With plenty of data and profiles to choose from, finding the best candidate only through conventional recruiting techniques is not enough in the modern digital world. The importance and responsibility of data for recruiting are likely to increase over the next few years, as hiring companies’ priorities will continue to evolve, and finding the best applicants will be one of HR leaders’ main challenges. Employers and recruiters are therefore continuously refining their finding, recruiting, and retention processes. And data analytics seems to be the next savior of human resources and recruiting.
Why does Data Analytics Matter in Recruitment?
Organizations across industries are using data analytics to learn about their job applicants, customers, and employees. The HR function has been the beneficiary of increased focus on the utilization of analytics. The use of analytics has facilitated HR professionals with numerous abilities, including:
- Analyze the changing landscape of recruitment for growth in a particular region or across countries and cities
- Improve candidate vetting and enable personalized selection of the best fit for the role
- Enhanced decision-making that results in the successful recruitment of best-fit candidates
- Distinguish through the utilization of analytics to minimize bias and ensure workplace gender equality
Data analytics also provides a tremendous opportunity for recruitment professionals, enabling them to see the complete picture of candidates with varied backgrounds and education levels. Utilizing data to draw different conclusions about a candidate’s aptitudes, passion, and drive ultimately helps the recruiter’s team in crafting a convincing cover letter and a comprehensive job description. The role of data analytics in recruitment is fundamental as it enables the recruitment team to deliver a refined, targeted, and best-fit recruiting strategy.
What are the Benefits of Data Analytics?
The process of data collection is like a giant spider web. When a recruiter is in touch with a candidate for a particular job, there is an initial assessment of the information available, if it helps them in evaluating the candidates. Initially, HR professionals prefer a traditional approach by directly reaching out to the candidates and then collect their complete information about their current and past experiences, educational qualifications, personal particulars, etc. However, some companies opt for an automated approach that uses various sources such as resume databases, social media to know more about the current job market trends. This way, they are able to streamline their recruiting process by making valuable hires and increase the applicant pool in a time-bound manner.
AI/ML in Recruitment
Data analytics helps in creating a better and efficient recruitment process and significantly streamlining business processes, better recruiting, better targeting, and aligning the organization’s priorities with the requirements of its audiences. In simple terms, data analytics is essentially used to derive the patterns, trends, and behaviors of the target audience to aid the company in the decision-making process. Apart from traditional forms of analytics (such as traditional surveys, process evaluation, and high school-level data modeling), data analytics also leverages artificial intelligence (AI) to predict the future actions of consumers, users, and customers.
AI-driven accessible and inexpensive recruiting systems can easily substitute for traditional recruitment procedures. Through technology, corporate workers can be relieved from regular tedious jobs and instead be assigned to highly qualified positions. Recruitment can be more open and unbiased, and each job applicant can be personalized by AI capabilities. Even after recruiting, AI can efficiently handle many of the onboarding formalities and training.
Common Challenges of Data Analytics in Recruitment
Some of the challenges that organizations have encountered in data analytics in recruitment include training their workforce, gaining insights from the available data, understanding the right information, and prioritizing what information to incorporate. Training HR professionals to use basic tools for data collection and analysis is also a challenge, which is only the first step in the process of learning. It’s important for organizations to ensure employees have access to valuable tools so that they can perform effective analysis themselves, without being influenced by external factors. This enables HR professionals to stay abreast with the latest technology trends, test and evaluate potential solutions to predict success for their projects, and offer future-proof solutions.
The Future of Data Analytics in Recruitment
The current hiring landscape has transformed to suit the needs of hiring companies. By looking at the evolving demands of job seekers, the role of data analytics in recruiting is expected to develop in the coming years. The key focus of the industry is expected to be on data-led recruitment. While this means that recruiters will be relying on more effective and transparent data analytics to enhance their success rates, it also means that they will have to change their traditional way of hiring and evaluating candidates. With the constant enhancements in analytics and the rise of the Internet of Things (IoT) and machine learning, which enables data collection to improve decision-making, data analytics in recruitment is becoming the way ahead for talent acquisition professionals.
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