Time

Recruiting time questions have ranked in the top three inquiries received by Staffing.org since becoming an independent corporation in 1998. Proper implementation of time improves the relationship between hiring manager and recruiter, making for a more effective hiring process and yielding better results.

More than 10 years ago, when the phrase just-in-time recruiting became popular, many thought it marked the beginning of a new stage in the profession. We were going to advance recruiting as the manufacturing profession had recently advanced it. And most importantly, the fruit of our labor was going to be respected. Just-intime recruiting certainly resonates with hiring managers, but we didn’t take the time to understand how just-in-time works in the manufacturing industry.

Just-in-time is a sound inventory and manufacturing management practice. It wasn’t started so much to speed up delivery or manufacturing but rather to minimize capital tied up in inventory and storage. The associated financial benefits are significant. And it works. The organizations that are responsible for delivering just-in-time use detailed and sophisticated timelines to understand all components of the process and give the customer what they want, when they want it. It doesn’t matter how long it takes for the steel, or silicon chips, or chemicals, or tires, or whatever, to be delivered. All that matters is that they are delivered when they are needed and expected based on the terms jointly contracted by the manufacturer and supplier.

Time-to-Fill and Time-to-Start are popular traditional human resource metrics, utilizing time rather than number of hires as a measure of staffing efficiency. These measures are subject to several limitations and weaknesses. Both measures are easy to manipulate and are at the mercy of unforeseen business or personal demands beyond the control or purview of staffing operations. You can ask staffing professionals and they can easily recall experiences filling positions in what they believe to be a timely manner only to be told by an unhappy hiring manager that they needed someone “yesterday.” Time metrics that don’t specify an agreed-upon criteria and timeframe are by definition doomed to fail right from the start since no mutual understanding has been established.

Actual and Contracted Time-to-Start addresses this issue. Prior to beginning the recruiting process for a new position, the hiring manager and recruiter should negotiate a Time-to-Start for the position. This ensures more realistic expectations of when someone will start working. This becomes the Contracted Time-to-Start. The Actual Time-to-Start is the average number of days between the first day of recruiting for a position and the first day new employees are on the job. Note the difference from Time-to-Acceptance, which focuses on number of days to fill the position. The Time-to-Start is a more important number, since most hiring managers care more about when a person will start working. Prior to beginning the recruiting process for a new position, the hiring manager and recruiter should negotiate a Time-to-Start for the position. This ensures more realistic expectations of when someone will start working. This becomes the Contracted Time-to-Start.

The Time metric encourages recruiters to meet with hiring managers and discuss these issues and the joint responsibility involved in filling the position in question. Sample timelines, including roles and responsibilities, are especially helpful to accurate contracting. The outcome of this discussion is a negotiated, realistic target start date. The hiring manager and recruiter should be working together to achieve this goal. As with the best metrics, this one fosters high performance by:

• Creating shared ownership of the process with hiring managers.

• Encouraging hiring managers to include recruiting in their human capital planning.

• Allowing recruiters to jointly establish realistic expectations with hiring managers.

• Allowing recruiters to focus on quality as well as Time-to-Start.

The Actual Time-to-Start is divided by the Contracted Time-to-Start and then multiplied by 100 to yield a percentage. Outcomes of 100 percent or less indicate that new employees are starting on or before the contracted time, while percentages over 100 indicate that recruiting efforts are taking longer than expected.

The value of using a ratio instead of a difference (that is, Actual Time-to-Start minus Contracted Time-to-Start) is that the ratio better accounts for the initial hiring manager expectations and needs in contracting. Consider ratios for two positions that each are filled 14 days later than promised. The first has been contracted for four weeks (28 days) but actually takes six weeks to fill (42 days). The ratio calculation is 42/28 × 100 = 150%, or 50 percent longer than promised. The second position has been contracted for 12 weeks (84 days) and takes fourteen weeks (98 days) to fill. This ratio calculation is 98/84 × 100 = 116%, or about 16 percent longer than promised. The higher ratio in the first instance captures the fact that a two-week delay is more problematic when a hiring manager has contracted to fill a position quickly. The straight difference between Actual and Contracted Time-to-Start (14 days for both positions) misses this important point.

The Time metric recognizes that filling the position is a joint responsibility between recruitment and the hiring department and encourages both parties to negotiate a realistic contracted date that can be changed upon mutual consent and prevailing business conditions. This level of partnership provides a constructive way to deal with changing priorities and other issues that inevitably occur and adversely impact the hiring process.

Although this metric is expressed as a ratio, actual time measures to fill specific positions can be used as sample timelines and can be helpful when planning to fill similar positions in future efforts. As mentioned earlier, this metric helps create a shared ownership of the hiring process, a key advantage over traditional time metrics and reflective of current business practices, which stress having management involvement in talent acquisition. It helps to address the “communication gap” that is frequently cited in business literature as existing between Human Resources (HR) and hiring management. Hiring managers directly participating in a collaborative recruiting system are more likely to have their needs and issues addressed because they can actively own their part of the recruiting process while communicating effectively with other participants.