Thankfully the Dashboards provided by staffing technology vendors (typically as part of the reporting tool) of today are fully configurable. Unlike the dashboard in your vehicle you get to choose what appears at a glance on your screen.
This is a key element considering the fact that every one from the person who posts the job online to the VP of HR (or perhaps even the CFO/CEO) will want to monitor the activities of the staffing department on some level.
However this raises an interesting challenge for those of you who are responsible for keeping track of all of the metrics: What metrics do you track?
Well, in short it's not a simple answer. You keep track of what you determine, as an organization should be kept track of. The only way to do that is to ask. In a very simplistic sense it is that simple and yet that complex. Everyone will have a different opinion to offer but your guide should be 'in what way do we align our staffing goals with our overall corporate goals?"
Answering that question is not a simple task if you've never done it before but is one that needs to be answered. While I always cringe at the idea of offering up any 'best practices' (quite simply best practices for one company are not always best practices for every company) here are some suggestions for your metrics team to include on a dashboard:
- Best recruitment source (of top performers).
- Cost per source (per qualified applicant)
- The performance of hires (6-12 month lag after hiring)
- Cost per hire
- Time to fill (average)
- Percent of hires per source
- Time to interview
- Time between interview and offer
- Percent of bad hires (released/quit within 6-12 months)
- Satisfaction with the hiring process (applicants and managers)
- Top 5 reasons why bad hires leave
The list can go on ad infinitum but you get the idea. Align yourself with all of the people in your organization who would review such data and determine what makes sense to keep track of and why. It's not enough just to be curious. You want to keep track of metrics that impact how your company does business.
This will enable you to get one step closer to becoming the value added partner in HR that is truly needed in today's economy.
