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. 

We all know how powerful word-of-mouth and the opinions & insights of friends, family and colleagues can be in the world of marketing.  And an overwhelming majority of us would agree that social media has made it far easier for influence – both positive and negative – to reach more ears and eyeballs than ever before. 

A recent AdvertisingAge article begins to explore the impact the powerful influence of social commentary coupled with the evolving personalization of search results will have – leading to the imminent evolution of ‘friendsourcing’.  No longer can companies go on believing (and many still do) that negative commentary from sources unknown might be disregarded or dismissed because the user doesn’t have a connection to the author of that particular comment or post.  

Working with HR clients for many years (and having been one myself) I am amazed at how little attention has been paid to the ability of candidates to share their negative experiences about a company’s sourcing and hiring practices with others.  Even the recent explosion of social media tools giving high visibility to often negative commentary and years of Gerry Crispin & Mark Mehler’s CareerXroads® job seeker experience research  (among others) has not motivated staffing organizations to be more concerned about what is being said about them online. 

Now, the very real possibility of search results including the comments and opinions of those you know and trust – not random strangers – is upon us.  Just think about the impact this can have on the sourcing ROI of hard-to-fill or high turnover hiring areas.  Good recruiters & sourcers work very hard to penetrate and gain the trust of tight knit groups of hard to find talent such as mechanical engineers, critical care nurses or software developers – looking not only for interested candidates but those willing to refer their qualified and equally in-demand friends and colleagues.  Often – this courting process takes weeks, months, even years – giving those targets ample time to share their experiences with their own networks.  Imagine the advantage gained to an organization whose sourcing and hiring practices are reflected positively and spontaneously within peer groups who actually know their fellow members. Now imagine the magnified impact of that same network receiving the negative commentary. The ROI, opportunity cost and time-to-fill improvements you’ve worked so hard for will most surely take a heavy hit – even if temporarily.

Any good social media pundit will tell you that conversations positive and negative are happening about you already – and now is the time to get involved and join in.   The time for “baby-steps” and “dipping a toe” has passed.  If your staffing organization has not figured out how social media impacts your sourcing strategy and results– your ship is sailing without a captain at the wheel.

I truly believe the impending, if not upon us, collision of search and social will have an impact far greater than the sum of its parts.  Reminds me of that old Reese’s ® Peanut Butter Cup commercial: “You got peanut butter on my chocolate!” “You got chocolate in my peanut butter!” But together – it became something magical. And the rest is history.