Simply Hired Blog

Efficiency vs. Effectiveness: Overview

Third in a nine-part series about the concept of Efficiency vs. Effectiveness and some possible measures to help you determine whether the job you are hiring for is one or the other. Previous posts:

Introduction
Definition

Part of the trap that the recruiting function falls into is reinforcing the perception that it is a service function when in fact it is a business function. Recruiting should not measure its success by how happy its customers are, but instead by how much it contributes to both the top and bottom line. Analyzing requisitions according to the effectiveness vs. efficiency framework is the first step in changing the perception of a recruiting organization from that of a service function to a business function. Therefore my proposed metrics for determining whether to classify a requisition as efficiency- or effectiveness-focused are linked directly to business function measurements.

Effectiveness and efficiency are actually ways to measure the business needs of a requisition. Each business is different, and each position or opening within a business must be considered with an eye toward the needs of the enterprise. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to determining what category a requisition may fall into.

For each category to be posted I propose some questions that can be asked of the executives ultimately responsible for the P&L of the hiring manager’s business line in order to clarify the needs of the position. (Notice we did not say “hiring manager.” Hiring managers may not understand the direct business impact that a hire may have. It is important for recruiters to get a complete picture for each requisition, which may include talking to others within the organization.)

Finally, the categories discussed will be “leading indicators” and not “lagging metrics.” Leading indicators examine the probability of success or failure. Lagging metrics measure what has already happened. Lagging metrics are part of why the recruiting function is seen as a service organization, but that will be another post for another time.

Next: Effectiveness vs. Efficiency: Timing

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Efficiency vs. Effectiveness: Definitions

(Second in a nine-part series about the concept of Efficiency vs. Effectiveness and some possible measures to help you determine whether the job you are hiring for is one or the other.)

Yesterday I talked about the “Efficiency vs. Effectiveness” framework.

The first question that must be asked of any requisition is whether it requires a focus on efficiency or effectiveness. These two catagorizations are often mutually exclusive: You can either get it fast or get it right, but you can rarely get both at the same time.

(For the purposes of this series I am assuming that you are not sourcing ahead of demand with a well reasoned specification and a well documented process. In other words, I am assuming that your organization runs like most corporate recruiting departments.)

Efficiency is a measure of speed and cost. Efficiency says “Getting someone in here right away is more important than getting the right person later.”

Effectiveness is a measure of quality. When you hire for effectiveness you are saying that the only way to meet the business’s competitive needs is to find a person who is a demonstrably correct fit for a detailed and rational specification. So effectiveness is talking about the opposite of efficiency: “Hiring the right person is more important than hiring someone right away.”

Machine Age hiring was all about efficiency. Information Age hiring was a little of both. Talent Age hiring is all about effectiveness, since the efficiency jobs will be outsourced or automated.

Next: An Overview of Efficiency vs. Effectiveness

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Searching Job Titles Effectively Using SimplyHired

Searching for a job can be a daunting experience for many. The SimplyHired search engine, with the largest number of job listings anywhere, can help make it easier for users to search for jobs from a wide variety of sources, including many of the major job boards we all know and love.

That being said, SimplyHired is a search engine that works very much like other search engines you may already be familiar with (think Google and Yahoo!) and your results will be based on “how you did your search”. As I know that many people search by job title, I thought I would give some pointers on how to search by job title more effectively.

For instance, putting in the keywords of “Community Marketing Manager” yields 311 results (at the time of writing) for the Mountain View zip code of 94043. Doing the search this way means that they search engine is going to look for every instance of the words mentioned above (community, marketing & manager). (Find the link here)

Now if you look at the results, you will notice that many of the jobs do not have the title of “Community Marketing Manager”. As mentioned above, the job search engine is looking for all instances of these words (for that location) in the title AND in the description of the jobs in our database. Does this mean that you can’t find only jobs with the title of Community Marketing Manager? Not at all. Read on…

By adding a “title”: modifier (find the link here) in the keyword area, I can now search for jobs by specific job title (in this case, for “Community Marketing Manager”). The new number of results is now 16 (at the time of writing). Now doesn’t that make your job search easier? Now you don’t have to go through a bunch of listings that don’t appear to be relevant to you!

Again, you will notice that some of the listings don’t always reduce it to the job title of “Community Marketing Manager” because you will see job titles for “Community Manager” as well. How do you get around this to make it even more exact? Read on…

If I use the “title”: modifier above and make a slight change by wrapping the title in parentheses (find the link here) , the search engine yields no results (at the time of writing). I guess this isn’t a good thing for me personally!

Additional examples using “Marketing Manager”:

Marketing Manager w/no modifier

Marketing Manager with "title": modifier.

Marketing Manager with "title: ()" modifier.

If you know that you’re looking for keywords within the job title, I would also recommend using the “search within results” box on the left of the page. I added the word “digital” to my results from this link, and it dropped the number of jobs I had to look at from 877 to 38.

By using these tools (and many others) you can tap into the immense power and scope of the SimplyHired database without inundating yourself with too many results. If you come up with any other tricks or tips we would love to hear about them. Just leave them in the comments section below or leave a comment on the forums!