both our own and our organization’s performance. What’s the best way to get started? I would suggest you do the following:

Meet with your CFO or finance group and find out what is important to the organization. In the coal-mining industry, for example, the measure of tons of coal produced per man-hour shift is a very important metric, much more so than, say, turnover percentage. While I was working at Peabody Energy, I recall telling our hiring managers that they needed to be concerned that 20% of their employees would be retiring in the next few years. It fell on deaf ears. But when I rephrased my argument and told them how that would affect the tons of coal produced per man-hour shift, it got their attention.

Identify how your organization would like to see your information. Believe it or not, how you present the information is as important as the information itself. The finance group should be able to help in this area too. John Vlastelica recently spoke on this topic at the national EMA conference. While at Amazon.com, every single one of his staffing reports looked like it came out of the finance group. Same fonts, same format, everything. And it got attention. It looked credible.
Make sure the metrics you use are meaningful. We all know that cost per hire is something that most organizations look to as a standard. But is it really a metric that you can use to make valid comparisons? There are some major issues with cost per hire. I would suggest that you look into a metric called the staffing efficiency ratio. It’s a much better, more easily comparable metric. (See www.staffing.org/measure/costperhire.html for a complete discussion on CPH and staffing efficiency.)
Start! Don’t worry about historic information. The most important information to gather is what you are doing today. Often organizations think that the first thing they should do is to gather historical data so they have something to benchmark against. Wrong. The first thing you should do is just start measuring. Once you’ve gathered your current information, then you can go back and look at the historical information to see how you did before.
Benchmark your results against other organizations in your geography and industry. In order to tell the most compelling story with your metrics, you need to know how you fared compared to your key competitors and to others in your geography. For example, your staffing efficiency ratio may be high, and you might be a bit concerned. But when you compare that to others in your industry, you may find out that their efficiency ratio is even higher. Your efficiency ratio then doesn’t look so bad, and you have a different story to tell.
Determine the best frequency for each metric. One of the questions I get asked frequently is, “How often should I report my metrics?” The answer is, it depends. For example, you may not be interested in reporting turnover every month if yours is an organization with historically low turnover. But you may be interested in looking at time-to-start each and every month, especially if you are using this metric to gauge recruiter effectiveness.

Now is a great time to start measuring and benchmarking. The Human Capital Metrics Consortium’s 2003 Standard Benchmark Surveys were just launched. There is no reason not to participate. It’s free, absolutely confidential, and you’ll receive a valuable analysis at no cost. Your performance will also improve. Visit survey.staffing.org to take this important survey today!

Note: If you’re a recruitment or HR professional in the Washington D.C. area, don’t miss Heather Hartmann at the Washington D.C. Metrics Symposium, hosted by ERE, at the Doubletree Hotel in Crystal City on May 21. Click here to learn more.

