A Measure of Success: Getting Started

• Author: Scott Biggerstaff
• Posted: March 9, 2007
• Category: Recruiting, Performance Staffing
• Tags: No Tags
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Everyone is talking about metrics these days. Operational metrics, strategic metrics, staffing metrics, CFO reportable metrics, it goes on and on. Many HR folks are scared of metrics. They’ve never been held accountable for metrics before. They don’t know where to start or where to pull the numbers from. I mean, not everyone has a fully customized report generator on their ATS, if they even have one at all.

I’ve heard many reasons for not measuring performance. That’s what metrics are really, a way to measure productivity or performance. So, what product does staffing produce? If the answer is qualified new hires then the next question is, “How can metrics help us measure that?”

In the next few weeks I will be posting some snippets that will help clear up some of the confusion that can easily lead to metric jitters. I’d also like to share my beliefs on a few very important operational metrics in a few posts after that. These are all posts that will help you as a recruiter increase your productivity everyday. We’ll worry about larger strategic metrics another time.

To get started, here are three good resources to use:

• SHRM has a HR Measurements Focus Area which always has something interesting posted there. They also have some neat calculators and sample spreadsheets to help you get started.
• HRMetrics.org is full of really useful stuff for beginners and experts and everyone in between. They also have a good blog, I mean a really good blog!
• And for good measure, our Performance Staffing site has some great titles organized under Metrics in the Recruitment Process. All of the books are available on Amazon to buy.

Feel free to add to the comments any resources that you want to share. If you have found something useful we want to know!