Interesting article here from RecruitingTrends.com that highlights a speech given recently by Dan Hanyzewski, staffing director from Nike. There is one piece of data that caught my attention immediately:
“This is the first time in American history that we’ve had four generations at work at the same time,” Hanyzewski says. How do you communicate an employer brand that will attract such a broad audience?
Quite a dilemma, isn’t it? The task of branding your company effectively for 4 different generations is a tremendous undertaking. But the discussion then turns to a critical point (my editing):
“One of the most powerful metrics is time,” Hanyzewski says. But, what’s does it mean? What’s the expectation? It’s not time to fill. “If you had an understanding of what that role being empty represents on a daily basis, then you will know what it means to the bottom line.” Whether a position is open 75 days or 125 days, unless you know what the vacancy cost is, it won’t help you know the impact, Hanyzewski adds.
Seventy days or 125 days, unless you know what that vacancy cost is, it won’t help you know the impact, Hanyzewski says. Hanyzewski explains that if you can calculate your vacancy cost due to lost revenue, and maybe you deduct 10% due to the declining economic climate, and you know the vacancy has existed for 6 months, and you multiply it by the number of territories, then you now know the reality of time to fill because it’s real money. “Now you can come to the table with a real business concern.”
Exactly. The costs in sales is even more dramatic. An open territory is lost revenue to your company and added revenue to your competition.
I think the counter-argument we see is managers discussing the cost of a bad hire. Their view is that it is cheaper to wait to get the perfect hire than to accelerate their process to make a strong hire. You can effectively argue both sides of that equation until you get to one pertinent point – what if you don’t find the perfect hire?