How big data can improve your recruitment process

by the year 2020, about 7 megabytes of new information will be created every second for every human being on the planet. This can be sliced and diced, split and segmented, and provide massive value in better understanding…well, anything. HR and recruitment included. In a human-driven business such as recruiting, behavior is a big deal. How are your applicants finding you (or you them)? What kind of recruiting and hiring experience are they having? How many open positions do you have? How many days does it take to fill? Better understanding these numbers can impact efficiency, effectiveness, and profit within any organization.

Getting Started

Estimates suggest that the ROI of bad hire can be a whopping -298%.  With big data, you can improve this number and create a more profitable, streamlined approach. The first step to analyzing data is agreement on what metrics to focus on. Similar to a reverse engineering process, you start with the end goal and work your way backwards. Consider, what are your organizational or team goals?

Finding Data

Once you have your metrics, collect your existing data and consider the ‘impact factors’. Which metrics, if improved, would have the biggest impact on your organization? Even if you don’t have the resources to collect data on your own organization, there’s a plethora of industry data from which you can learn. Consider government reports, for example. So much information to draw from. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, which compiles labor market data, should serve as “an initial stop” for talent acquisition specialists to mine data points for statistics such as job openings and employment projections, said Nicole Dessain, founder and principal consultant at talent.imperative, an Evanston, Ill.-based talent experience design consultancy. Data from agencies like the BLS, the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis offer an important tool that can be used to attract employers and the highly skilled talent that many companies need. You don’t even need to collect any data yourself, just use the information that already exists. LiveStories, for example, a Seattle-based civic intelligence platform that provides services for government clients, tracks more than 1,500 government data indicators across 40,000 locations in the United States, “right down to the neighborhood level,” said its founder, Adnan Mahmud. A client may be on the hunt for engineering workers and LiveStories can tailor a dataset to reveal where the highest concentration of engineers may exist and what they earn on average. The question isn’t whether or not big data is here to stay; the question is are you ready. How are you using data to impact your hiring decisions?]]>