Hiring Metrics - TAT

Recently I've been thinking about hiring metrics a lot (yes, very exciting stuff :-) and the more I thought about Turn Around Times (TAT) where we measure the time it takes to fill a req from getting it approved to getting the offer accepted, the more I started wondering whether that was actually a very good indicator for your performance.

It does not say anything about how good you are at managing the workforce plan which I my eyes is a better indication of the strength of your staffing organization. Besides that it's a one-size fits all and all exempt positions have a target of 60 days.

One of the problems we run into is that there is a bit of disconnect between the business plans and staffing and we are always the last one to hear the headcount plans. Hence, we always are surprised by new hiring projects and then are struggling with the deadlines as the managers for some reason still think that you can open a can and the candidates will crawl out. I did some searching and came across this one:

Time: The Time metric is the Actual Time-to-Start divided by the Contracted Time-to-Start and multiplied by 100 to yield a percentage. Outcomes of 100% or less indicate that new employees are starting on or before the contracted time, while percentages over 100% indicate that recruiting efforts are taking longer than expected.

Time = (Actual Time to Start / Contracted Time to Start) x 100

What are you using in your company and what do you think about this metric?