Gretchen comes out with the big question of Metrics in blogging, and I think it's time to lay my own cards on the table.
We've discussed blogging metrics before, and the question has been one of soft measures versus hard measures. Does traffic, "buzz," press mentions, and anecdotal stories count as good metrics, or should we be focused on employees hired, time-to-hire, and cost-to-hire?
First, let me just say that recruiting metrics are not reliable. They're fun to talk about, they give executives a sense of security, and they allow recruiters to pitch the illusion that our job can be measured.
I'm not disagreeing with the principle of recruiting metrics. The numbers do mean something. I simpy refuse to believe that steps taken to improve measures like cost-per-hire are causal, rather than coincidental. Improving cost-to-hire is not an exact science, and anyone pretending it is deluding themselves.
What's more important to a company; a hardware developer that created the iPod, or the call center representative that handles service calls? What matters more - sales managers over districts, or salespeople in a new office? Office staff, or Securities analysts?
You cannot lump employees into categories that recruiting metrics can measure, because the complexity of why human beings accept jobs is greater than our ability to accurately measure. You face two problems. First, only the largest companies hire enough people in a category to generate the numbers to truly measure. Second, the changing nature of the employment and factors like geography, interviewer aptitude, local unemployement rates, and even employer brand affect the choice of why someone accepts your offer.
Recruiting metrics only measure one thing - what recruiters are doing. Until those numbers include accurate mathematical models of the behavior of hiring managers, candidates, and outside factors, then they are not truly measuring recruiting.
So why do recruiter metrics work? They work for the same reason that diets appear to work. The individual who eats pizza, fast-food and wedding cake while never working out has a lot of improvement they can shoot for. Changing diet, moderate exercise, and changing their lifestyle will all make some improvement. It's the same with recruiting staffs. The job is so complex that people still use intuition to solve it. Improvements of any kind are bound to have results, and if you have targets to shoot for, you're more likely to eliminate wasteful activities.
The metrics only work in that case because you're giving a name to improvement. That doesn't mean the metrics are meaningful as more than a target, anymore than the Hoolywood Miracle Diet works because you droppped ten pounds.
Recruiting Metrics? Pah. And this is what you want to measure Blogs on?
Next, Examples of How Line Recruiters should blog.
