The field of talent acquisition is always changing, meaning businesses need to pay close attention in order to attract the best candidates. One way to stay ahead in the recruitment game is by leveraging analytics.
While Deloitte’s recent report shows that this has a substantial positive effect, it also shows that 83% of companies don’t pay enough attention to talent analytics.
Here, we’ll examine how to improve recruitment with talent acquisition analytics, why it matters, and how it can revolutionize your hiring efforts.
What is Talent Acquisition Analytics, and Why Does it Matter?
Talent acquisition analytics involves using data and metrics to optimize your recruitment process. It requires gathering large quantities of data and processing it in order to gain insights into the various elements influencing your hiring efforts. It’s often combined with technology solutions such as HR/recruitment programs, specialized software for consultants, or machine learning models.
When we talk about talent acquisition analytics, it can include:
Conducting and analyzing candidate experience surveys
Examining channel effectiveness for job advertisements
Tracking hiring metrics such as recruitment duration, cost, success rate, and sources
Examining the effectiveness of your existing recruitment strategy
Why Talent Acquisition Analytics Matter
Traditionally, recruiters often worked with their ‘gut feelings’ when hiring. But, the world has evolved beyond relying on intuition-based decisions. Generally, decision-makers now put more trust in data-backed insights to make informed choices.
Similarly, recruiters now benefit from accurate data-backed talent acquisition analytics to improve their hiring processes. According to Bain & Company, there’s a 40% productivity difference between companies that invested in talent analytics and those that didn’t.
Below are some other reasons you should implement talent acquisition analytics.
Improvement in hire quality. By analyzing the data of your previous successful hires, you can find what factors contributed to them. You can then make use of this in your ongoing recruitment processes – for instance, did you find your best candidates all came via one platform? Invest more time in advertising roles there.
Lower recruitment cost. By carefully assessing the data you’ve gathered, you’ll start to spot needless expenses in your hiring processes. The process can also speed up the time it takes to find suitable candidates as well as avoiding bad hires, reducing costs associated with the recruitment process.
Reduced employee turnover. TA analytics aren’t just about hiring – they’re also about why staff leave. By analyzing employee tenure data, you can identify and address the leading cause of staff turnover to boost employee retention.
Reduced Skill Gaps. TA analytics helps you identify the specific skills missing in your workforce. That means you know exactly where you need more personnel and can focusing on finding the right people in the next recruitment cycle.
Eliminate hiring bias. Recruitment managers can be subject to personal bias that prevents them from employing the best candidates – even subconsciously. Incorporating data in hiring processes helps you be more objective when examining candidates, thereby checking and preventing such prejudices.
Saves time and prevents repetitive processes. The insights gained from talent acquisition analytics can point you straight to the best course of action. That way, you won’t waste time on needless activities in the hiring process.
Improve candidate experience. By analyzing previous recruitment data, you’ll get insights into the experiences of candidates in your previous recruitment exercises. This means you can improve the process to ensure all applicants have a pleasant experience, improving your reputation.
How to Improve Your Recruitment Process with Talent Acquisition Analytics
Now that you know the benefits of talent acquisition analytics, let’s examine the best practices for implementing it into your recruitment process.
Data Collection and Integration
Data collection is a key part of any analytical process. In this case, you’ll collect data related to recruitment, talent acquisition, employee engagement, and retention. However, without a strong data gathering strategy in place, everything else is at risk – inaccurate and incomplete information will give you poor results and misleading insights.
A crucial factor that will contribute to your data-gathering process is the tools you use. Several modern data collection, collation, and processing tools exist, but it’s best to find ones with specific functionalities for talent acquisition analytics.
Take call center scheduling software and other contact center solutions in your recruitment outreach team’s operations toolbox. You can implement a centralized system that collects and integrates data at the recruitment contact center from various inbound sources, including job boards, social media, and internal databases.
You may also obtain data actively through surveys, interviews, and questionnaires. This method allows you to target specific groups of people and tailor the responses you want from them.
Identifying Key Metrics
After obtaining general information about your talent acquisition activities, it’s time to filter out the parts you need and those you don’t. To do this, you must set metrics and define the key data points you want.
Some common metrics include:
Time-to-fill
This metric measures the time between opening applications and when the candidate accepts the offer. Basically, it’s the number of days it takes to find and employ a candidate for a role.
This metric helps you measure your recruitment speed, determine unnecessary delays, and optimize for faster hires.
Offer acceptance rate
This metric compares how many candidates accepted your offer against the number of offers you sent out. A low acceptance rate signifies that most candidates are turning down your offers, which means your employer brand isn’t attractive enough. You must address this problem to attract top talents to your company.
Yield ratio
This metric measures how candidates move through the stages in your hiring process. It compares how many candidates are making it to the next stage of your recruitment assessment to the amount that got into the previous stage.
A low yield ratio may mean your assessment is too challenging for the candidates or many unqualified candidates are applying to a role. Either way, you must review your recruitment process.
Other common metrics to consider include:
Cost-per-hire
Quality of hire
Candidate experience
Onboarding feedback
New employee turnover rate.
They’re all useful to gauge the effectiveness of your recruitment efforts.
Predictive Analytics for Future Needs
One thing TA analytics can help with is planning for the future. You can determine your future talent needs and values for metrics such as the time-to-fill, cost-per-hire, and quality of hire, as discussed in the previous heading.
These projections will enable proactive recruitment planning, helping you put the best structures in place for future recruitment activities.
Candidate Sourcing Optimization
It can be tempting to just post your job advert everywhere you think of, but this won’t necessarily have the best results. By analyzing the channels you use to reach candidates and their performance, you’ll know which your most effective channel for reaching prospects is – and be able to focus more resources on what works.
You may also collect data on granular metrics such as the type of device candidates often apply from. For example, if you discover more candidates responding to your job ads on their mobile devices, you can optimize your recruitment process for mobile devices and equip your recruitment team with work phone apps for easier candidate outreach.
Enhancing Diversity and Inclusion
Creating a diverse work environment is excellent for building inclusion and teamwork in your company. Recruitment analytics insights will also help you identify diversity gaps and develop targeted strategies for inclusive hiring. This is where you can answer questions like:
Does the current recruitment strategy exhibit a bias against a specific group?
Does the strategy favor a specific group?
How does it affect the quality of hire and other essential recruitment metrics?
Answering these questions will enable you to improve your hiring strategies and create a more diverse work environment.
Leverage Talent Acquisition Analytics for Your Recruitment Process
As you’ve seen, talent acquisition analytics is not just a fancy-sounding phrase. It’s a strategic tool for improving modern recruitment.
By following the tips presented here and implementing them in your recruitment process, you should soon start to reap the benefits: better hire quality, lower costs, reduced turnover, and more!
