Description
Business intelligence (BI) tools give executives the ability to aggregate, view and analyze information within their organizations.
BUSINESS
INTELLIGENCE
FOR STAFFI NG EXECUTI VES
How t o Cr e a t e + Ma n a ge a Da t a - dr i ve n Fi r m
2 1. 888.GOLIVE8 • [email protected] • @BULLHORN
Business intelligence (BI) tools give executives the ability to aggregate, view and analyze information
within their organizations. BI is taking on an increasingly strategic role in the stafng industry as more
frms look for ways to unlock key insights and gain a competitive advantage. In fact, businesses can
earn an incremental return on investment (ROI) of 241% by using business intelligence,
1
but creating a BI
environment is a long-term culture shift that has to be driven from the top down. Executive involvement is
critical to ensuring the successful creation of a data-driven culture that operates smoothly and efciently.
This whitepaper explores the key considerations and action items for executives in the stafng industry
looking to successfully create a BI environment within the organization.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
WHY FIRMS NEED BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE
Business intelligence is seen by nearly every industry and
market vertical as the next big leap in business efciency.
In fact, 46% of stafng frms said they consider analytics
to have a big impact on business operations, according
to a 2012 Stafng Industry Analysts study.
2
As the
owner or manager of a stafng frm, it’s vitally important
to understand and regularly monitor the key metrics
that impact the fnancial and operational health of the
business. In the past, gathering this data, analyzing and
interpreting it, and then using it was quite a challenge.
Measuring the impact was nearly impossible. With the
technology available today, there is no longer an excuse
not to leverage data to gain a competitive advantage.
Your data is the foundation of your entire business, and it
must be trustworthy. Many stafng frms fnd it challenging
to ensure data is captured accurately, regularly and
consistently; however, utilizing powerful recruiting tools
can help you automate processes to improve productivity
and data quality. According to the 2013 Bullhorn North
American Stafng and Recruiting Trends Report,
87% of North American recruiting professionals agree
that using ATS/CRM technology is important to the
success of their business and 62% said they consider
it “extremely important.”
3
The results of the survey
suggest that ATS/CRM technology is playing a more and
more critical role in stafng agency success and is no
longer considered a luxury, but a necessity.
“It’s well past time that the same level
of business intelligence and analytics
that sales, marketing, supply chain and
product teams have been enjoying for
over 5 years finally comes to recruiting
and staffing. Data is the new ammunition
in the war for talent.
”
GLEN CATHEY
VP, Global Sourcing and
Talent Strategy
Randstad Sourceright
1
“The Big Returns from Big Data,” Nucleus Research, 2012
2
Stafng Industry Analysts, 2012 Recruiting/Talent Acquisition (TA) Survey: Insights Into Organization, Personnel, Technology & Metrics
3
“Two Steps Forward, One Step Back: North American Stafng and Recruiting Trends Report,” Bullhorn, Inc., 2013
3 1. 888.GOLIVE8 • [email protected] • @BULLHORN
By harnessing the available data in your ATS/CRM,
your sales and recruiting managers can make better
decisions, faster — shortening the time it takes to fnd and
place talent, build strong client relationships, and even
anticipate client needs.
One major driver of high returns on leveraging business
data is the ability to improve business processes and
decisions by looking at diferent types of datasets.
For example, you can use recruiter activity data to
learn from and understand the value of your most
efcient recruiter.
For recruiting frms looking for an edge, the choice is
clear — embrace a data-driven culture, tap into the
available knowledge base, and uncover ways to outpace
the competition.
“If you manage to the right activities,
the results will follow, but if you manage
to your results, you’ll only be managing
your hopes and wishes.
”
TODD SPRINGER
Co-Founder and President
FootBridge Energy Services
UNDERSTANDING THE KEY METRICS
There is an overwhelming tendency
to try and eat the entire proverbial
elephant at once when a company
decides to move to a metrics-driven
approach; however, it’s important to
take one bite at a time. Executives
must understand the key metrics that
impact progress towards achieving
their business goals. As leaders,
we often focus on results and
less on the activities that produce
the results. For example, we may
know how many placements we
need to make at a given time, but
do we truly understand how many
openings we need in order to make
those placements? Or how many
client meetings it takes to get
those openings to make that one
placement?
