Posted by Gregg at 08:55 AM in Human Capital Joe Krause thinks about applying the principals used by the A's Billy Beane as described by Michael Lewis in Moneyball to hiring for start - up companies. The challenge with applying sabermetrics to business is that in baseball each player's offensive (at bat) contribution can be discretely measured. They either got a hit, walk or an out - you can drill down - sacrifice, RBI, homerun, hit into a double - play, left runners on, ground out, infield fly ... and on and on. To the extent that the results are available one can precisely target and recruit the kind of players a coach thinks will combine to make the winningest team. By contrast there is no way to quantify the discrete actions of a company's employees. There isn't even a universal standard for business success- is it profitability or ROI, an IPO, innovation - the answer is yes or no depending on the circumstance. As a recruiter, I spend at least three hours evaluating what a candidate has accomplished before presenting him or her to a client - phone calls, in person interviews, back channel referencing. And then after several rounds of client interviews and more referencing there's still debate about what the candidate really did and their contribution or the success or failure or past employers.

| TrackBack