The staffing industry has always been about people. And that’s why, historically, hiring professionals have needed to possess excellent interpersonal, communication, and relationship-building skills in order to build rapport with hiring managers and job candidates driven by accurate hiring data.
While this will continue to be the case in 2020, we cannot ignore the fact that talent acquisition has quickly become a numbers profession too. Data has massive amounts of potential to streamline key parts of the hiring process, making it easier for organizations to reach the right decisions and measure success.
With this in mind, this article will explain the keyways that smart reporting is shaping the future of hiring; and what this might mean for your sourcing efforts.
Whatever metrics you use to measure the success of your hiring process, you can bet your bottom dollar that data could help to make this a whole lot easier.
Cost-per-hire, time-to-hire, and offer acceptance rates; are all areas that companies are focusing on to gain a better understanding of how effective their current process is.
But you wouldn’t be able to track any of these without data. These data points might include how long it takes to write your job adverts, to go through your application process, or to progress through your interview stages; alternatively, it might be the number of applications you receive or the number of people you shortlist.
Understanding how to manage this data and use it to your advantage will be key in the future. Especially as new technologies make it easier to report these findings back to hiring managers and the wider business.
Following on from the above, it’s clear that data can be an extremely useful resource for highlighting areas for improvement throughout the hiring process.
For example, if you’re tracking your time-to-hire and notice that a large chunk of it is taken up by multiple interview stages, you could use this information to consider cutting this down to just one or two meetings.
Similarly, your data might inform you that people are dropping off half-way through the application process. This could suggest that your forms are too long or difficult to complete; and that you should, therefore, make appropriate changes. Not only will this make your process more efficient, but it can also help to boost the candidate’s experience.
With any situation, it’s important to not rest on your laurels. You should always be thinking of how you can do better, and this is no different when it comes to your hiring process.
Another reason why more companies are investing in data is to ensure that they make smarter and more informed decisions when it comes to hiring. And this can definitely pay off.
In fact, many hiring decisions are made based on people’s gut feelings. For the most part, this works. But what happens when you hire someone who turns out to be the completely wrong fit? It’s going to waste your time and money in the long run.
Data can be particularly useful when it comes to refining your hiring criteria. Perhaps, for example, you need every candidate to have a college degree in XYZ; but when you actually look at data from your workforce, this has no bearing on someone’s success in your company.
Better still, data can now power machines to make smarter decisions for you. This means you can automate key parts of your hiring process, safe in the knowledge that the right decisions are being made.
Whether we like to admit it or not, we can all be biased when it comes to making hiring decisions. But that’s why data has such fantastic potential in this market.
Indeed, by using data to analyze a person’s fit for the role, you’ll ensure that you focus on their skills, experience, and suitability for the job. It’s particularly useful as you can program these technologies to ignore any information around demographics such as age, race, gender or even zip code.
Of course, we’ll never be able to remove unconscious bias from the hiring process fully; but using Artificial Intelligence and machine learning to screen candidates and predict who will perform best in the role based on their data can help massively.
Overall, it’s clear that there are several benefits to using data in your hiring process; and this is by no means an extensive list. Many companies are recognizing the benefits of investing in new technologies and taking the time to step back and analyze what’s working and what isn’t. Will you be taking a similar approach in 2020? If you’d like to learn how SmartSearch can help you build better reports click here to schedule a live demo.