As the war for talent heats up, organizations are looking at talent acquisition in a new light. By using technology, recruiters are bringing together data and analytics to help tide over the talent crisis. The new challenge is whether HR and business managers are in a position to act on the critical problem areas and emerge as talent magnets. 

Data for hiring 

The hiring game is multi-faceted. As work becomes more complex and interdependent, skills are becoming complex to assess. Here's how data is changing the game: 

 •    Streamline manual processes to increase the quality of hire: High-volume recruitment tasks such as sourcing and screening are demanding. Applying data-driven artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies can simplify these tasks through automation. This will allow recruiters to focus on more value-adding tasks, including cognitive hiring decisions. For example, resume-parsing using AI tools can shortlist candidates on selection based on skill-fit, culture-fit, organizational-fit, etc. This shift will enable a better quality of hire, enhance recruitment-efficiency, and lower hiring costs. 

•    Minimize bias for right talent selection: Human judgments can color hiring decisions. Hiring biases such as confirmation bias, recency effect, halo effect, overconfidence, and beauty bias can derail the hiring process. Data-dependence instills rationale and logic in the hiring process, thereby minimizing the chance of hiring the wrong individual.  

•    Predict at-risk employees and retain top talent: According to a study by Deloitte, employees with less than two years tenure expressed the strongest turnover intentions, with 34% indicating they expect to have a new job within a year. 26% millennials stated that they planned to leave their employers at some time in the next year- the highest among all generational groups. Using data-driven platforms can help focus on engagement and retention efforts on talent, at risk of leaving.    

• Improve the candidate experience, create a better employer brand: Data insights help better understand candidates' expectations and aspirations. The right workforce intelligence solution can help measure candidate engagement levels, including the last time contacted, the candidate's previous feedback, etc. Recruitment Chatbots and social tools can help engage candidates in a meaningful manner.  

 •    Hire for diversity: Diversity targets are becoming a norm, as legal and regulatory statutes are still evolving, ensuring diversity will be critical for businesses. Data analytics can help HR continuously monitor the hiring funnel for diversity-demographics and to act on them.

• Workforce analytics to drive efficiency: Planning for recruitment is a tough balancing act. Over-hiring can be costly, while under-hiring can hamper performance. Data-driven workforce planning in sync with the business need can help create accurate hiring plans. With this, recruiters can predict hiring-time estimates and effectively manage emerging situations. 

The steps to accelerate a data-driven hiring process  

The first step to embracing data-driven recruitment is to master data. Incomplete or unorganized data can misrepresent the real picture and lead to inaccurate hiring decisions. Therefore, start by streamlining data within HR. 

Using digital tools, one can easily track multiple touchpoints with a prospective candidate. Technologies must be integrated into the recruitment process. For example, cloud-based HRIS provides a complete end-to-end view of the recruitment pipeline, allowing companies to hire better and faster. AI-based screening and sourcing tools employ data to help recruiters focus on profiles that really matter. 

There are many avenues for data-driven hiring, but it will succeed only with a strong base of data-skills. Data-driven recruitment strategy must continuously evolve - data and analytics can never be a one-time process; HR must continually look for ways to improve hiring through data. HR professionals can no longer stick to non-technical expertise; they must embrace a new data-outlook. Organizations are already hiring data scientists and data analysts in HR tech roles. Innovative learning and development interventions such as AI-led learning recommendations, gamification, micro-learning, on-the-job data projects, can help build data-skills from within. HR leaders must learn to be comfortable and adept with data and technology. HR professionals who do not embrace data and digitalization will face the uphill challenge of aligning with the business.