You can't improve what you don't measure, so metrics are a crucial element of great recruiting. I recommend three basic approaches to employment metrics. The first is a "dashboard" (like a car dashboard), which is so named because it allows you to continually monitor all of the vital elements in a successful employment function. The second approach is an employment "index" which is a single combined index that allows you to see how you are doing at a single glance, very much like the Dow Jones average gives you a quick glance of how the stock market is doing. The third is to monitor business and economic trends in order to anticipate how they might impact the supply and demand for employees and employment services. The Dashboard seems to be taking a stronghold in staffing as the preferred method of positioning metrics to all users of metrics in the staffing process.

Though it's cold and lonely in the deep dark night,I can see paradise by the dashboard light

- Jim  Steinman/Meatloaf, (Bat out of Hell LP 1977)

 

For those of you old enough to remember the song it has nothing to do with staffing and metrics. However it wasn't that long ago that using the term metrics and staffing in the same sentence seemed ludicrous. What few bits of data that were tracked during the staffing process amounted to little more than how many candidates applied to an open requisition or how many open positions you were working on.

Very little effort was made to track some of the other basic pieces of information attached to the staffing process. Now more than ever it has become imperative that some form of reporting is done during the act of recruiting. Exactly what is being kept track of or what should be kept track of is a matter of extensive debate and probably will be for some time.

However one thing is very clear, the need to not only keep track of but also make sense of what is being tracked or measured. As the old adage goes "You can't improve what you don't measure". So metrics are a crucial element of great recruiting. In an attempt to become more efficient at keeping track of all of the activity before, during and after the staffing process a number of different solutions have come to pass.

I recommend three basic approaches to employment metrics.

The first is a "dashboard" (like a car dashboard), which is so named because it allows you to continually monitor all of the vital elements in a successful employment function.

The second approach is an employment "index" which is a single combined index that allows you to see how you are doing at a single glance, very much like the Dow Jones average or the NYSE gives you a quick glance of how the stock market is doing. The third is to monitor business and economic trends in order to anticipate how they might impact the supply and demand for employees and employment services.

The Dashboard seems to be taking a stronghold in staffing as the preferred method of positioning metrics to all users of metrics in the staffing process.

Is it Paradise by Dashboard light? Well perhaps not exactly. But the value of having an at a glance view of all that is measured and being able to package that in different ways to not only your staffing people but to the senior management is invaluable