“You can’t improve what you can’t measure” holds true across different fields and business processes, and recruitment is no exception.
The job market is intensely competitive and rapidly changing. Relying on intuition alone isn’t enough and could even cause you to miss critical opportunities. On the other hand, leveraging measurable data gives you a more accurate understanding of your recruitment process’s strengths and weaknesses to make better-informed decisions.
Are your recruitment efforts suffering from bottlenecks? It might be time to take a step back and crunch numbers by implementing data-driven recruitment strategies into your operations.
What Is Data-Driven Recruitment?
Data-driven recruitment leverages data analysis and metrics to guide and improve hiring and onboarding processes. In effect, you can make guided decisions throughout the recruitment lifecycle, from sourcing candidates to onboarding new hires. This approach effectively shifts the focus from unreliable gut feelings to evidence-based decisions.
A significant advantage of data-driven recruitment is it can identify bottlenecks in the process by examining key metrics like time-to-hire and drop-off rates. Doing so helps streamline decision-making and cut cost-per-hire.
Furthermore, utilizing data improves your chances of hiring quality talent by highlighting the sources and methods that yield top-performing candidates. This advantage lets you attract top talent and enhance the candidate experience by making the entire process smoother and more transparent.
What Are the Types of Data Used in Recruitment?
Tracking and analyzing these HR KPIs help refine your recruitment strategy and make it more effective in attracting and retaining top talent.
Sourcing metrics
These figures help you understand which sourcing channels are most effective for finding high-quality candidates, allowing you to allocate resources more effectively.
- Source of hire identifies the sourcing channels, like job boards and remote hires, that bring in the most productive candidates.
- Sourcing channel cost evaluates the cost-effectiveness of each sourcing channel.
Time-related metrics
They focus on the duration of different stages of the recruitment process to identify delays and inefficiencies. In turn, you can fix them to build a more efficient recruitment process.
- Time-to-fill is the number of days it takes to fill a position since it opened.
- Time-to-hire represents the duration from when a candidate enters the recruitment pipeline to when they accept your job offer.
Candidate experience metrics
Experience metrics assess how candidates perceive and interact with your recruitment process. They’re essential for building a positive experience that encourages other top talents to apply.
- Candidate satisfaction gauges candidates’ satisfaction with your recruitment process, often through surveys.
- Net promoter score refers to the likelihood of candidates recommending your company to others.
Quality-of-hire metrics
These figures evaluate your recruitment efforts’ effectiveness by measuring the performance and retention of new hires—reflecting the long-term impact of your hiring decisions.
- Performance ratings assess the job performance of new hires, usually through manager evaluations.
- Retention rate is the percentage of new hires who stay with your company after a certain period.
How to Implement Data-Driven Recruitment in Your Process
How do you use the information above to bolster your recruitment operations? Here’s a walkthrough to help you out.
Set your goals and objectives
Think about what you want to achieve through your recruitment operations and how data can help you achieve those. For example, is your hiring process taking too long? This problem significantly increases cost-per-hire and hurts your bottom line over time. So, consider making it an objective to hasten your recruitment pipeline.
Whatever your goals are, ensure they’re SMART:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Achievable
- Relevant
- Time-bound
Choose relevant metrics to track
Next, pick metrics aligning with these objectives, so you know which data to gather. Returning to the earlier problem of a slow hiring process, targeting time-to-fill and time-to-hire helps you streamline it. Meanwhile, you must reduce cost-per-hire or sourcing channel costs if your goal is to minimize recruitment costs.
Selecting a mix of data covering different stages of the hiring funnel is essential to track progress toward your goals more comprehensively.
Establish data collection methods
How do you plan on gathering your data? An applicant tracking system helps you spot sourcing metrics by automatically logging where candidates come from. Meanwhile, HR software monitors time-related metrics because some can record each step of the hiring process, among other things.
While these digital tools are convenient, don’t underestimate surveys and feedback forms for gathering candidate experience data directly from the source.
Integrate data into decision-making
It’s time to put the collected data into action by integrating your findings into your decision-making processes. Use data analytics tools to interpret metrics and gain insights into your recruitment performance to gather trends and patterns. For instance, if you notice that candidates from specific sources have higher performance ratings, you can prioritize those sources and address those that don’t.
Improve continuously
The challenge with numbers is that they aren’t static; they are constantly changing. Data-driven recruitment must be a continuous process.
Regularly review your data and the effectiveness of your hiring processes to identify areas for improvement. Look for trends indicating problems, like consistent drop-off at a particular or a high turnover among new hires. Then, implement changes based on your insights and monitor their effects over time. This way, you can adapt to hiring challenges and stay ahead of the competitive job market.
Strengthen Your Recruitment Processes
As you see, data is invaluable in recruitment. Refining the hiring processes with data-backed insights lets your business overcome bottlenecks and ensure high-quality hires. However, filtering through hundreds of applications to increase your chances of landing a high-quality hire can be daunting. Getting help from an experienced and established recruitment agency will be beneficial.
If you need help finding top talent, don’t hesitate to reach out to Manila Recruitment, a leading recruitment agency in the Philippines. We’ll take over your hiring pipeline and implement data-driven strategies so you can focus on your core business activities without worry.
Contact us to learn more.
