Why Your Talent Team Needs SMART Goals

December 11, 2012

In recruiting, it is important to implement a project management methodology.  How else are you going to manage your time and keep track of your work?

Here at OpenView Labs, we use Scrum and my colleague Katy Smigowski recently wrote a post about why and how Scrum can work for your talent team. To build off of that, I’d like to talk about why it’s vital in any type of project management to develop SMART goals. In recruiting, SMART goals allow individual recruiters to truly track their work progress while also ensuring accountability. It also allows recruiters and management the ability to identify and evaluate tactical work, progress, impediments, etc., and re-evaluate how to improve goals for the next week.

What is a SMART goal?

Though there are variations, the acronym stands for goals that are:

  • Specific
  • Measurable
  • Attainable
  • Relevant
  • Time-bound

How can your recruiters develop SMART goals?

They can start by answering these questions:

  1. What are my priorities for the upcoming week?
  2. How should those priorities be ranked and prioritized?
  3. How much time do I have to allocate to each priority (this should be based on the answer to the second question)?

Once they understand their priority rankings and time, they need to ask questions that pertain to each priority, including:

  1. What do I want to accomplish?
  2. How much time to do I have available to allocate to this priority?
  3. What tasks do I need to complete?
  4. What amount of time do I have allocated to complete each task?

In the end, your tasks will be your SMART goals. Here are some examples:

  • Goal: Source 25 new candidates for the Marketing Manager requisition.
  • Goal: Send 2 candidates to hiring manager for the Sales Director requisition.
  • Goal: Interview 6 candidates for Business Development Representative requisition.

Now, there is one fairly significant caveat. 

It is necessary to understand that, in recruiting, not everything is quantifiable or measureable.  Sometimes, recruiters will set goals that you cannot measure. For instance:

  • Goal: Obtain feedback on candidates A and B from hiring manager.
  • Goal: Follow up with candidates A-through-D that are in process for the Software Engineer role.
  • Goal: Meet with hiring manager to kick-off the Research Specialist search

So, how do you track and re-evaluate SMART goals?

Using retrospect. At the end of each week, hold a meeting where recruiters can individually speak to what worked that week, which impediments they faced, and what they did or did not accomplish.  Additionally, each recruiter should look at the progress they did or did not make on each search, and adjust their planning tasks and hours for future efforts.

Director of Talent

<strong>Carlie Smith</strong> was the Senior Talent Manager, Sales & Marketing at OpenView. She worked directly with hiring managers and key stakeholders within OpenView and its portfolio to lead vital searches and provided process guidance on recruitment strategy, including talent identification, strategic sourcing, relationship building, and competitive intelligence. Currently, Carlie is the Director of <a href="https://www.circle.com/en">Circle</a>.