Recruitment Must Be Both Good and Fast – Friday Distraction
(Editor’s Note: Today’s post is brought to you by our friends at Kronos, the global leader in delivering workforce management solutions in the cloud. Kronos CEO Aron Ain was recently awarded Glassdoor’s Highest Rated CEO recognition for 2016. We’ve been honored to interview Aron on building a world-class company culture. Congrats to him and enjoy the post!)
The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) recently published an article talking about quality of hire being the top metric for human resources. I agree that quality of hire is important. Unfortunately, it’s also a very difficult metric to calculate. If you aren’t calculating any metrics or just starting to calculate some, quality of hire might not be the place to start. Get the organization accustomed to metrics first. Then, introduce the more complex ones.
In the meantime, consider focusing on speed. A common metric to measure is time to fill or time to start. Organizations can attract the best talent, but if the recruitment process takes a long time…well, things like this might happen.
This Time Well Spent cartoon from our friends at Kronos reminds me that we need to balance our recruitment efforts like a three-legged stool. We want quality candidates, in a timely fashion, within a reasonable cost. It’s the concept of good, fast, or cheap.
- If we hire the best candidates quickly, does that increase our cost to hire?
- If we extend offers to the first candidate who has below-market compensation requirements, are we getting the best?
- If we’re willing to pay top dollar for the best talent, how long will it take for us to find them?
Ideally, our recruitment process should balance all three components – quality, cost, and time. It’s possible that the way a company ranks these factors might impact whether they hire a full-time employee or a freelancer.
Bottom-line: everyone involved in the recruitment process needs to understand the company’s hiring priorities. Otherwise, they’re working at cross purposes. One person may be working to save costs while another is trying to speed the process.
Do you know which one your company values most – candidate quality, time to start, or cost per hire?
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