What metrics does your company take into account when hiring? With “people analytics” being all the rage, this once data-lagging department is positioned to prove its value with powerful people-performance insights.

While some argue old-school HR metrics like time to hire do not matter, the truth is, if you are not focused on more meaningful metrics like time to performance, or if you are not streamlining your hiring process with a recruiting or performance recruiting platform, which by nature helps cut down on time-intensive hiring tasks like sourcing, screening and communicating with candidates, it is not a bad place to start.

What is time to hire?

Time to hire is a widely used hiring metric that describes the total time it takes to fill an open position. Some companies start the time-to-hire clock upon approving a job requisition, while others start it when posting to a job board.

Like its cousin, cost per hire, time to hire is often considered a key metric for gauging recruiter effectiveness. However, time to hire may not paint a proper picture of recruiter effectiveness, as it focuses on the speed of staffing instead of on the quality of hiring, which is the hallmark of time to the time-to-performance metric.

See: How Can Organisations Make the Most Out Of Psychometric Testing?

What is time to performance?

Time to performance is a hiring metric that describes how long it takes a new hire to begin adding value to an organisation. Three factors drive the metric:

1. The candidate, and whether he or she is widely considered a “performer”
2. The company’s onboarding process and training program
3. The availability of post-hire support and mentoring

Companies that seek to hire performers tend to use time to performance over time to hire and cost per hire, as the latter two metrics don’t account for the quality of the new hire.

Companies can improve time to performance by:

• Implementing a protocol that helps define precisely who you’re looking for, helping you source and hire performers who ramp up and adapt quickly
• Increasing time to hire or cost per hire to focus more on quality over quantity
• Adopting onboarding and readiness solutions that help new hires feel like part of the company from the first day
• Adopting solutions that enable immediate, mobile access to expertise and answers to questions new hires will likely encounter on the job

So how long does it take to hire, anyway?

For example, time to hire: from sales to customer service may take more than four months to find the best-fit talent.

Time-to-hire takeaway

Fact: It takes time to recruit and hire the best talent. But do not depends in that metric alone. Consider time to hire a starting point to make sure you are on track, but ultimately focus more of your energy on finding the best-fit talent for your team based on performance data, which will help you close the loop on your hiring efforts and make recruiting come full circle.

See also: Predictive HR Metrics: Smart Way to Use Data