Introduction
Data-driven recruiting has changed the hiring game! The traditional recruiting methods relied more on guesswork and less on data. It resulted in bad hires, and loss of time, resources, and money.
Did you know that nearly three in four employers are affected by bad hire? Source: Career Build.
But modern recruitment has made things easier and more effective for recruiters.
According to LinkedIn, Talent acquisition teams with mature analytics are 2X more likely to improve their recruiting efforts.
So, if you are also looking for an efficient method of recruitment, data-driven recruiting is the way to go. But what exactly is a data-driven hiring process and how to incorporate it?
Data-driven Recruiting: What is it?
In simple words, Data-driven recruiting is a process of optimizing your hiring strategy with available data.
It is a process used by HR specialists and recruiters to analyze available data and plan the hiring process accordingly.
It helps you make objective hiring decisions that are based on reliable data and stats. So rather than “going with your gut,” your decision is backed by evidence.
Following a data-driven recruitment strategy not only helps you get rid of the guesswork but also ensures you select the right candidate without any biases.
What Are the Benefits of Data-driven Recruitment?
Data-driven recruiting can make or break an organization. It can change the hiring game for a company. Here are some of the benefits of data-driven recruiting –
1. Eliminate the Guesswork
Hiring someone on a hunch is a risky business. Your decision could backfire if it turns out to be a bad hire. Using a data-driven approach to hiring can help you eliminate guesswork.
Rather than going with your gut feeling and hiring someone likeable, it is better to hire someone based on their job-fit skills, experience, assignment score and other variables.
So, instead of using the same old boring process that focuses on resumes and personalities, try using a software or tool that automates your hiring process and selects candidates based on data.
2. Speed Up the Hiring Process
An unplanned hiring process will take time and cost you more, whereas a data-driven recruitment strategy will speed up your hiring process. So how to do it?
List all the data metrics you need to keep an eye on while hiring to speed up the hiring-
- Hiring time: How much time does it take to fill a position in your company? Identify the time you spend on sourcing, interviews and hiring.
- Applicant drop-off rate: Pay attention to the stages where candidates are dropping off from the application process, etc.
- Time spent on writing job postings for job boards: Track the time spent in writing job descriptions and putting together the job postings.
3. Reduce Hiring Costs
Did you know one bad hire can cost you $15,000? That number is astounding!
To reduce unnecessary costs, it is better to follow a data-driven recruiting that reduces your hire time, makes effective use of your recruitment budget, and promotes employee retainment.
You can also use data-driven HCM tools that do all your recruitment work in one place from job posting to resume parsing, reducing the costs of using multiple tools.
4. Boosting Quality Hires
In the traditional form of hiring, no matter how good a candidate might do in an interview their performance is not guaranteed.
However, using a data-driven approach will help you choose the highest quality candidates that suit the job profile appropriately.
Good hires mean a good team! So, a data-driven recruiting process boosts not only quality hires but leads to higher productivity of the team as well.
What Recruitment Data Should I Measure?
The biggest question, many HRs and recruiters pose while implementing a data-driven hiring process is “What recruitment metrics should I measure?”
This part can be a bit confusing, but you can divide all your metrics into 3 basic recruitment metric categories –
1. Quality-based Recruitment Metrics
This data helps you determine the quality of your hiring process, it can include metrics like acceptance rate, source of hire, applications per job, candidates per hire, employee turnover, etc.
2. Speed-based Recruitment Metrics
This data will determine how much time each stage of your process takes like time per stage, time for acceptance, time to hire, etc.
3. Cost-based Recruitment Metrics
This data keeps track of the costs of every aspect of the hiring process like cost per hire, advertisement costs, platform costs, etc.
Data-driven Recruiting: How to Use It?
Many companies know about data-driven recruitment but have no idea how to use it. Let us talk about how to use data-driven hiring for better recruitment –
1. Identify Bottlenecks in Hiring the Process
Data-driven recruiting and HR analytics will help you collect data and identify problems in the hiring process. For example, which job board is not working for you anymore, but you are still paying a hefty sum for it, or at what stage of the hiring process are the candidates dropping out? By using data at hand, you can tweak your hiring process accordingly.
2. Allocate a Hiring Budget
Cost-based metrics can play a huge role in keeping track of your hiring budget. You can track the source of hire to determine which recruiting channels bring in the most qualified candidates and invest more in it.
3. Streamline With Data-driven Hiring
The traditional recruitment process can be confusing for recruiters and HR professionals. Data-driven recruitment streamlines the hiring process and makes it more efficient.
Moreover, if you are using software or tool for the hiring process, it can help you to datafy the process quite easily, just like Akrivia HCM does.
4. Reach More Objective Hiring Decisions
Ditch the gut feeling and age-old stereotype of “hiring the good guy,” with a data-driven approach you can reach objective hiring decisions.
You can compare the candidates, their resumes, skills, and assignments. Allocate scores to candidates, compare the data, and make a responsible hiring decision. There are various data-driven recruitment management tools that can help you do that.
5. Increase Efficiency and Productivity
According to research featured in the Harvard Business Review, using an algorithm increases the accuracy of selecting productive employees by more than 50%.
Using data-driven recruiting boosts productivity in two aspects –
- It increases the efficiency of the hiring team and reduces the hire time.
- Hiring the right candidate increases the productivity of the team.
Tools You Can Use for Data-driven Recruitment
Many large companies and enterprises use multiple HR tools and databases to handle their data, which can cause miscommunication and data mishandling.
Rather than using many tools, you can use one single tool that handles the entire hiring process in a data-driven way!
Akrivia HCM has an AI-powered recruitment management system that automates the entire hiring process. You can do everything from ATS to OCR-enabled resume parsing, we have it all.
Why is Data-driven Recruiting Important?
Recruitment processes have evolved over the years. Earlier candidates were hired based on a “good-looking resume” and “likeability.” Now companies have data but have no clear idea what to do with it. A data-driven recruiting method:
- Enables you to examine the valuable data about the overall hiring process and helps you optimize it.
- Provides you with candidate engagement information that educates you about the candidate experience and how to improve it.
- Reviews your hiring technique and determines if any changes should be made to it.
Conclusion
Using a traditional recruitment method is like sending a letter in the age of emails. It is outdated, time-consuming and inefficient.
Whereas data-driven recruitment optimizes your hiring process, reduces hire time, and increases productivity. Let us know what you prefer in the comments below – Traditional hiring or data-driven hiring?
