Having left the talent acquisition arena nearly 11 years ago, at a time when it was first coming into “vogue” for an HR organization to show their ability to positively impact the bottom line of their organization (vs. just spending money on benefits, sourcing, etc) I find myself wonder why the needle seems to have moved so little when it comes to caring about and measuring accurately the return-on-investment (ROI) of a sourcing strategy, the opportunity cost of open positions and the overall value of the talent acquisition organization. 

Even back in the not so distant recruiting days of the newspaper ad response cattle call - where my trusty black filing cabinet was my ATS – I somehow managed to employ the most rudimentary of formulas to calculate the return I achieved from my efforts and the opportunity cost of not filling those open positions in a timely fashion. 

So I did some exploration intowhat is driving this lack of interest in how we actively spend (or indirectly waste) the company’s money and I’ve stumbled on a few recurring challenges that seem to plague organizations large and small, domestic and global.

1. HR / Talent Acquisition is still not viewed as a “player” at the table – Although this has been changing rapidly over the last decade with ironically, advances in metrics and ROI that have given HR the ability to show its value to the bottom line, many C-suites still do not recognize the impact a strong talent acquisition function can have on the success of a company.   I truly believe that any organization that really looks at the opportunity costs of losing, and having to source, recruit and replace just five key positions in their company would make a mad dash towards implementing some workforce planning as well as strategic, proactive and measurable sourcing strategies.  Staffing.org publishes an annual Recruiting Benchmarks and Performance Report that outlines many of the metrics critical to the process of defining, benchmarking and achieving success in this area.

2.“I like talking to people, so I’d make a great recruiter” – Suffice to say there are many, many career changers out there (I’m one of them having gone from HR to advertising myself) but we do these folks a disservice when we welcome them to a talent acquisition organization from a functional area but forget to tell them about all the “other” aspects of the job.  We often make the mistake of thinking that all it takes to hire great engineers is another engineer, or great nurses another nurse.  It is so much more than that. Recruiters are more often than not a tightly rolled combination of salesperson, counselor, multiple ball juggler, and savvy politician.   The really good ones care not only about the conversation but about the candidate, the company, the bottom line and the metrics.

3. Technology & infrastructure – My guess is you won’t find too many companies of any real size significance manually cutting payroll checks, running background investigations or conducting banking activities without a strong technology foundation – which makes me wonder why it is that I still encounter talent acquisition organizations with limited technology resources and employees gravely unhappy with the technology that is in place (even when it is solid). A few reasons - first talent acquisition software (ATS, CRM) tools have often been just an add-on to a payroll or HRIS system purchase.  Not giving the actual users the opportunity to define system needs and requirements for their organization and have a seat at the table in that purchase can lead at best to a system that simply doesn’t sync with the way talent acquisition does business and at worst can create an ineffective process for recruiters and candidates that negatively affects morale, candidate perception of your company and sourcing ROI.  Another common mistake around technology is the hope that by putting a system in place – processes will automatically fall into line and broken techniques will fix themselves.  This could not be further from the truth – if you have any hope to change the way your staffing function conducts business – you must do it the hard way – by changing the attitudes, perceptions and ways your team works – only then can you deploy a technology solution to support and measure the new way of doing business.  Lastly – in some cases, HR has simply not raised their hand when it comes to asking for their fair share of technology investment.  Technology has been a long missing link to HR’s credibility with the C-suite so now is the time to ask for your fair share if you haven’t already. 

4. Hiring managers – I used to say (jokingly, but only half so) that I could be a much better recruiter if only I could eliminate that middleman – the hiring manager.  Alas – these folks are pretty critical to our jobs and rather than living in a state of constant conflict or stress over how to deal with them – we must learn to engage them as active partners in a successful sourcing process, and measurement and metrics can help us do that.  Here are some of the most common hiring manager challenges and how metrics can help you combat them.

