Most people are freaked out when they are surfing Facebook or another site and find targeted ads related to a product they were researching earlier in the day. Ok, I’m a little freaked out but I am also amazed at how companies know to bring content to me based on data. I guess that’s why I love the topic of data analytics & recruiting.
Information exists in unimaginable amounts, telling various stories, supported by statistical data. Any business desiring to gain a competitive edge have begun using this influx of data to their advantage, alongside technology organizations who are creating the power to analyze and interpret this data. In recruiting, data analytics allows us to anticipate better ways of finding, evaluating, and selecting candidates. In short, data that a recruiter collects this way makes or breaks all outcomes related to source-ability and hiring. I’ve become obsessed with how we can use data analytics & recruiting.
Here are my ideas.
Faster & More Efficient Hiring
One of the themes I touch on in Sprint Recruiting is the idea of hiring faster and more efficient. Part of the Sprint Recruiting methodology is the retrospective which allows our team to examine what worked and what didn’t during the sprint. We will often use data analytics to analyze candidate flow, bottlenecks in the process and other vital data points to help with the upcoming sprints.
To increase hires, it’s incredibly important to analyze where your hires are sourced from. Rather than spending thousands of dollars on job boards, you might find many of your hires come from internal referrals or other sourcing methods. This analysis will not only help you decrease the time a job stays open but also help you reallocate money spent on useless candidate sources to more effective sourcing strategies.
Better Hires
Leveraging data analytics & recruiting will help recruiters focus on finding the right candidate for the right role. Analyzing successful employees currently in the role being recruited can help recruiters lock in on the rock-star candidate versus merely someone who will do the job.
I’ve become interested in the predictive analytics within recruiting over the last two years. In simple terms, predictive analytics in recruiting is a process that uses historic data to make predictions about hiring activities and candidates going forward. While predictive analytics can help recruiters place only the best candidates before hiring managers, organizations must first assess predictive analytics tools based on their own unique business needs. Using human data from existing employees, predictive algorithms are designed to narrow down candidates before they ever reach the recruiter or hiring manager, recommending only the most qualified candidates. When done correctly and on a regular basis, predictive analytics in recruiting can have a drastic impact on your recruiting quality, as well as on your overall hiring process
By uncovering historic patterns in data, predictive analytics can give hiring and HR managers insights into probable future outcomes. Data analytics can give hiring managers more predictive capabilities and accurate insights about candidates skillsets and how well they fit into companies and roles. Data analytics is now an essential skill for hiring managers and recruiters, because it can be a powerful tool for improving outcomes throughout the entire hiring process.
Using a tool like Visier or another HCM analytical tool can help you gather the needed data to beef up your sourcing strategy. It can also help you fine tune the interview process to ensure you and your hiring managers are asking the right questions to gain the right insight on candidates.
Increase Engagement
I’m a huge fan of MailChimp and other services to help with managing the content marketing process. The true value of services like these is the data analytics it provides to help you better understand your audience.
If your goal is to leverage content marketing in your recruiting strategy, it’s vital for you to know what your readers want to increase engagement. MailChimp and Hubspot offer incredible analytics to allow you to track how many clicks and shares your posts receive from those on your mailing list.
As content marketing becomes more prevalent in today’s recruiting strategy, you will want to be sure you are an Ace in how to use data analytics in recruiting.
By applying Big Data analytics principles to recruiting, HR leaders and talent acquisition professionals can readily gauge the impact that recruiting has on business. For leaders, recruiting analytics gives them unprecedented visibility into recruiting effectiveness, as well as the opportunity to align recruiting strategies with broader business objectives. By basing hiring decisions mostly on data-driven, algorithm-driven predictions, recruiters are freed up to eliminate their own biases in the process, which can, in turn, produce results that are more stable and higher quality.
You don’t have to be a statistic nerd to appreciate the vast number of enhancements data analytics can bring to your recruiting strategy. My advice would be to start small in an area you would like to enhance and learn your way through trial and error.
For those of us who geek out on this type of stuff, the growing influence of data analytics in recruiting is akin to a binge on the latest Netflix series…. we just can’t get enough!
About me
and Sprint Recruiting
I joined the HR industry in 2004 after working as a sales leader in the Financial Services Industry for eight years. After spending his first couple of years in HR trying to fit in, I found my voice. Now I leverage all of the things I once hated about HR to become a consultant and invaluable partner to the businesses I support. I contribute to the HRGazzette and to DataDrivenInvestor on Medium. WARNING: my writing style is raw and in your face, not what you would expect from an HR executive.
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