Choose a few key metrics that
create actionable/tactical results
that individuals in the frm can use
(e.g., number of placements) and
focus on those. Understanding and
consistently monitoring your key
performance indicators (KPIs) will
help you keep focus on what matters
most to the frm.
The single most important
performance metric for stafng
executives is “total number of
placements,” according to the 2013
Bullhorn North American Stafng and
Recruiting Trends report,
4
followed
by “fll rate.” When Bullhorn looked at
the 73% of survey respondents who
reported meeting or exceeding their
revenue goals in 2012, they reported
the same two metrics (“number of
placements” and “fll rate”) as their
most important; however, they had
them listed inversely with “fll rate”
as their number one.
4
“Two Steps Forward, One Step Back: North American Stafng and Recruiting Trends Report,” Bullhorn, Inc., 2013
Most Important Peformance Metric
for Staffing Firms by Year (Execs Only)
40%
35%
30%
25%
20%
15%
10%
5%
0%
Total Number
of Placements
2010 2011 2012
Fill Rate Hit Rate Average Gross
Margin of
Placement Fee
Total
Number of
Job Orders
Time-to-Fill
4 1. 888.GOLIVE8 • [email protected] • @BULLHORN
To start, decide which metrics are
most import to your frm, and then
measure those systematically.
Another good starting place is to
enforce that all jobs be added to
the ATS as soon as they come
in. This way you’ll know if your
recruiters are working on new
jobs or old “purple squirrel” jobs
that will not beneft the business.
This can also help you determine
your average time-to-fll. Once
your salespeople and recruiters
are doing this consistently and
accurately (and you should be
auditing), then you can add the next
layer, including interviews, internal
submissions, and sendouts. These
metrics help you understand how
hard you work for each placement
and the efort that is required. Does
it take you 3 or 12 interviews to get
a placement? How many internal
submissions happen for each job?
You should also require that all
placements be put in the ATS
with the right client, candidate, bill
rate, pay rate, start and end date
or the placement fee and salary
information. Then you can measure
current and future bookings.
These basics are the foundation for
more important business questions
such as which clients generate the
most revenue, and involve the least
amount of efort. Do we have a
disconnect between a salesperson
and recruiter because it takes 30
internal submissions between these
two, but fve for the rest of the
team? Adding the flters of clients
and employees helps you make
better data-driven decisions.
LEVERAGING THE RESULTS
After choosing the right metrics to monitor, you will fnd
that business intelligence helps executives transform
data into actionable information that will help improve
operational efciency and business productivity.
Developing a metrics-driven stafng strategy enables
executives to extract existing information from
unstructured data and leverage it to make business
decisions. The trick is oftentimes related to how the
results are interpreted. Tactical results, along with other
pertinent fndings, should be at the core of your BI
initiatives, and may include a number of things, such as:
• Clients that require a lot of activity, whose demands might
actually outweigh the value of the jobs that you close for them
• Identifying older (or low value) jobs that are being worked
• High value jobs that are getting dropped in favor of newer,
but lower-value jobs
• New salespeople or recruiters who aren’t ramping
up appropriately for long-term success in a stafng
environment
• A salesperson who fails to get quality information on jobs
that they are asking recruiters to work
• A recruiter who doesn’t listen to the client requirements or
fails to properly prep his or her candidates
Making adjustments based of of your fndings can
immediately impact your revenue. For example, if you
reduce the number of internal submissions for each job,
that immediately saves time for each recruiter. If you can
present two candidates to a client (instead of six, seven
or eight) and get a placement, then that impacts both
your recruiter’s time and the relationship with the client.
Tracking lost jobs is just as important — do you always
lose the IT jobs with Client Y? If so, perhaps you should
change the recruiter or walk away from that part of the
account altogether. That would free up your time for more
successful ventures. The adjustments you make based
on the data you gather and interpret, as well as the
measurements you take afterwards to see how your
changes have impacted your business, represent the
true power of business intelligence.
Ultimately, business intelligence should help you make
strategic decisions with each client, employee and job
that comes into your business. You should see the
results over time as you improve client engagement
and employee coaching. By having metrics-driven
conversations you will focus your eforts on the jobs,
clients and employees that are most likely going to drive
revenue faster for your business.
