One of the popular terms circulating the world of TA the past years is Data-Driven Recruitment. Despite the term being thrown around frequently, very few TA professionals have hands-on experience of working with data and even less with creating a full cycle feedback loop or using data to formulate a strategy. So why should we be adopting a data-driven approach to recruitment strategy?
Working data-driven means basing your decisions on facts and tangible data as opposed to going on instinct or just following the often trodden paths and doing what you have always done. The great advantage of working data-driven is that you will have more focus on spending your valuable time and money where it will make the most use and yield a better ROI. I would argue that investing in a recruitment strategy that is data-driven will lead to an improved candidate experience, a better quality of hire, lower cost per hire as well as empower the employees involved in the process
So what are some of the areas where using data can improve your hiring strategy?
Attraction: using data can help you make a smart and efficient plan when allocating your recruitment marketing budget and efforts.
Recruitment process: unearthing issues and problems in your hiring process will help you set relevant KPIs and pave the way for increased productivity in your hiring team.
Planning: benchmark and forecast to create your hiring plan! Look at how many applicants you typically need to make a hire in various areas and adjust your strategy accordingly. The same goes for evaluating diversity in your workforce and setting realistic goals for improvement.
Some argue that implementing a data-driven approach is only for the larger corporation with a complete TA team and an extensive budget. While there are certain limitations to what you can do within a smaller company, you can always do something
Start by identifying problems and points of improvement by asking yourself some of these questions:
What will our hiring needs be in the coming quarter, year, 3 years?
Will the market/our business model change and are we equipped to deal with these changes with the current employee population?
What are some of the bottlenecks in our recruitment process?
Are we managing candidate experience well?
How are our job ads performing?
From which source do we get most of our candidates?
To which extent are these candidates relevant to our hiring needs?
Without the appropriate data, you will not be able to provide an educated answer to these questions. Without the appropriate data, you will not know when to up-scale your recruitment efforts, where to focus those efforts and what the most efficient approach is.
If we look closer at some examples, a tech company may find that a lack of inflow of quality candidates is the biggest problem. Measuring the success of your job ads and creating a more efficient sourcing funnel is vital to addressing this issue. Using labour market data to find clusters of candidates with a scarce skill set, and information on how to attract them can help the company formulate a strategy.
Your smaller scale-up with little resources and no dedicated employee will likely need to focus on how they can attract the right talent as they scale up their business model. It is easy to throw money at the problem using promoted ads and external recruitment sources. While there is nothing wrong with these solutions, do the results of these costly efforts balance against the returns for your company?
You should also be measuring candidate experience if you decide to outsource your recruitment efforts. Not providing a candidate-centric recruitment journey will eventually erode your Employer Brand and make it all the more challenging to attract talent in the long run.
Lastly, a global corporation may identify an overwhelmingly large inflow of candidates as their main bottleneck. Part of their strategy can be investing in AI or other technology to analyze a large pool of candidates (predictive analysis). The goal being to identify common denominators in successful applicants and automating part of the screening process accordingly, saving time and resources.
Now that we have outlined some of the areas we can benefit from a data-driven approach to creating strategy, a word of caution. Data will not tell you why something happens or how to solve the problem. You will always need people to evaluate the past and plan for the future. So find that person in your company (or your network) who is passionate about facts and continuous improvement, and make them the owner and ambassador for a data-driven approach to TA within your organisation!
SUSANNE SIMKENS
