Skiing a new mountain with a trail map is a good strategy. But executing the turns on a real slope is where challenge becomes success. Consider this challenge: how do you hire thousands of annual seasonal employees when optimizing your customer experience is the ultimate goal? The Forbes article Snowed Under tells the story of how Taleo customer Vail Resorts transformed their recruiting process to achieve significant payback.

Two years ago Vail had massive hiring demands--30,000 people applied for 10,000 jobs--and an antiquated system.

The system overhaul changes the way that Vail Resorts--which controls ski resorts such as Vail and Breckinridge, golf courses, real estate, retail stores, and concessions at some national parks--recruits, vets and hires its 11,000 annual seasonal employees. The changes came at an opportune time, since the troubled economy is causing a record number of people to apply for jobs at Vail; today 70,000 people apply for 16,000 positions, up from 30,000 in 2008.

Today applicants get a verdict within 45 days of submitting their resume – down from four months in 2008. Recruiting process transformation returns are also quantifiable for Taleo customer, CACI International. Here are some highlights:

• Monetizing recruiting — in addition to the traditional metrics like recruiter workload, workforce movement, and days-to-fill, it also calculates lost revenue. Demonstrating revenue gains and losses in dollars as a result of talent management decisions is a critical factor in getting managers to pay attention to talent management issues. It has calculated that its recruiting success enabled CACI to generate an additional $12.2 million in revenue in 2009.

• Cost per hire — its hiring process also produced an average cost-per-hire of $3,401, which is extremely low in its industry where recruits often must have unique skill sets and security clearances.

The talent acquisition challenges for your organization may be seasonal, or may be tied to unique skill sets or other circumstances. Regardless, there is real payback to be had from the execution of optimized talent acquisition practices supported by a technology platform.