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“What can I do today, to influence tomorrow?”

By Dave Cox posted 06-27-2022 09:43

  

Imagine an instinctive reporting suite that simply “Tells” you what to do next? A suite free of any bias or subjectivity. A revolutionary suite that allows you to predict future results based on “what-if” scenarios… Brilliant right? Well, it’s coming! This blog will divulge a little secret as to which ground-breaking, disruptive recruitment platform, has woven these such reporting tools into its rudimentary fabric.

The recruitment industry continues to persist with dated practices to measure business and personal performance. Certainly, the days of input driven metrics such as the number calls, number of CVs submitted, and ratios have long since been superseded? These simplistic instruments only serve as a mere indication of a consultant’s effort without a note of quality and in most cases the consultant is only following instructions. Using these metrics for measuring anything more than effort would be a perilous mistake!

This is even more prominent when we see that consultants alter their behavior based on incentives. The shameful truth of the matter is, that once the incentive is over, consultants and recruiters return to the same archaic habits. This has to change and change for good.

The amount of data being collected by agencies today is immense. However, plagued by the simple mind frame, this data is going untapped and simply wasted. Even in the current day, agencies proudly display gigantic metric screens that exhibit a leader-board of consultants who have made the greatest number of calls. So, what, I say! How many of those calls were made to time wasters? How many of those calls were of any benefit? But most importantly, how many of those calls should not have been made at all? If we persist with measuring the same thing, we risk getting the same results.

The only metric that really matters is “What can I do today, to influence tomorrow?”

I want my reports filled with color indicators, alarming me to the fact that there may be a problem, before there is a problem. I then want to predict with needle level accuracy, what impact making a change will have. Finally, I want these reports analyzing my business from top to tail and from boardroom to consultant. For these reports to be of any use, clearly, they need to be in real-time and not after the fact. Granted, I want to know who are my best clients, but I also want to know which clients to reject, I want to know which clients I should be doing more business with and at what margin? I want clear metrics that give me the courage to turn down clients. Am I asking for too much??

Let us divert and discuss trends for just a moment. Trends are based on historical occurrences set in stone, “Actuals” so to speak. They tend to be graphical representations, typically highlighting performance over a period. But surely a trend should not end with today? Today is a point of time, same way yesterday, last year and more importantly next year are all points of time. So, with all of today’s predictive analytics technology, historical ebbs and flows, business growth indicators, is it not possible to extrapolate how the trend curve will snake into the near future?

I am here to tell you, that you do not need to settle for the typical suspects telling you what you already know. Reporting within the recruitment industry is changing and changing rapidly. This is largely because the technology has only just matured to a level to allow it to. As such I would like to let you in on a little secret. Mercury xRM is working on this exact piece. Whilst the rest of the recruitment world looks backwards at calls made, Mercury customers will be able to look forward and change the future in real-time.

The powerful instrument is said to give the report driver a “choose your own adventure” type experience, allowing him or her to see the cause and effect of introducing “What-if” tweaks. The immersive experience conjures questions and answers as the interrogator gets a deep understanding and a completely new perspective of a business they thought to have known intimately. All delivered in the comfortable and recognizable Power BI framework.

To go forward you must look ahead of you, not behind you!

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