5 1. 888.GOLIVE8 • [email protected] • @BULLHORN
The long-term viability of your BI culture is questionable
without the support of an executive sponsor. The
executive sponsor is responsible for efectively managing
the BI program and overseeing the BI initiatives within the
organization. The ideal executive sponsor will exhibit a
number of specifc traits. The executive should be:
• An analytical thinker who understands that data
can help the company reach its goals
• Committed to managing data as a business asset
• An authoritative fgure who can enforce decisions
concerning the data and rally other executives
• Respected within the frm and able to set the quality
expectations of the BI initiatives
• Able to quickly ascertain if certain metrics are not
producing actionable intelligence and quickly move
away from them
The executive sponsor is also in charge of funding BI
initiatives, which typically involves purchasing BI tools.
There are a number of BI tools available that will help
you capture and maintain strategic reports that can not
only measure performance, but also forecast your sales
pipeline for the next week, month and year. Building a
data-driven organization is not easy without investing in
BI technology. In fact, it’s almost impossible.
Finally, executives should be actively involved in enlisting
resources and providing support when needed. While
implementing BI techniques within the organization,
issues are sure to arise and it’s important to have the
proper resources in place to support the BI initiatives.
Depending on the size of the stafng frm, the executive
sponsor may want to create and direct a cross-functional
BI team. This is not to suggest that you need a BI
technology expert, although they can be helpful, but
rather a team of people committed to operational
excellence within the organization. This team would be
in charge of allocating resources, implementing BI tools
and developing the overall BI strategy. In this case, the
executive sponsor will oversee the BI team, but should
still be actively involved in providing the following
components:
LEADERSHIP
The executive sponsor is responsible for setting the
direction of the BI program, and the direction may
change over time. A direction that is set today may not
be appropriate two years down the road. The executive
sponsor should be strategic and infuential as “failure to
launch” is the single biggest reason companies fail to
maintain a BI strategy. While most companies will cite
bad data, bad data is a result of employees failing to
add the data accurately and consistently into the CRM
or ATS. This is easy to overcome if the BI program has
the right leader.
INFRASTRUCTURE
The executive sponsor is also responsible for managing
the people, processes and technologies that support the
BI infrastructure. This can be challenging because it may
also involve managing the security of the company data
so it cannot be accessed in its raw form. Executives
should address what happens to the information and
who can access it regularly as long as it is stored in
electronic form.
IMPLEMENTING EXECUTIVE INVOLVEMENT
“Business intelligence underpins all
of Peoplebank’s business activities to
assess historical performance and
make predictions about likely future
performance. Our improved use of business
intelligence has allowed us to continue
to deliver high performance recruitment
outcomes for our clients, contractors and
our people.
”
PETER ACHESON
CEO
Peoplebank Australia Ltd.
6 1. 888.GOLIVE8 • [email protected] • @BULLHORN
QUALITY
Business rules must be defned for bringing data into the
company’s systems. Typically, it is the responsibility of
the line of business (e.g., sales, recruiting) that owns that
set of data to defne its quality expectations. However,
the executive sponsor should approve the business
rules and ensure they are in line with the company’s
overall quality expectations. Regular data quality audits
are your best option to ensure data is compliant with
business needs.
MANAGING A METRICS-DRIVEN CULTURE
Creating and nurturing a metrics-driven culture is also
critical to implementing a successful BI program within
your organization. Without a metrics-driven culture,
you won’t get anywhere. First and foremost, executives
must drive data compliance in order to successfully
implement a BI program within the organization. You
can’t measure what you don’t capture/record. There
should be consequences for not keeping data in the
ATS/CRM, which could include anything from manager
intervention to public stack ranking of employees based
on activity ONLY captured in the ATS/CRM (not what
they told you they did). Some stafng frms have even
become as strict as not paying full commission to
employees who haven’t entered in activities when they
happen (e.g., reduction in commission for adding the job
only once the placement closes).
Making data quality an emphasis early on is critical
to the success of your BI program. Allowing bad
behavior, even from your long-term sales and recruiting
employees who may be set in their ways, will only
create exceptions in the environment. Tolerating an
environment like this means you’ll never fully know what
is happening in the business, and therefore you’ll never
be able to change it.
