The perfect candidate for your client’s temporary job is sitting in right in front of you. You know this. But how do you prove it? And how do you prove it to your clients?
You can’t improve what you don’t measure. For decades, Human Resources departments have used established metrics to measure their own performance. So it’s somewhat surprising to me that so many staffing firms – even the larger ones with multiple locations – aren’t doing the same thing.
It’s surprising because a good system for self-measurement can be doubly useful for staffing and recruiting. You can use it to make your own staffing firm more efficient. Plus, you can get a much clearer idea of who the perfect temp candidates are.
But it’s only somewhat surprising because the most commonly-used metrics are not foolproof. Here’s a quick look at some of them:
■Time-to-Hire. This is a good metric to show clients who typically want positions filled RIGHT NOW. However it’s dangerous, because it encourages you to fill a position fast – as opposed to filling it with the best resource. That can cost your client a lot of money in training and quality assurance, and ultimately cost you both the resource and the client.
■Retention/Turnover. How long are your placements staying with their employers? These are good metrics, as they can shed a lot of light on costs associated with recruiting, hiring and training. You can use them to prove, for example, that a client is better off leaving the position open for an extra month rather than hiring too fast.
■Cost-Per-Hire. This compiles all of the expenses related to hiring, including advertising, sourcing, technology, drug testing and many more. In fact, a taskforce led by the Society for Human Resource Management operating under the auspices of the American National Standards Institute is developing a universal CPH standard which is currently up for second review. It does not, however, measure any expenses after the hire.
■Performance. Many organizations use a general survey-style method for measuring the “quality” of an employee, such as a performance rating based on a scale of one to five. The problem here is that what people say and what they do are often very different. An evaluator who’s in the mood to award a “5” one day might be more inclined to award a “3” the next, and even then there’s often no clear action to be taken on the results.
Perhaps a more practical approach, for yourself and for your recruits, is to focus on KPIs (key performance indicators).
KPIs are related to your specific business. They should always be tied to your business goals, actionable, consistent and trackable.
For example, let’s use common staffing KPIs tracked by the American Staffing Association. These might be:
■Resumes received
■Sendouts per employee
■Number of placements
■Hours billed per employee
■Length of service by recruit
■Gross margin per salesperson
For determining the perfect temp candidate, it’s great to know your client’s KPIs. Your client might measure success by:
■Hours per employee
■Total production by employee
■Employee absences
■Total business cost per employee
■Total cost per project/initiative
This is important: once you’ve got the right KPIs down you can combine them into what tells you the most, at a glance, about how your recruits are performing and how you are performing for your client.
It’s important because none of your KPIs will tell the complete story. An employee who is absent the most may not be the least productive. A low number of sendouts might mean you’re slacking off; it could also mean that you’re consistently getting it right the first time. You need to combine them to get a full picture.
But here’s the most important part. It will no doubt get me in trouble with HR mavens and other math-oriented professionals.
People are not numbers. No matter how hard we try, they never will be.
None of these metrics help you measure the perfect temp candidate that’s sitting in front of you right now. So it’s vitally important to balance the knowledge you’ve come up with through hard numbers and your unmeasurable instincts. Because if you bring in good people in the first place, many of the reactive measurements later on will take care of themselves.
In a recent New York Times article, author Robin Black said: “I have to stop worrying about numbers. I have to reclaim the ambiguous part of my own intelligence.” There has to be a subjective “gut” feel to what you’re doing, too. Nobody has ever come up with a formula to quantify creativity or drive or persona (see point #6 here). Sometimes you just know.
That’s your job.
And if you’re doing it well, you’re probably dealing with numbers – matching the client’s KPIs to the candidates’ qualifications.
At the same time you’re operating in ambiguity, looking for specific strengths and identifying weaknesses in your recruits that will allow both the recruit and the client to grow. You’re making an informed judgment call.
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