Great post over at Fistful of Talent (again) by Kris Dunn. (yes, it does seem to be FOT week this week). The crux is, you can have your food fast, good, or cheap. In fact, you can get two out of three, but you won't get all three in the same meal. OK, so maybe it's strange to talk about recruiting as a food analogy. The point is a great one. Except, we can add something...
None of this really matters unless you also have a good handle on the returns you can expect from your talent investments. If you have no insight as to the value that is created or destroyed by the right and wrong hires, how can you determine if you need your food fast, or good, or just cheap?
When I am hiring someone to iron my shirts, I can afford to take some risks. Fast and cheap may work ok for this recruitment process. I can quickly detect a mistake, and one or two mistakes don't cause my life to fall apart. On the other hand, I cannot afford to do a poor job on my next research assistant. I will be stuck with this person for a while, and the difference between a good RA and an average RA can amount to significant differences in my productivity.
So my business is easy to understand. But in most organizations, the question of how recruiting leads to value creation is something that you must map out quite carefully. Where are the A-positions (value creators) and which are the dispensible positions? What do those positions do, and importantly, what is the monetary value of hiring someone who is above average, as opposed to simply average (or worse!). These are the key questions to help in deciding WHICH of those metrics (fast, cheap, or good) you need to apply to evaluating recruitment.
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