Why Data-Driven Recruitment Strategy Matters

By Kelly Barcelos & Lorenz V. Esposito | May 18th, 2020

The recruitment process in itself is a data mine. Traditional recruiting doesn’t explore this treasure trove and rely more on luck and intuition. So, how to hire employees by taking a more scientific approach?

The answer is data-driven hiring. This approach uses existing or external data to optimize the recruitment process. To effectively use data in refining your recruitment strategies, you need to measure the right recruitment metrics. These insights will help you assess the effectiveness of your hiring process and ultimately drive your decision making forward. 

A host of technologically-advanced software and analytical tools are available in the market today that can mine this data to reveal tangible facts and stats, which you can use to empower your recruiters and hiring teams to make hiring decisions based on facts and not on gut feeling.

Benefits of Embracing a Data-Driven Recruiting Strategy

1. Improve Quality of Hire

If your recruitment process is driven by data, your recruiters will dig deep into the metrics, such as below to ensure a better quality of hire: 

• Qualified applications per requisition – whether your sourcing practices are delivering effective employees.

• Employee turnover in less than 3 months of service 

• New hire performance by lead source

• Quality of hire per channel - Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc.

2. Predict Speed of Hire

Data analytics gives you the confidence to estimate how long it can take for you to hire for a certain role and how much time you spend on each stage of the hiring process. When you have this information backed by data, you can provide credible timelines to your stakeholders. This data-driven approach can also identify the bottlenecks in your hiring process, giving you the opportunity to fix them and increase the speed of the process. 

3. Improve Candidate Experience

Workforce analytics brings to light the factors that affect candidate experience. Through data, you’ll get the picture of what’s increasing or decreasing the likelihood of candidates withdrawing their applications – and help you build strategies that can decrease the odds of you losing strong candidates. 

4. Boost Diversity 

Data analytics monitors your hiring funnel for important demographic ratios such as ethnicity, gender, and veteran status. This helps you to track diversity better and implement programs in your hiring process to increase diversity throughout your candidate pipeline.

Talent Acquisition Mistakes You Can Avoid With a Data-Driven Recruitment Strategy  

1. Focusing only on filling positions 

Recruiters are more focused on filling the position, which can be a mistake in the long run. Rather than concentrating on just getting things done, it’s always more effective to take a step back, analyze your hiring process and identify areas where you can improve. 

Data on your recruiting funnel and candidates can help build a better talent acquisition process that assures long term benefits. With a data-driven recruitment strategy, you can identify areas of improvements, adjust your recruitment process to get rid of the bottlenecks and empower your hiring teams to make the right hires much faster. 

2. Allowing bias and gut-based hiring decisions

We, as humans are naturally and traditionally biased. We tend to gravitate towards people who are like us. When this bias is reflected in the recruitment process, it can result in a less diverse workforce. Hiring decisions that are biased and gut-based lead to bad hires and cause a significant drop in productivity. 

Data can help eliminate gut-based and biased hiring decisions. When your hiring teams rely on real numbers and not on the gut, they will challenge themselves to lower bias and boost diversity.

3. Failing to track employee performance post-hiring  

Many organizations don’t have a way to analyze the success of their hires. If data is involved in linking the candidates and their performance, there will be a better measure to determine – which of the candidates were quality hires, which recruiter brought them in, and whether or not they are a good fit. Such data analysis also helps in attracting and retaining top hires. 

By adopting a scientific, data-driven recruiting strategy, your hiring teams will rely on data and not intuition while making their hiring decisions. With data as your ally, you can optimize your recruitment strategy by doubling your strengths and eliminating the areas of weakness, enabling you to hire faster and better, and get ahead of competition.

Tagged: Recruiting Tips, Data-Driven Recruiting