You can rely on luck, intuition, and your gut when recruiting new talent. They’re not bad things. Or … you can get it right.
If you operate on assumption – experience and warm, fuzzy feelings notwithstanding – your results may not be reliable when the value of a good hire is at stake. And that’s not a chance you can afford to take.
The Case for Data-Driven Recruiting
Data-driven recruiting is based on the use of tangible facts and statistics to inform your hiring decisions. It’s not to say your gut feelings never come into play; rather, it supports them – or not – based on reliable science. Teams that utilize data are more likely to be successful, keep costs down, and enhance their overall hiring process.
By using data, you’ll find you:
- Improve your quality of hire. Your recruiters will have a seamless way to connect all candidate and employee data around such considerations as qualified applicants per requisition, new hire resignations, involuntary turnover and performance by lead source, and top talent characteristics.
- Accurately predict the speed of hire. Data enables you to provide more accurate hiring time estimates to stakeholders, as well as reveal any bottlenecks and inform you how to correct them.
- Spend budget dollars more wisely.
- Better track your sources of hire to determine which channels bring in the best candidates.
- Unearth any issues that may impede progress. One example might be the need to review application form conversion rates to see if you need to tweak your questions or redesign your page.
- Strengthen diversity. Data-driven diversity checks present a picture of candidate demographics, so you can make sure you’re not discriminating against anyone.
- Upgrade the candidate experience. Analytics bring factors that impact the candidate experience to the forefront, and workforce intelligence solutions can help you to quickly measure the effectiveness of each one.
- Make the case for recruitment process improvements. For instance, if your company needs to invest in a referral program, you can present data showing how this strategy solidifies your position.
How to Do It Well
Here are a few tips to get the ball rolling on data-driven recruiting:
- Choose the right metrics. Start by meeting with your leadership team to determine what matters the most to them. What hiring issues do they see? What specific data would help them – and what does their optimal hiring process look like?
- Collect data efficiently. Use software to your advantage. Your applicant tracking system (ATS) may already have the right reporting capabilities. And find different ways to collect data; for instance, using Google Analytics or simple surveys, for starters.
- Act on your data. It’s not going to do any good at all if you leave it sitting on a shelf or in a file folder. Determine – and then take – the right steps to turn data into action. If your time to hire is too long, look more closely at how you source, screen, interview, and/or make offers. If your acceptance rates are too low, create more competitive offers or communicate better with candidates. You get the gist.
Partner with Search Wizards
If you’re looking to improve your hiring process and results using data-driven recruiting and other best practices, consider partnering with Search Wizards. Talent acquisition is all we do and has been since 2005. Don’t let the thought of data scare you. Instead, contact us today and we’ll help you make it happen.
