How simple data can help guide you to success

This article first appeared in Hr NETWORK Scotland Magazine in July 2021.

Car drivers rely on a dashboard, which tells them what is happening in real time; current speed. distance travelled, current time, fuel resources. They can then adjust control of the vehicle, primarily increasing or decreasing speed. It is binary stuff. This simplicity has its benefits, after all nobody would enjoy having to manually divide distance by time in their head whilst driving to know their speed.

Here, Alica Melvin, Client Engagement Manager at Jobtrain looks at what talent acquisition teams should expect from their applicant tracking system.

Just like the dashboard on a car, understandably, Talent Acquisition teams demand similar of their data dashboards whether built into PowerPoint, Excel or native to their ATS. A basic dashboard should include:

• Number of live vacancies
• Current candidate volumes at key stages of the process
• Number of vacancies filled
• Average Time to Hire
• Average Cost per hire

In short, this will tell you how you are doing and which areas may need attention to get better performance.

A better dashboard will give further insights:

• Ratios of applications to interviews to hires - this helps you understand how many applicants you need to attract to apply, in order to get sufficient number of hires
• Average timescales for processing candidates through key stages of the process - this helps you identify and tackle 'bottle-necks" within your process
• Source of candidates versus how many apps, interviews and hires - this will help you work out where to concentrate or reduce efforts to attract candidates
• Candidate diversity data versus how many applications, interviews and hires - this will help you understand the diversity of the candidates you attract, and how they fare through your selection processes

But with tools available to support the automated production Fin and analysis of data, I recommend taking a three-prong reporting, the 3 'P's:

Prompt - What needs to be done, and when:

This is ideal for helping to achieve SLAS or targets, by prompting the need to perform a task, often linked to a deadline or piece of compliance; for example: a daily report of candidates who are due to attend interview. Or a list of candidates who have documentation missing that will delay their start date

Processing - What has happened:

This allows you to measure what has taken place, why and what it means; for example: this can be used to monitor compliance or standards, or simply to manage resources and expenditure.

Prediction - What is planned or expected:

This involves creating reports that quickly show how you are doing against a measure - e.g. applications to hire ratio; or lost volumes of candidates between stages. Typically viewed monthly these reports can greatly support forecasting of budgets and resources and, critically, timeframe needed to hire to support business goals.

These three 'P's work in harmony and a continuous improvement cycle is created; identifying and removing defects or duplication in the processes, applying improvements and recalibrating targets and SLAs. It will help you deliver an efficient, cost effective, consistent service to your organisation and that is only good news for your Resourcing function.