As you invest in recruiting software tools and set up
dashboards to track performance, make sure you are
sharing metrics with your entire team. It’s important for
employees to know exactly how their managers are
measuring them so they can meet their expectations.
Tell your recruiters and salespeople that you expect
them to view these dashboards regularly, and send
employees alerts when you see any issues with poor
performance. Show your team that you are watching
their activity and tying their performance to BI goals
and successes.
Ultimately, a metrics-driven culture has to be driven
from the top down. Stafng executives must instill a
BI-centric mindset and continue to nurture that new
culture as the frm grows. Creating an atmosphere
of transparency will intensify the competition
among recruiters and sales personnel, which may
cause a slight shift in company culture. This is why
it’s important for stafng executives to encourage
metrics-driven behaviors and keep the BI program
strategically aligned with the organizational goals.
7 1. 888.GOLIVE8 • [email protected] • @BULLHORN
Moving forward, it’s important to stay focused on metrics that drive the right behaviors. Lean on
management to enforce these behaviors; however, continue to be the leading advocate for your BI
environment. Monitor your KPIs and implement appropriate response channels if the data deviates
from your expected KPI. As you maintain your metrics-driven culture, make sure you continue to
support that culture by hiring metrics-driven people who have perhaps worked in a BI environment in
the past. This will help support your vision of running a data-driven organization.
CONCLUSION
Bullhorn creates software and services that help recruiters put the world to work. For over ten years
our innovations have powered the recruiting and stafng operations of fast-growing start-ups up
through the world’s largest employment brands. Headquartered in Boston, with ofces in St. Louis,
Vancouver, London and Sydney, Bullhorn’s applicant tracking system, recruiting CRM, and social
recruiting products serve more than 10,000 clients representing nearly 200,000 users across 150
countries.
Please visit our website at www.bullhorn.com to learn more about Bullhorn’s full suite of business
intelligence tools. Have an immediate question? Speak with an expert: call 1-888-GoLive8.
ABOUT BULLHORN
doc_590225809.pdf
Business intelligence (BI) tools give executives the ability to aggregate, view and analyze information within their organizations.
BUSINESS
INTELLIGENCE
FOR STAFFI NG EXECUTI VES
How t o Cr e a t e + Ma n a ge a Da t a - dr i ve n Fi r m
2 1. 888.GOLIVE8 • [email protected] • @BULLHORN
Business intelligence (BI) tools give executives the ability to aggregate, view and analyze information
within their organizations. BI is taking on an increasingly strategic role in the stafng industry as more
frms look for ways to unlock key insights and gain a competitive advantage. In fact, businesses can
earn an incremental return on investment (ROI) of 241% by using business intelligence,
1
but creating a BI
environment is a long-term culture shift that has to be driven from the top down. Executive involvement is
critical to ensuring the successful creation of a data-driven culture that operates smoothly and efciently.
This whitepaper explores the key considerations and action items for executives in the stafng industry
looking to successfully create a BI environment within the organization.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
WHY FIRMS NEED BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE
Business intelligence is seen by nearly every industry and
market vertical as the next big leap in business efciency.
In fact, 46% of stafng frms said they consider analytics
to have a big impact on business operations, according
to a 2012 Stafng Industry Analysts study.
2
As the
owner or manager of a stafng frm, it’s vitally important
to understand and regularly monitor the key metrics
that impact the fnancial and operational health of the
business. In the past, gathering this data, analyzing and
interpreting it, and then using it was quite a challenge.
Measuring the impact was nearly impossible. With the
technology available today, there is no longer an excuse
not to leverage data to gain a competitive advantage.
Your data is the foundation of your entire business, and it
must be trustworthy. Many stafng frms fnd it challenging
to ensure data is captured accurately, regularly and
consistently; however, utilizing powerful recruiting tools
can help you automate processes to improve productivity
and data quality. According to the 2013 Bullhorn North
American Stafng and Recruiting Trends Report,
87% of North American recruiting professionals agree
that using ATS/CRM technology is important to the
success of their business and 62% said they consider
it “extremely important.”
