Man, in some ways Third Party Staffing Firms have it so much better than the internal folk.
On the outside, we have very specific ways to track our performance with clients. It's called the check clearing and the client calling with new orders.
Metrics on the inside seem impossibly complicated. I've seen hires made for political reasons, personal reasons, and even to inflate the headcount of managers before performance review. Those kind of hiring decisions don't do well in the contract recruiting world because invoices are easily tracked to people.
If your contractors are not liked, they are easily rolled off on the next purchase order. If they are not performing, I can expect a call at the end of the day with unpleasant news.
We're often told in sales that the definition of relationship is an invoice. For other businesses it's a check in hand or a signed contract. If I truly took that to heart, I might have a few placements, but the amount of work I would do over the years would double or triple.
This is a business of relationships. My success is dependent on how people feel when they get off the phone with me or respond to an e-mail. My job is to understand their business and their problems and solve them by finding the exact match for their talent and personality fits. Sometimes that is broad, and sometimes that is narrow - but the perception from the side of the hiring manager has to be that I understand them, that I want them to succeed, and in the end, that they can trust me to find the people they are looking for.
I don't know how you would measure that without looking at my paycheck.
