Today, more data than ever exists. With technology, the internet, and a greater population than ever before, information exists is huge quantities, telling various stories, supported by statistical data. Businesses have begun using this influx of data to their advantage, alongside technology organizations who are creating the power to analyze and interpret this data. Sales departments, marketing teams, and executive leaders are using market data, internal sales data, and financial numbers to understand what is affecting their business and what they can or should be doing differently to grow their business, drive sales, engage with customers, or bring more of their product or service to the world.
How HR analytics can help your recruitment efforts.
It turns out that HR teams can benefit from this data too. Many recruiters in the past have relied on traditional methods of sourcing, hiring, and interviewing, such as reading resumes manually, calling references, and relying on intuition and standards of behavior during interviews. These things all still have their place, but HR data analytics are changing a lot about how human resources recruits talent.
What are the benefits to data-driven recruitment?
Here’s how data analytics can impact your recruitment and help you find the best people for your team.
1. Faster, efficient hiring
Applicant tracking software (ATS) is one of the first and most basic forms of HR data analytics. It can scan reviews and integrate applicant software into internal HR programs to help recruiters and HR management sort through resumes faster – by only presenting the top candidates who meet the most important criteria, as ranked and sorted by the ATS. This can help recruiters spend less time sorting through resumes and more time connecting with applicants and onboarding new hires. It can also reduce the cost of data-driven recruitment by implementing automation and reducing manual reviews.
2. Higher quality hires
One thing that data is helpful in analyzing is the quality of your job ads. How frequently do you think that people are applying to jobs that you post that they aren’t qualified for or overqualified for? What about your postings is leading to that? Additionally, huge amounts of data can be gleaned and processed from resumes, leading to a better understanding of a candidate’s true potential. Beyond just pinging keywords, HR analytics can help you highlight other pertinent information such as length of tenure at other organizations and performance specifics. It can also help you look at employee data from past employees and help distinguish what qualities made those employees successful or not and help managers hire using that criterion.
3. Better retention
Related to quality hires is the idea of retention. HR analytics – outside of recruiting – can help you understand what keeps employees engaged. With feedback and performance review data, you have the ability to assess what is positive about your work environment and keeps people on board. Knowing that helps you retain talent across the board, but also helps you write better job posting ads that can speak effectively about your culture and the kind of people who will fit in best with your organization. Additionally, data can help you define and identify the markers that indicate a candidate is more likely to stay with your organization.
While data certainly has limitations and the data that every business needs or chooses to utilize will depend on their staffing needs, data analytics has helped businesses improve retention, reduce time to hire and cost per hire, and led to better fits for unfilled roles. It can also help you find out more about your hiring process and understand what draws in quality hires and what the stumbling blocks during the process are that might be turning away quality potential candidates.