3
The results of the survey
suggest that ATS/CRM technology is playing a more and
more critical role in stafng agency success and is no
longer considered a luxury, but a necessity.
“It’s well past time that the same level
of business intelligence and analytics
that sales, marketing, supply chain and
product teams have been enjoying for
over 5 years finally comes to recruiting
and staffing. Data is the new ammunition
in the war for talent.
”
GLEN CATHEY
VP, Global Sourcing and
Talent Strategy
Randstad Sourceright
1
“The Big Returns from Big Data,” Nucleus Research, 2012
2
Stafng Industry Analysts, 2012 Recruiting/Talent Acquisition (TA) Survey: Insights Into Organization, Personnel, Technology & Metrics
3
“Two Steps Forward, One Step Back: North American Stafng and Recruiting Trends Report,” Bullhorn, Inc., 2013
3 1. 888.GOLIVE8 • [email protected] • @BULLHORN
By harnessing the available data in your ATS/CRM,
your sales and recruiting managers can make better
decisions, faster — shortening the time it takes to fnd and
place talent, build strong client relationships, and even
anticipate client needs.
One major driver of high returns on leveraging business
data is the ability to improve business processes and
decisions by looking at diferent types of datasets.
For example, you can use recruiter activity data to
learn from and understand the value of your most
efcient recruiter.
For recruiting frms looking for an edge, the choice is
clear — embrace a data-driven culture, tap into the
available knowledge base, and uncover ways to outpace
the competition.
“If you manage to the right activities,
the results will follow, but if you manage
to your results, you’ll only be managing
your hopes and wishes.
”
TODD SPRINGER
Co-Founder and President
FootBridge Energy Services
UNDERSTANDING THE KEY METRICS
There is an overwhelming tendency
to try and eat the entire proverbial
elephant at once when a company
decides to move to a metrics-driven
approach; however, it’s important to
take one bite at a time. Executives
must understand the key metrics that
impact progress towards achieving
their business goals. As leaders,
we often focus on results and
less on the activities that produce
the results. For example, we may
know how many placements we
need to make at a given time, but
do we truly understand how many
openings we need in order to make
those placements? Or how many
client meetings it takes to get
those openings to make that one
placement?
Choose a few key metrics that
create actionable/tactical results
that individuals in the frm can use
(e.g., number of placements) and
focus on those. Understanding and
consistently monitoring your key
performance indicators (KPIs) will
help you keep focus on what matters
most to the frm.
The single most important
performance metric for stafng
executives is “total number of
placements,” according to the 2013
Bullhorn North American Stafng and
Recruiting Trends report,
4
followed
by “fll rate.” When Bullhorn looked at
the 73% of survey respondents who
reported meeting or exceeding their
revenue goals in 2012, they reported
the same two metrics (“number of
placements” and “fll rate”) as their
most important; however, they had
them listed inversely with “fll rate”
as their number one.
4
“Two Steps Forward, One Step Back: North American Stafng and Recruiting Trends Report,” Bullhorn, Inc., 2013
Most Important Peformance Metric
for Staffing Firms by Year (Execs Only)
40%
35%
30%
25%
20%
15%
10%
5%
0%
Total Number
of Placements
2010 2011 2012
Fill Rate Hit Rate Average Gross
Margin of
Placement Fee
Total
Number of
Job Orders
Time-to-Fill
4 1. 888.GOLIVE8 • [email protected] • @BULLHORN
To start, decide which metrics are
most import to your frm, and then
measure those systematically.
Another good starting place is to
enforce that all jobs be added to
the ATS as soon as they come
in. This way you’ll know if your
recruiters are working on new
jobs or old “purple squirrel” jobs
that will not beneft the business.
This can also help you determine
your average time-to-fll. Once
your salespeople and recruiters
are doing this consistently and
accurately (and you should be
auditing), then you can add the next
layer, including interviews, internal
submissions, and sendouts. These
metrics help you understand how
hard you work for each placement
and the efort that is required. Does
it take you 3 or 12 interviews to get
a placement? How many internal
submissions happen for each job?
You should also require that all
placements be put in the ATS
with the right client, candidate, bill
rate, pay rate, start and end date
or the placement fee and salary
information. Then you can measure
current and future bookings.