• Their job is the only job – We’ve all felt this pressure to elevate one position over another either in time or resources put toward it.  Having measured the success of sourcing/recruiting tactics by position type and/or geography can allow you to immediately kick off a strategy using techniques that will provide results and make every hiring manager feel as if they are your number one priority.
• Hurry up and wait – So you scramble to get your hiring manager resumes and then you never hear back from them – either because no candidate is “just right” (see bullet four for more on this) or because of other business challenges (ironically enough often caused by having a missing staff member).  Calculating the opportunity cost of an open position to the bottom line (and if you can to that hiring manager’s specific bottom line) can help bring things into perspective and give them the push they need to make filling the job a priority.
• “I want you to advertise here”– Again, utilizing your successfully measured sources with ROI metrics can help educate your hiring managers about the target audience from which the right candidate for the job is likely to come.  Hiring managers often make the mistake of seeing themselves as the target audience and projecting their preferences onto the sourcing strategy rather than taking the time to figure out if it is really a correct fit.  Unbiased, real results can help educate them and help you eliminate unsuccessful tactics that contribute to high opportunity costs, long time-to-fill and frustrated hiring managers.
• They can’t let go of the past – If the employee you are working to replace was any good – chances are you have a hiring manager who will want exactly what they had before and who will reject any candidate whose skills, experience or background are even slightly out of line with what they had before.  Fearing a change to their team dynamic – hiring managers will naturally gravitate to trying to make as minimal as possible the impact a new team member will have.  By measuring the quality and retention of employees and tying it back to the media from which they were sourced – you can encourage hiring managers to look beyond the individual and to the broader scope of resources that can help find quality talent that will fit the organization successfully and in a repeatable fashion. 

5. Marketing & HR live separate lives – Many of the principles we engage to help our customers measure their sourcing success are also used by marketing organizations who wouldn’t dream of placing an ad campaign or implementing a customer acquisition strategy without measurement tools in place.  Unfortunately, in many organizations we the agency are the first ones to bring marketing and HR together in a room.  Involving marketing doesn’t mean HR has to relinquish control of their strategy, messaging or the vendors they engage with- but you might be pleasantly surprised by the collaboration and understanding that can achieved when everyone is singing from the same song book.  The marketing team is a valuable ally to secure visibility with IT, Finance and the C-suite if you don’t already have it – and help to evangelize the mantra that “job seekers are consumers too” – and the way they behave as a consumer is often reflective of how they behave as a job seeker.  Although a simple conclusion to draw when awareness is raised, you’d be surprised how many organizations don’t often recognize how valuable B2C or B2B marketing techniques translate to the recruitment space.

You are probably not surprised to learn that after digging deeper I have to admit, my initial assumption that organizations are not interested in measuring their success and developing solid metrics is wrong. Rather than a lack of interest – there are simply numerous distractions that challenge and pull on talent acquisition professionals – preventing them from giving attention to this very important topic.   But the hopes of this self-professed “data diva” and budding statistician have not been dashed.  I sense a new passion and groundswell focused on metrics and measurement in our industry each and every day, whether listening to Jason Whitman of Indeed talk the basics of metrics to his clients, encouraging them to demand better tools and technologies for measuring success or reading the latest CareerXroads Annual Source of Hire study.  The economic downturn and the “doing more with less” mantra of the last eighteen months not withstanding – talent acquisition professionals need and are beginning to make noise and demand the tools and resources they need – from their own companies and the vendors that service them - to accurately measure and ultimately evolve their success. 

You’ve certainly seen Best Places to Work lists in business magazines like Fortune, and maybe in the niche publications that publish their own rankings for narrower constituencies. What you might not know is that Washington’s Partnership for Public Service regularly produces a similar government-wide ranking of federal departments and agencies (http://data.bestplacestowork.org/bptw/index).

It’s all based on what a couple hundred thousand government workers tell the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) in its bi-annual survey. The Partnership, in concert with American University's Institute for the Study of Public Policy Implementation (ISPPI) and The Hay Group--and with support from TMP Government--collates and submits OPM’s independently gathered results to strict statistical analysis. The outcome is a detailed side-by-side comparison of how federal organizations rate with their own employees across a range of criteria, from teamwork to training to perceived leadership competencies. The rankings also compare OPM’s employee responses—again agency by agency--by demographic segments, including gender, ethnicity, and age.

A benchmarking tool for agencies. If you’re looking for insight into your agency’s authentic employment value proposition, this compilation is a remarkable source, provided you’re willing to spend some time exploring its capabilities.

Both OPM’s own survey report (www.fhcs.opm.gov/) and the Partnership/ISPPI rankings allow you to see how your agency measures up in the eyes of your own workforce. But the Partnership/ISPPI compilation makes it easy to compare your results directly with those of virtually every other government agency. What’s more, the Best Places comparisons provide you with a statistically sound benchmarking tool for improving or refining key attributes in your own workplace culture. It can help immeasurably in refining your programs for employee engagement, inclusion, organizational development, succession planning, retention, and a host of other human capital focal points.

And when it comes to recruiting, is there a more resonant and authentic jumping off point for your agency’s employment brand than the characteristics where your own workforce tells you that you excel?

A resource for job seekers. For the federal job seeker, these rankings are indispensable, cutting through the recruiting noise to core workplace characteristics. While this certainly should not be the only comparative tool a candidate uses, it does represent a marvelous starting point and useful set of job search benchmarks for federal candidates at all levels of experience.

