Big Data: Can You Rely Too Heavily on Analytics When Hiring?

Predictive analytics and Big Data intelligence tools can be effectively leveraged to produce dynamic recruitment and retention results. But be sure you mine and use the right information – and build your strategy around a combination of analytical, social media and person-to-person tactics.

The Value of Predictive Analytics

Predictive analytics allow your staffing team to create economic value from data, which ultimately helps you become more competitive. These analytics help you anticipate and optimize:

• Talent acquisition: Identify top candidates and determine the best time to contact them.
• Pipeline planning: Leverage macroeconomic and talent data to ascertain key factors that can lead to better resource allocation. For instance, you can identify the best locations to launch recruitment campaigns for specific skills.
• Job posting response: Develop tailored plans to help your company achieve higher response based on duration, location, occupation and industry.

The Value of Big Data Intelligence

You receive vast volumes of resumes and related talent data. In order to fully understand and maximize your recruitment metrics, you need to effectively utilize Big Data intelligence technology. The benefits include:

• Better awareness of your cost per placement: This is key to building recruiter productivity.
• Clear analysis of candidate quality: This helps your recruiters find a broader range of candidates than they could using traditional search methods.
• Improved time to fill ratio: This reduces total search time and provides accurate candidate rankings. The end result is matching the right talent to the right job.

Focus on the Right Data

Examine your staffing data carefully so you can hire more strategically in the future. Make sure you focus on the data that provides key information as you drive your plans forward.

• Enable your team to recruit from multiple generations. Your pool should include the right combination of millennials, Gen X employees and baby boomers. This helps your company to appeal to top candidates while providing the broadest possible range of perspectives from which to promote innovation and tackle tough issues.
• Boost employee satisfaction. Tracking employee satisfaction data provides a window into turnover and retention patterns. This is key as recent studies show that up to 86 percent of full-time U.S. workers are open to switching jobs within the next year.
• Be aware of upcoming retirements and flight risks. Find any potential skill gaps on your organization’s radar so you can recruit, train and develop accordingly.

The Rest of the Picture

If you’re not using talent analytics, you’ve got your head in the sand. However, it’s not the be all and end all. Take all that relevant data you’ve mined and make it the core of your multifaceted recruitment and retention strategy.

• Start with your company website and put social media to work for you. Keep your site up to date and user friendly. Make it the hub of growing your network into a full range of strategically selected social platforms. It goes well beyond LinkedIn and Facebook, though these remain the keystones. Find out where your top candidates are and meet them on line. Maximize use of mobile technology. Be an active social media participant by providing links to articles, images, videos and other resources.
• Never disregard good ol- fashioned handshakes. Your personal and professional network and that of your recruitment firm are priceless. Professional associations, conferences, campus recruiting and even social events can be venues for establishing and building viable candidate relationships. It’s a Big Data world, but it’s still populated by people.

The specialized big data recruitment team at BrainWorks can help you make the best staffing decisions based on targeted data analysis coupled with other strategic tactics tailored to your firm and its continued competitive success. Contact us today to learn more!