Data-driven recruiting is a process of selecting new employees in a way where hiring decisions are based on clear and measurable occupation-related abilities, standards and criteria decided in a predictable manner. This strategy is used in contrast to how most recruiting is performed, such as using resumes as an intermediary for employee expertise and knowledge, applying contradictory standards, and allowing bias to creep into the process. But data-driven recruiting ensures only skilled and competent candidates are hired through a bias-free and properly designed and implemented process.
Some major benefits of implementing a data-driven recruitment practice are:
- Taking more informed hiring decisions
- Obtaining improved quality of hires
- Making better future forecast for the hiring process
- Achieving greater employee retention
- Reducing time and other resources required in the hiring process
How to effectively use data-driven recruitment
To properly recruit, the first recruiting team must identify and decide the characteristics of the ideal applicants. This might include a few distinct criteria such as past experience, skill set, and personality. One can look internally to their finest employees to find desirable attributes to determine these characteristics. This can greatly aid in standardizing the recruitment endeavor.
Here are some great candidate characteristics to look for when hiring:
- Location
- Skill Set
- Tools and Technologies Used
- Job Titles
- Work Experience
- Duration of the Existing Role
To execute a powerful data-driven recruitment operation, the hiring process must be first and foremost based on correct data. Therefore, the hiring data collected should reflect the goals and objectives of the recruiting process specific to that organization. As all organizations are unique, they collect and look for different kinds of hiring information. Also, the hiring objectives, targets, and requirements are different from one organization to another. There is multiple software like the applicant tracking system, hiring solutions, HRMS, or HRIS that can help to track and analyze the hiring data.
Using data to make better recruitment decisions
Recruiting teams can use data analysis to make decisions that benefit overall organizational development. Regardless of whether data-driven recruitment is the answer to further enhancing the organization’s recruitment cycle, integrating the information into the recruiting process is highly complicated. So engaging an applicant tracking system or HR recruiting solution or other applicant information management software will help users considerably. With these solutions, organizations can obtain hiring analytics, insights, and intelligence that suit their recruitment need and practices.
Hiring Information gathering and analysis
To shorten the hiring cycle, use an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) to collect and organize information. ATS can automate the hiring process and practices successfully. Also, applicant tracking software and tools can save precious time, effort, and other resources as compared to non-computerized alternatives. Furthermore, the applicant tracking system removes tedious manual tasks and ensures the data is consistent and methodical, ready to be explored, analyzed, and mined for hiring insights.
Throughout the recruiting funnel, a business should collect and analyze information. This information may include the number of applications received, the number of interviews scheduled, the number of applicants who advanced to the final round, the number of candidates who accepted offers, and more, resulting in a robust collection of recruiting data.
Using data to identify hiring choices and explore possibilities
An effective way to start utilizing data-driven recruiting is to focus only on metrics that can aid the organization’s goals. It is better than attempting to manage everything by obtaining every type of information. Also, it can be counter-productive in data-driven hiring. Moreover, data may also help confirm existing issues and identify bottlenecks in the recruiting practice and procedures. Most importantly, it will explain why a certain technique isn’t working or highlight the unforeseen concerns beforehand.
The Future of a Data-Driven Recruitment Strategy
Recruitment is a very complicated activity that involves a variety of actions that needed to be executed at various levels and phases. But functioning in a data-driven environment can considerably improve the process. Companies will be able to acquire higher-quality talents, cut down expenses and reduce recruiting time if they can harness the full potential of the recruiting data.
Any recruiting team, even one that generally makes decisions based on intuition, would benefit greatly from hiring data. It will let businesses identify what really worked and what didn’t in previous recruiting cycles, allowing them to optimize future hiring decisions.