These basics are the foundation for
more important business questions
such as which clients generate the
most revenue, and involve the least
amount of efort. Do we have a
disconnect between a salesperson
and recruiter because it takes 30
internal submissions between these
two, but fve for the rest of the
team? Adding the flters of clients
and employees helps you make
better data-driven decisions.
LEVERAGING THE RESULTS
After choosing the right metrics to monitor, you will fnd
that business intelligence helps executives transform
data into actionable information that will help improve
operational efciency and business productivity.
Developing a metrics-driven stafng strategy enables
executives to extract existing information from
unstructured data and leverage it to make business
decisions. The trick is oftentimes related to how the
results are interpreted. Tactical results, along with other
pertinent fndings, should be at the core of your BI
initiatives, and may include a number of things, such as:
• Clients that require a lot of activity, whose demands might
actually outweigh the value of the jobs that you close for them
• Identifying older (or low value) jobs that are being worked
• High value jobs that are getting dropped in favor of newer,
but lower-value jobs
• New salespeople or recruiters who aren’t ramping
up appropriately for long-term success in a stafng
environment
• A salesperson who fails to get quality information on jobs
that they are asking recruiters to work
• A recruiter who doesn’t listen to the client requirements or
fails to properly prep his or her candidates
Making adjustments based of of your fndings can
immediately impact your revenue. For example, if you
reduce the number of internal submissions for each job,
that immediately saves time for each recruiter. If you can
present two candidates to a client (instead of six, seven
or eight) and get a placement, then that impacts both
your recruiter’s time and the relationship with the client.
Tracking lost jobs is just as important — do you always
lose the IT jobs with Client Y? If so, perhaps you should
change the recruiter or walk away from that part of the
account altogether. That would free up your time for more
successful ventures. The adjustments you make based
on the data you gather and interpret, as well as the
measurements you take afterwards to see how your
changes have impacted your business, represent the
true power of business intelligence.
Ultimately, business intelligence should help you make
strategic decisions with each client, employee and job
that comes into your business. You should see the
results over time as you improve client engagement
and employee coaching. By having metrics-driven
conversations you will focus your eforts on the jobs,
clients and employees that are most likely going to drive
revenue faster for your business.
5 1. 888.GOLIVE8 • [email protected] • @BULLHORN
The long-term viability of your BI culture is questionable
without the support of an executive sponsor. The
executive sponsor is responsible for efectively managing
the BI program and overseeing the BI initiatives within the
organization. The ideal executive sponsor will exhibit a
number of specifc traits. The executive should be:
• An analytical thinker who understands that data
can help the company reach its goals
• Committed to managing data as a business asset
• An authoritative fgure who can enforce decisions
concerning the data and rally other executives
• Respected within the frm and able to set the quality
expectations of the BI initiatives
• Able to quickly ascertain if certain metrics are not
producing actionable intelligence and quickly move
away from them
The executive sponsor is also in charge of funding BI
initiatives, which typically involves purchasing BI tools.
There are a number of BI tools available that will help
you capture and maintain strategic reports that can not
only measure performance, but also forecast your sales
pipeline for the next week, month and year. Building a
data-driven organization is not easy without investing in
BI technology. In fact, it’s almost impossible.
Finally, executives should be actively involved in enlisting
resources and providing support when needed. While
implementing BI techniques within the organization,
issues are sure to arise and it’s important to have the
proper resources in place to support the BI initiatives.
Depending on the size of the stafng frm, the executive
sponsor may want to create and direct a cross-functional
BI team. This is not to suggest that you need a BI
technology expert, although they can be helpful, but
rather a team of people committed to operational
excellence within the organization. This team would be
in charge of allocating resources, implementing BI tools
and developing the overall BI strategy. In this case, the
executive sponsor will oversee the BI team, but should
still be actively involved in providing the following
components:
LEADERSHIP
The executive sponsor is responsible for setting the
direction of the BI program, and the direction may
change over time. A direction that is set today may not
be appropriate two years down the road. The executive
sponsor should be strategic and infuential as “failure to
launch” is the single biggest reason companies fail to
maintain a BI strategy. While most companies will cite
bad data, bad data is a result of employees failing to
add the data accurately and consistently into the CRM
or ATS. This is easy to overcome if the BI program has
the right leader.