So...which agencies are the leaders of the pack? I leave that to you to discover. If you’re serious about how your team’s collective view of your workplace stacks up against other agencies, go here: http://data.bestplacestowork.org/bptw/index.

Where would we be without formulas? We all need them in order to make some of the most important decisions in our lives. For example, buy one gallon of paint for every 300 to 400 square feet you have to cover (more if you’re painting over a dark color). Or never eat shellfish in a month that has an “r” in it. Or is it in any month that doesn’t have an “r” in it? Hell, just stay away from shellfish.

But what about a formula for how long it takes to develop an employer brand? (I’ll bet you’re interested now.)

Here it is: Time to Brand Resonance = (Ubiquity x Breakthrough)/Market Dispersion.

Let’s take a minute to define each of these terms (just because it’s so much fun).

By Brand Resonance, I’m referring to the market not only having awareness of your organization as an employer, but a positive disposition shaped largely by the positioning strategy you have constructed.

Ubiquity simply refers to the degree of message presence, whether that message is manufactured (advertising and communications), or organic (networking, word-of-mouth). The ideal state being a constant presence everywhere imaginable (think news about Britney Spears).

By Breakthrough, I’m addressing the ability of the brand message to stand out against all background noise. Given that most messaging in the employment space tends to blend, this shouldn’t be hard to achieve. Yet surprisingly, it is. See my previous diatribe about camouflaging your message.

Let’s talk about the relationship between Ubiquity and Breakthrough. Having your message everywhere can certainly overcome a lack of Breakthrough. However, that’s a very expensive proposition. Breakthrough can also overcome lack of Ubiquity. And it doesn’t increase expense – but it does require organizational confidence. Lack of Ubiquity can be offset by Breakthrough and vice versa, but Brand Resonance cannot be achieved without one of these characteristics.

As for Market Dispersion, this refers to whether you are targeting a few people in a lot of places or thousands of people in one place. Therefore, geographically decentralized companies have a higher Market Dispersion factor than companies with a single location. Market Dispersion is also exacerbated by market segmentation (job category, generation, etc.). So at one end of the spectrum would be one job category in one region. At the other would be dozens of job categories in hundreds of markets.

So what is it that we learn from this new, magical formula? Concentrate your brand efforts in markets with limited dispersion and make sure you either have breakthrough or really deep pockets.

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I don’t know this for certain, but I imagine there is a law of physics that explains how energy dissipates as it gets farther from its source. (I’m also hoping there is an explanation for why my car breaks down right after the warranty expires.) It would also demonstrate how a greater source would result in energy taking longer to expend itself. With this law in hand, I would then propose to measure the reach of individual employer brands. A stretch, you say? I think not.

Here’s how it would work.

Every employer brand has an epicenter from which all corresponding attributes emanate. For most companies, this epicenter is a physical location. And the more employees an organization has in a given location, the greater the potential of the brand.

So, let the number of employees in a given location = V.

In addition, every organization has a different level of cultural vitality.

Let cultural vitality = I.

However, every organization also faces obstacles that diminish the potential of its employer brand. These obstacles could be internal, materializing in the form of counter-productive (at least from the standpoint of brand development) policies or practices. These obstacles could also be external (more powerful brands in the vicinity, declining sector, etc.).

Let the sum of all obstacles = R.

Therefore, (VxI)/R=W.

And what does W stand for? The actual power of the brand.

For those of you who recognized this as a rip-off of electrical formulas (V = voltage, I = current, R = resistance, and W = wattage), you win a prize (perhaps something fitting like a Sony lithium battery).

There are actually some useful lessons in this strange little exercise. For example, large, centralized companies have an advantage over smaller, decentralized companies in a given region. They may not have applied their advantage, but it is there nonetheless (why is that one word anyway?). It also serves as a preliminary strategy for brand building. Powerful brand epicenters can focus on achieving differentiation or even esteem, while less powerful epicenters may want to focus on basic awareness.

Next time out, a formula for finding missing socks.

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Random rave
Inspired by Al Gore in his movie, An Inconvenient Truth, I offer my big idea for reducing our dependence on oil: parking lots made from solar panels. The idea alone should drive down the price of oil to 10 cents a barrel.

A couple of the more recent entries on this site addressed the idea of employers and employees as commodities. As a follow-up, here's a handy little check list you can use to see where your organization stands.

I'll really know this check list is successful if it shows up in Cosmo or Maxim.

Download file

Interpreting your score.

One check in the commodity category means you have a lot of work to do. More than one check means you are seriously screwed. If you actually kept a tally, you should give some thought to either getting a hobby or submitting to therapy for Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (please excuse me for a minute while I check again to see if I left the iron on).

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