A 3 Step Process for Recruiting Analytics

I get excited when I have the opportunity to teach Talent Acquisition Leaders how to leverage analytics in their recruiting strategy. There is always a phase in the conversation when I can tell the participants have entered the “shut-down” mode and begin to drift away to their happy place. Recruiting analytics can be overwhelming for anyone who has an aversion to math but it doesn’t have to be complicated. Analytics are most powerful when they can help you understand a current recruiting obstacle or problem. Visier just released a great article on how to leverage data in your DEI strategy. They presented a three step process for recruiting analytics that I think is incredibly useful.

Step 1: Ask

I’m not sure who to give credit for one of my favorite quotes: “Fall in love with the problem, not the solution” but it is at the core of how I approach recruiting strategy sessions. First, I like to ask a lot of questions to the recruiting team, candidates and the hiring managers to best understand what the real problem is. Assessing the feedback helps you to determine what is noise and what is a real pain point to be addressed. This step is critical as it will help you determine which data points are most important for analysis during this first step.

Once you have taken the time to identify the real problem or obstacle, you can begin analyzing your data to either validate or invalidate your ideas or solutions. Assess your data points thoroughly and involve your team. I love taking raw data like candidate survey data to facilitate a design thinking based work session with recruiting teams. This is a great way to involve your team in the strategy development which not only gives you more ideas for potential solutions but also increases ownership.

Step 2: Align

“Once you have some findings pointing to potential hiring issues, gather together a small team of recruiters and hiring managers to discuss how they align with what they’re seeing day-to-day. For example, are certain sourcing pools producing better quality hires that are also from diverse groups? Their insight will tell you if you’re on the right track and help you focus your research.”

https://www.visier.com/clarity/framework-for-leveraging-people-analytics-for-recruiting-diverse-talent

In the Visier article, they address how to leverage data for DEI recruiting activities. Step 2 requires you to align your findings with the issues. You’ll find that your gut may have misled you and the data is pointing to another possible solution altogether. Be sure to keep an open mind and encourage your team to do the same during this process. The goal is to use the findings from step one to align your strategy with data.

Recruiting teams will often work through strategy sessions and miss one important steps in this process: sharing the information with the client. Making this information accessible to leaders and change-drivers to get their input will transform the impact to your strategy. Be sure to show them how you came to specific conclusions and ask them what they think the path forward should look like. This is a great time to garner their support and possibly increase the success rate of project implementation.

Step 3: Act

Once you have your potential solution, work with your team to create sprints to roll it out. Don’t be afraid of releasing a less than perfect solution. Your goal in this step is to release a prototype to test and gather more information. Setting this expectation with your clients in step 2 is critical and will relieve some pressure during what I call the “beta phase” of solution implementation.

Set up your data points early in the process and meet with your team and clients frequently to analyze the results. If there are portions of the program that are not working, change them. That’s the fun part of the sprint process-it’s designed to iterate toward success every two weeks. The result will be a data-based and client-partnered solution that will undoubtedly be more successful than if you had built a solution based on a “gut feeling”.

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I encourage you to take some time to read through the DEI case study mentioned in the Visier article. It’s a great example of how you can use this three step process in your recruiting analytics strategy.