A New Order for Recruiting Measurements

The traditional recruiting system is broken. This isn't breaking news, but the awareness will hopefully lead to change. At the risk of offending multiple levels of readership, I'll also state that many of the problems are systemic and begin with leadership putting the wrong carrot in the right place.

Too often, I hear both business leaders and recruiters emphasize lower cost and faster recruiting - as if these are the highest order of KPIs for the recruiting process. They are valid KPIs, to be sure, and should continue to be measured. But the most important KPIs should be: employee performance versus measurements of job success, and time to ROI. It's unfortunate that the latter KPIs are rarely discussed.

Something got lost along the way where the quest for ultimate profitability superseded superior quality of hire. This is fine if you're manufacturing widgets, where speed of execution and cost-cutting measures are essential drivers, but we're talking about hiring the very best people for the job - a process that cannot be manufactured. And in this context, manufacturing is much different than organizational development leading to business growth.

The lesson is that we shouldn't confuse lean processes with hiring processes. But people hear what they want to hear, and too often in my opinion, fail to stack rank the right priorities to the right tasks.

If the late Peter Drucker earned even half the credibility for business wisdom that he deserves, it should be abundantly clear by now that people are the key ingredient to the performance of any organization. Yet his timeless principles are apparently lost on so many business leaders. If they're not, why aren't we putting the right carrot in the right place with regards to people decisions?

If the primary objectives for business leaders are truly about business growth and profitability, it's time to recognize that superior quality in the hiring process is the catalyst which ultimately drives greater profitability. A responsibly executed and robust recruiting process will always create a robust business with magnitudes of strategic and competitive advantage.