Why Can’t My ATS Do What I Want It To Do? A Recruiter’s Perspective

Heather Hartmann — Mon, 14 Oct 2002 19:00:00 +0000

While visiting with numerous applicant tracking system vendors at the recent HR Technology Expo in Chicago, a common theme began to emerge that left me very uncomfortable. It seemed that none of the ATS representatives could explain what they actually deliver. They apparently knew a great deal more about what they were “soon” to implement (in version 6.0.3.1) than what they already had, and insisted on describing these visionary features and benefits in great detail. Maybe I completely missed the point, but last time I checked, I thought recruiters were the potential clients in this relationship. I always thought that when a prospective client asks, “Can you do X?” the vendor should simply reply, “Yes” or “No.” Instead, what I heard was, “You’re the only one that has ever asked for X,” or “That feature is in version 6.0.3.1,” or lately, the dreaded: “Don’t you remember the 80/20 rule?” The 80/20 Rule Revisited The first time I remember applying the 80/20 rule was when I was baking a cake (really). I was young, learning to cook, short of several ingredients and, most importantly, in a hurry. I interpreted the rule to mean that 80% of the ingredients were sufficient to bake the cake. So which ones do you think I left out? Flour? Water? Sugar? Eggs? Milk? Nah, all of these ingredients make up the backbone of a good cake. I couldn’t leave any one out, because they are all equally important. I ended up using 80% of each ingredient ó and then burned the cake because I failed to understand how the ingredients would interact in the oven. Assuming that an employer knows which processes (ingredients) are essential for hiring, then what functionality do you leave out of your ATS? What can you do without? Maybe it depends on what you and your organization need from your ATS. Are you trying to gain efficiencies or streamline processes? What reporting functionality do you need? Do you require EEO/AAP reporting, or recruiting metrics such as Total Compensation Recruited or Sourcing Efficiency? If I followed the 80/20 rule, I might not be able to get all of the reporting tools that I need and be forced to use other sources for reporting. Just about all of the ATS systems I’ve seen can dump data into an Excel spreadsheet, but why should I have to go out to another software package for reporting? Why can’t my ATS provide me the meaningful reports that I need? And, more importantly, why should I have to pay for functionality that I, and my organization, don’t need or use? To me, that’s like paying for a car with a Global Positioning System (GPS), Roadside Assistance, All Wheel Drive and more ó when all I plan to do is commute across town. Why Recruiters Don’t Use All of the Functionality Available How many of us use all of the capabilities of our cell phones? I heard one presenter at this most recent conference state that “recruiters only use 30% of the functionality of an ATS”. Okay, so now I’m settling for 80% of the functionality I want, and then I only use 30% of what I get? Why? A unique experience I had at a former employer, Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, offers one answer. The recruiting team (then just Ernst & Young) had decided to move away from a process in which each regional office did its own thing in terms of applicant tracking to a more standardized, client/server-based system that was organization wide. It sounded like a good thing to do. The company included recruiters from several different practice areas to become part of the Ernst & Young Recruiting Information System (EYRIS) team. This team was responsible for determining the requirements of the system and passing those on to the IS project team. They then assisted with the training of the remaining 100+ recruiters on the new EYRIS system. What they didn’t do ó and I think this was the fatal flaw in the system ó was help the recruiters understand why this type of a system was important to the organization. They were good at mandating that recruiters update every milestone in the system, but I don’t recall them ever explaining why these milestones and pieces of data were important. So what happened? Recruiters only updated the milestones when required. They updated contact information and made notes about the candidate in the system, since that was useful to them. But getting them to update a candidate from Interview 1 to Interview 2 to Office Interview to Offer Extended to Hired was like pulling teeth! Why? Because to do this took the recruiters away from what was important to them: sourcing, screening, interviewing candidates, and getting “butts in seats.” As a result, when I would run “management reports” from EYRIS, the data looked like this: Phone Interview 2/01/2000, INT1 2/01/2000, INT2 2/01/2000, Offer Ext. 2/01/2000…you get the picture. The date field self-populated; the recruiters couldn’t change it. Whenever you updated the milestone, the date was captured automatically. Going back to the cell phone analogy, most of us don’t understand all of the inherent functionality or how to use it because we haven’t been trained properly AND motivated. Have you read your owner’s manual cover to cover? So, once again, we’re paying for 80% of what we really want/need, and using 30%. Everything You Need? “Don’t recruiters realize that this is an awesome system and can do everything they need?” This seems to be the standard question that most ATS vendors ask themselves. Naturally, each vendor thinks theirs is the best product. They are also quick to tell you about all of the functionality. What very few of them do, however, is find out what is important to you and your organization. In fairness, some do attempt to do this. They send out a very complicated questionnaire in advance of the demo to ensure that they are on the right track and are not wasting the recruiter’s time. Unfortunately, the questionnaire is so complex that, in my own experience, I immediately tossed it in the trash and promptly called to cancel the demo. I’m happy to tell a vendor what I need from a system, but a five-minute conversation should be able to highlight my hot buttons ó versus a questionnaire that takes an hour and three other people from my IS group to complete. As for the system being able to do everything recruiters need, few do it all. This brings me to the question of modularity. Why aren’t more vendors configuring their systems in such a way that you can pick and choose pieces that you like, and put them all together into one system? For example, I’ve been looking at various vendors who include a skills database as part of their system. I really don’t want to purchase a new ATS; I like the one I have. Instead, I want to be able to add on a module that allows for my internal employees to update their skills, create an internal resume, and indicate to our organization what kind of positions they would be interested in applying for in the future. I want this to run on our intranet, but allow our employees to click a button from the intranet and apply through my current ATS to any open positions. This must be too much to ask. I’ve only found two vendors that allow for this kind of functionality: Monster and Kenexa. Yes, I did say Monster. Not normally known as an ATS vendor, Monster does have this functionality embedded in its Office HQ product. And it’s a modular system. I don’t need to purchase all of Office HQ to get this feature. Another item of interest to me is metrics. I want my ATS to incorporate the four core metrics advocated by Staffing.org. (For those of you not familiar with Staffing.org, they are a non-profit organization providing human capital performance metrics, benchmarks and resources.) However, I’ve only found one vendor so far, NuView, that has the capability to incorporate Staffing.org’s metrics into their system. This vendor even goes so far as to be able to compare your internal recruiting metrics with the benchmarks from Staffing.org’s annual benchmark report. The result is immediate results, right there, on your desktop. No need to download anything to Excel, and then plug in the numbers from Staffing.org ó it does it for you. Talk about efficiency! So, ATS vendors, hopefully you’ve paid attention ó and when I visit next year’s HR Technology Expo in Philadelphia, I’ll be blown away by the following:

Systems will be modular, which will then encourage me to use 100% of the system rather than settling for 80% functionality.

You’ll have surveyed the recruiters in a very simple manner to find out what their needs are, and incorporate those into your systems.
You will have provided training on all aspects of the system and helped me to understand why each feature is important, as well as how to use it.

It seems pretty simple, really. Each organization is unique, so why would we expect our ATS to be any different?