Two Talent Metrics HR Should Know (and Why It's Important)

As the lines between marketing and HR continue to blur, talent metrics begin to creep to the forefront of employment success. If you've spent a significant portion of time in HR, or you're a certified HR professional with either HRCI or SHRM, then you understand the importance of possessing solid strategic insight in your HR role. Part of the reason assuming a more broad-vision goal is so imperative to HR professionals is due to the high financial impact hiring the right (or wrong) people has on job openings. Not only do employees eat up the bulk of a company's budget, but a good employee has the potential to make a substantial amount of money for the company. On the other hand, hiring an employee who isn't a good fit can wreak havoc on revenue.

Having a well-developed employer brand plays just as crucial of a role at your organization as your company brand.

Now, understanding the strategic weight HR holds at the company is only the first step to increasing strategic credibility. The second aspect is implementing a process that measures one's success based on the company's bottom line, and that's where talent metrics come in. Few metrics that measure your contribution at the company will be as valuable as talent metrics because high quality talent metrics are the hallmark of your ability to assess your company's hiring success. And since staff is the foundation of any company, hiring the right people (or at the very least, creating a solid "insurance policy" for the success of your new hires) is the gateway to your company's overall output. Now that we've tackled the whys for talent metrics, let's talk about two talent metrics that help recruiters monitor their progress with respect to an organization's vision. Dr. John Sullivan discusses them at length here.

For enhancing your employer brand, choose talent metrics that monitor your applications.

Having a well-developed employer brand plays just as crucial of a role at your organization as your company brand. This is one of the areas that HR has really started to mirror marketing. Your marketing team understands that without a solid brand, you are at a disadvantage because people (potential clients) won't know who you are. The same can be said for your employer brand. You're not going to attract top talent to apply for your positions if you don't have a solid presence online where most people turn when applying for jobs nowadays. To measure your success at increasing the reach of your employer brand (or, at the very least trying to create talent metrics benchmarks), aim for reeling in at least one application per employee at your company for each job opening. In other words, if you have 300 employees, aim for receiving 300 applications for one of your job openings. Talent metrics like this one help you create a very simple and tangible guideline for expanding your employer brand.

All talent metrics should include diversity measurements.

Tactics to deploy a broad range of talent metrics shouldn't exclude diversity. Use the diversity of your customers to steer your diversity talent metrics efforts. A lot of HR professionals wrongly assume that in order to be "diversified" they should be focusing on quantity which can cause a lot of unnecessary stress. Instead, opt for finding diverse talent and hiring them into high impact positions. The wider their reach, the more likely it is that they'll be able to speak to your clients with which diversity efforts resonate. The key is to not overcomplicate these talent metrics simply monitor how many diversity based hires you do in high impact positions and get with sales to pinpoint whether their contributions influence clientele that may be missed in your general marketing campaign.

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