Metriculation: the act of focusing on selected metrics as a measure of performance to the exclusion of business goals.

I made that up - metriculation is not a word but it is going on every day here in China. I was talking to a recruiter at a Client today who was celebrating the fact that they had lowered their time-to-hire average by quickly hiring some low-level employees.

By the numbers this is a good thing and the time-to-hire average did fall but it does little to help make the decisions needed to improve the overall performance of the team and to stop losing money.

The fact is that while the internal recruiters are quickly hiring low level manufacturing labor they are not hiring the three Sales Managers that will make the company money.  With every day that passes the opportunity cost of not-hiring the sales positions climbs.

My proposal to break out the time-to-hire metric across the different roles; cost-centers versus profit-centers, was met with silence.  I am guessing that they don't want the added pressure that will occur when the focus is shifted to the numbers that mean money on the balance sheet.

If we look at the data and consider the easy hires as outliers their cycle increases dramatically and we see a much different picture. 

Without looking at the big picture it is a lot harder to point the recruiters in the right direction. 

It is not the fault of the front line recruiters, when the metrics are set to reward the wrong activity they have no incentive (other than the performance of the company, etc.) to do what is not measured.   

 It is especially important for foreign firms to be careful in the metrics they use as the Chinese culture is one where information flows only in one direction; from above to below.  Most employees figure that they are given the information they need and are happy to work hard to comply.

Metrics matter and better metrics management will benefit the balance sheet.

(In my humble opinion.)