Metrics, what do they mean

So, here’s the situation, on Tuesday morning, let’s say September 11th a VP of Talent Acquisition in California goes to work and get’s his morning briefing…here is the conversation:
Staff: Good morning
VP: Good morning, how are we doing
Staff: Well, over the last month the team hired 490 new people…that’s about 7 hires per recruiter.
VP: Wow, we’re doing really well, how many open opportunities.
Staff: Right now we have approx 1500 new opportunities
VP: Have we got the resources to deliver that many hires?
Staff: Given our current time to hire of 4-8 weeks on average, ummm, not really.
VP: Let’s schedule some time to talk more about that…..

Last week, I finished reading the HRPAO (Human Resource Proffesional Association of Ontario) issue on Metrics in the Human Resources profession and each author explained that HR is increasingly being asked to demonstrate it’s effectiveness in the organization and as a profession we’re not very good at it. The group that most often is best able to show their effectiveness is the Talent Acquisition groups as is illustrated by the above fictional conversation. The thing that surprised me about all the articles is that they failed to ask “should” metrics be the driving factor for HR. Here is what I mean, I’m not sure the numbers of hires, cost of hire, time to hire, etc…are the correct metrics for a Talent Acquisition department, I mean if their stated goal is to bring in top talent for the organization and retain that talent pool over time, then possibly number of hires, cost of hire and time to hire are counterproductive measurements to be using. I know, that seems radical, but hey, being radical is what I’m known for.

So then the question comes up, what metric do you use to measure effectiveness in growing talent pools, well, to my thinking you have to look at things like your retention rates, you need to look at exit interviews to see if you can see trends in fit (or fit analysis), you also need to look at your employment brand from a candidate perspective, both those hired and those not selected for roles within your organization. Coming recently from Intuit I like to use a methodology that they utilize called “Net Promoter” scores, to see more on Net Promoters go to http://www.netpromoter.com It allows you to determine how people feel about your hiring programs but also about the recruiters with whom they are interacting. The trick is getting folks who have been rejected in the interview process to give you their input, but hey, even that can be a metric.

I guess what I’m saying is that to get more into the TA2.0 era organizations will have to start paying more attention to the candidate experience and not allow those pesky time to hire metrics get in the way or in some cases sabotage their talent pools.

And that’s radical

Geoff