A Complete Guide to Data-Driven Recruitment

Over the last three decades, the world of recruitment has changed dramatically. From responding to a classified ad in the local newspaper to being headhunted by top recruiters all over the world, today’s job market is vastly different. It constantly presents new opportunities, from social media posts to recruitment platforms designed to capture your attention.

Of course, in the past, recruiters relied on gut instinct, experience, and sometimes blind luck to find the right candidate. The compromise was hours of combing through CVs without knowing if they had the perfect candidates or if the CV wasn’t exactly providing accurate information about actual skills and knowledge.

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Today, things have changed, and data-driven recruitment is not only faster but also more accurate. It assists recruiting managers in hiring better candidates and saving money. This guide will explain what data-driven recruitment is, its benefits, and how you can use it to make hiring decisions.

What is data-driven recruitment?

In a nutshell, data-driven recruitment is the use of data to optimize the process of recruiting the best candidates and the entire recruitment process.

This data-driven process involves the fact that rather than relying on guesswork to identify candidates or unstructured processes to better develop teams, data serves as a guide in achieving the results that an organization desires – and a recruiting manager requires!

For instance, data is used to analyze a large talent pool and a number of highly qualified candidates. It then matches them with candidates who have the necessary skills, experience, and mindset to assist an organization in meeting its objectives.

The accumulation of data can be mined, and because it is a relatively fresh approach to recruitment, its development is aided by new HR technologies that are constantly finding new ways to be implemented in the recruitment process.

The goal of data-driven recruitment is to utilize all of the data available to a recruiter, not just resumes or cover letters, to make the best hiring decision possible.

Data-driven recruitment has numerous advantages, ranging from reducing recruitment time to recognizing better candidates, which we will now examine in greater detail.

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The Advantages of a Data-Driven Recruitment Strategy

Data-driven recruitment has numerous advantages, some of which are as follows:

Data-driven recruitment offers a consistent, objective approach

Numerous business decisions, including recruitment, can be based on gut instinct. However, by using a data-driven process, you can create a repeatable, well-functioning framework that can drive a more informed recruitment process.

On their best days, candidates can appear to be the best hire you can make; on their worst days, you wouldn’t consider them – but that’s not objective. Data-driven strategies can help identify someone’s skills, culture/personality fit, and a variety of other factors.

It can also help to eliminate the majority of the uncertainties in your recruitment process, allowing you to be more convinced in your decisions.

Data-driven recruitment improves hiring quality

Employing the best possible recruits will benefit your company in both the long and short term. However, in the absence of data, hiring decisions would be based on subjective rather than objective criteria.

A strong candidate may perform poorly in an interview, but in a data-driven model, they can provide you with more information to help you make a decision. Assessments, personality tests, and skills competency tests, among other things, are far stronger predictors of quality than a CV or face-to-face interview.

Data-driven recruitment lowers the cost of hiring

If you hire strong candidates who also fit your company’s culture, you are employing people who will not only perform better but will also boost your retention rate.

However, it does not happen by chance. Data-driven hiring can identify areas where you may be spending more time in the selection process than in other areas, such as interviewing. You can reduce your hiring costs by reducing the time spent on interviews by using platforms to better screen candidates.

Similarly, if you keep more employees, you have to hire fewer people, which benefits the organization both financially and operationally.

Data-driven recruitment enhances the candidate experience

Improving a candidate’s experience is a no-brainer. Consider trying to draw in the best candidates in a fierce job market when they are distracted by emails, mobile notifications, and a plethora of other things.

It goes beyond the technology; it’s also about the process and how data-driven approaches can make it simpler and faster.

A candidate will give up if the application process is too difficult. If it is simple and requires little effort, you will attract more candidates, increasing your pool of potentially excellent employees.

Data-driven recruitment aids in identifying trends and future requirements

Data-driven recruitment is one of the effective methods to estimate and predict future business needs by incorporating information into things like:

• Turnover rate annually
• Movements between departments annually
• Hiring time

You can, for example, get a better approximation of what the recruitment budget should be. If statistically, X employees are going to leave the company within the year, you need Y’s budget. Since the data provides that information, you can also predict how much you need to spend – and how fast you can even recruit – all based on the data.

How to use data work for your recruitment process

There is a vast array of data that you can use to accelerate your data-driven recruitment process, and selecting that data will be critical to the overall outcome.

Choose the appropriate data and metrics

There are numerous types of hiring metrics that are commonly assessed – including 

• Cost per hire
• Time to hire.
• Source of employment
• Scores for candidate experience
• Acceptance rates for job offers

Calculating the various metrics and using them as part of the hiring process in both analysis and decision-making will improve your overall success rate.

• Effectively collect data
• Make use of applicant tracking software or a system.
• Consider software solutions.

Find a solution that allows you to stay ahead of the curve when it comes to storing CVs, assessment information, and even tracking where the candidate is in the recruitment process.

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How recruitment analytics can help you hire better

A company’s growth can be aided by having good data insights from the hiring process. Analytics can provide clear data points that can be used to assist in the development of the organization, from recognizing the type of people you recruit or need to the skills required to take you to the next level in your organization’s journey.

Recruitment analytics is a data and predictive analysis integration that provides real-time information to help you hire faster. Powerful recruiting analytics enables you to investigate every aspect of your business, transform data into actionable insights, and make better recruiting decisions more quickly.

However, there is no doubt that in order to use such powerful insights, you must first collect the data and then apply the knowledge derived from those data points. The most effective way to accomplish this is to have the appropriate data analysis technology. Not all platforms are created equal, nor are they equipped with the necessary tools to assist you in identifying the types of information you require to advance your organization’s journey. Thus, choosing the appropriate platform is critical.

It has already been mentioned how recruitment analytics can be used to enhance the candidate experience – for example, by identifying problems in the process, such as whether it is too difficult to apply. Are there any mobile applications that can help with a faster, more efficient application process?

Similarly, analytics offers insight into recruitment campaign success – are you spending too much or too little for the results you’re getting? Finally, one of the most significant benefits of analytics systems is that they will recognize inefficiencies in the candidate selection and interview processes, allowing you to not only resolve these issues but also save time, and money, and accelerate your recruitment process.

Conclusion

In a nutshell, data-driven recruitment is the use of data to optimize the process of recruiting the best candidates and the whole recruitment process. The goal of data-driven recruitment is to utilize all of the data available to a recruiter, not just resumes or cover letters, to make the best hiring decision possible.

Not only does data-driven recruitment aid in the employment of better candidates, but it also makes the recruitment process more effective and timely. It also aids in the identification of problems in a non-data-driven recruitment process, such as high turnover rates or acceptance rates that are significantly lower.

[To share your insights with us, please write to sghosh@martechseries.com]