Everyone’s talking about data. Data this, analytics that. Show me the numbers!
I get it. Business decisions need to be informed by data so that we can prove there’s a reason for the changes we make. And when we do make changes, we need to set a goal and capture a benchmark so that we can prove that whatever we implemented was successful (or not). So in looking specifically at the hiring process, how can data affect the changes we make, and what are the associated goals for those changes? There are an infinite number of ways to improve the process but here are a few ideas to get you started:
Reduce Promotional Spending
Where have you found your best employees or your best candidates? If you know that your top candidates come from only 3 sources, why bother with the other ones? You can save that extra cash and put it towards something else, or you could double-down on the sources that are proven to work. In recent reports, employee referrals seem to be the best source for hires (something that’s been echoed in our own analyses), but that doesn’t mean it’s like that across the board. Analyzing source-of-hire data allows you to understand where to allocate your recruitment budget and decrease unnecessary promotional spending.
Lower Turnover Costs
Now ask yourself this: what are the qualities or characteristics that make an amazing employee? Let’s find more people with those! If we can narrow it down for each specific role, that’s even better!
Be warned: if you jump to conclusions on what those things might be, you may end up pursuing the wrong people. Once again, you need real data. You need to capture information about existing employees and look for patterns of characteristics that lead to success. Maybe it’s education, a certain kind of experience, a particular personality type or a particular skill. Whatever it is, you’ll want to identify it and look for it in future hires. If you use this data to make more accurate hiring decisions, you’ll see your cost of turnover start to dip. If you’re hiring the right people, based on solid data, you should be hiring people who aren’t as likely to leave.
Improve Time To Hire
Even something as simple as figuring out the easiest way to book an interview can streamline the hiring process. When looking to acquire new employees faster, examine what could be slowing you down. Determining what should be included in the job profile (and then creating the profile itself), collecting candidate information, sending it to the appropriate people, scheduling interviews, processing paperwork – you might find there are better ways to do some or all of these things. Here’s where the data comes in: if you were to implement a new method for doing any of these tasks, do you get to the hire faster? Lever suggests tracking conversion rates for each stage of the process to help sleuth out inefficiencies.
Yes, there are a million data points to track and even more methods to test, but you can start with your biggest pain points and work from there. What’s the biggest priority or issue for you right now? Know your goal, collect your data, cut out inefficiencies and watch that benchmark move. If they want numbers, you can show them the numbers!