INFRASTRUCTURE
The executive sponsor is also responsible for managing
the people, processes and technologies that support the
BI infrastructure. This can be challenging because it may
also involve managing the security of the company data
so it cannot be accessed in its raw form. Executives
should address what happens to the information and
who can access it regularly as long as it is stored in
electronic form.
IMPLEMENTING EXECUTIVE INVOLVEMENT
“Business intelligence underpins all
of Peoplebank’s business activities to
assess historical performance and
make predictions about likely future
performance. Our improved use of business
intelligence has allowed us to continue
to deliver high performance recruitment
outcomes for our clients, contractors and
our people.
”
PETER ACHESON
CEO
Peoplebank Australia Ltd.
6 1. 888.GOLIVE8 • [email protected] • @BULLHORN
QUALITY
Business rules must be defned for bringing data into the
company’s systems. Typically, it is the responsibility of
the line of business (e.g., sales, recruiting) that owns that
set of data to defne its quality expectations. However,
the executive sponsor should approve the business
rules and ensure they are in line with the company’s
overall quality expectations. Regular data quality audits
are your best option to ensure data is compliant with
business needs.
MANAGING A METRICS-DRIVEN CULTURE
Creating and nurturing a metrics-driven culture is also
critical to implementing a successful BI program within
your organization. Without a metrics-driven culture,
you won’t get anywhere. First and foremost, executives
must drive data compliance in order to successfully
implement a BI program within the organization. You
can’t measure what you don’t capture/record. There
should be consequences for not keeping data in the
ATS/CRM, which could include anything from manager
intervention to public stack ranking of employees based
on activity ONLY captured in the ATS/CRM (not what
they told you they did). Some stafng frms have even
become as strict as not paying full commission to
employees who haven’t entered in activities when they
happen (e.g., reduction in commission for adding the job
only once the placement closes).
Making data quality an emphasis early on is critical
to the success of your BI program. Allowing bad
behavior, even from your long-term sales and recruiting
employees who may be set in their ways, will only
create exceptions in the environment. Tolerating an
environment like this means you’ll never fully know what
is happening in the business, and therefore you’ll never
be able to change it.
As you invest in recruiting software tools and set up
dashboards to track performance, make sure you are
sharing metrics with your entire team. It’s important for
employees to know exactly how their managers are
measuring them so they can meet their expectations.
Tell your recruiters and salespeople that you expect
them to view these dashboards regularly, and send
employees alerts when you see any issues with poor
performance. Show your team that you are watching
their activity and tying their performance to BI goals
and successes.
Ultimately, a metrics-driven culture has to be driven
from the top down. Stafng executives must instill a
BI-centric mindset and continue to nurture that new
culture as the frm grows. Creating an atmosphere
of transparency will intensify the competition
among recruiters and sales personnel, which may
cause a slight shift in company culture. This is why
it’s important for stafng executives to encourage
metrics-driven behaviors and keep the BI program
strategically aligned with the organizational goals.
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Moving forward, it’s important to stay focused on metrics that drive the right behaviors. Lean on
management to enforce these behaviors; however, continue to be the leading advocate for your BI
environment. Monitor your KPIs and implement appropriate response channels if the data deviates
from your expected KPI. As you maintain your metrics-driven culture, make sure you continue to
support that culture by hiring metrics-driven people who have perhaps worked in a BI environment in
the past. This will help support your vision of running a data-driven organization.
CONCLUSION
Bullhorn creates software and services that help recruiters put the world to work. For over ten years
our innovations have powered the recruiting and stafng operations of fast-growing start-ups up
through the world’s largest employment brands. Headquartered in Boston, with ofces in St. Louis,
Vancouver, London and Sydney, Bullhorn’s applicant tracking system, recruiting CRM, and social
recruiting products serve more than 10,000 clients representing nearly 200,000 users across 150
countries.
Please visit our website at www.bullhorn.com to learn more about Bullhorn’s full suite of business
intelligence tools. Have an immediate question? Speak with an expert: call 1-888-GoLive8.
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