Where do Top Performers Come From?

Budgets…cash flow…revenues…receivables…inventory…new hires? As financial and operations professionals, you understand the value of tracking and measuring every aspect of your business. As a leader striving to operate an efficient and profitable department and company, you are expected to develop a mechanism for evaluating your team’s activities. The obvious goal is to eliminate costly, ineffective programs and devote more resources to those practices that are deemed successful.

But what about your department’s hiring practices! How much do you know about where your new Controller came from? How did your new Director of Operations identify your organization as an ideal place to work? Where will you go to find another solid Finance Manager?

For the past several years, survey after survey has identified “hiring and retaining good talent” as one of the top 2 concerns faced by today’s leaders. Contrast this with the fact that less than 10% of the companies we work with have a system in place to track the source of their top performers. This begs the question: why is there such a disconnect? Senior executives would have little difficulty identifying the products that contribute the greatest revenue to their organization. These same executives, however, would find it much more challenging to specify the source of their #1 salesperson or leading operations manager. Herein lies the issue – many companies fail to clearly define their hiring metrics and lack a true definition of a successful hire.

Regardless of the current economic climate (see Top 10 Ways to Minimize Hiring Costs…), it is impossible to improve what you do not measure. When the senior management team evaluates the success of a new product launch or marketing campaign, the metrics are simple – determine the incremental increase in sales directly attributable to the campaign or product. When it comes to hiring, however, the results can be a bit more difficult to measure. Seasoned human resources professionals tend to measure their recruiting success based on two metrics: job performance and tenure. Therefore, the goal should be to hire additional top performers who are committed to staying with the organization. The issue, of course, is where to find these professionals.

In order to answer this question, companies must commit themselves to analyzing the sources of their successful hires, conducting a cost/benefit analysis and ultimately devoting more resources to the proven strategies. Today’s business leaders must avoid spending money on activities that fail to deliver increased sales or lower costs. Likewise, organizations should also avoid costly recruiting campaigns that fail to deliver high performance employees that remain with the company long term.

Fortunately, the process of developing a system that will identify your most effective hiring practices is not terribly difficult. The size, scope and duration of the program’s initial set up will be dependent upon the complexity of the organization and the amount of hiring.

Continued in next column >