How to make the most out of your recruitment data

1 - Calculating a tangible business outcome
2 - Understanding your reporting dashboard
3 - Who do I need to start taking data seriously?
4 - The steps to follow to analyse recruitment data
5 - Jobtrain's Free Guide to Talent Data

According to The People Analytics Survey, only 36% of recruitment teams think their decision-making is data-driven.

Does this mean that 64% of HR teams don’t have a powerful applicant tracking system that can report back on their recruiting funnel? Or do they just not feel armed with the right information on how to interpret and categorise recruiting information?

See what our Talent Intelligence team says about what candidates want in our latest Candidate Insights Report.

You’re more than an applicant tracking system and at Jobtrain, so are we! Our Talent Intelligence team has put together a detailed, easy-to-understand Guide to Talent Data to get you started.

Calculating a tangible business outcome

By using organisational and external data, companies are armed with insights for more intelligence-based recruiting, a competitive advantage, supporting common business goal themes such as cost and time savings or increased service satisfaction.

These can be broken down into more specific measures that in-turn feed other goals and measures, with a tangible business outcome.

For example:

+ Reduced Time-to-Hire

+ % vacancy fill, and % first time vacancy fill

+ Reduced empty chairs or empty chair time

= increased candidate satisfaction

Understanding your reporting dashboard

Car drivers rely on a dashboard that tells them what is happening in real-time; current speed, distance travelled, current time, and fuel resources. They can adjust the control of the vehicle accordingly, primarily by increasing or decreasing speed. It’s simple, and this simplicity has its benefits, after all nobody would enjoy having to manually divide the distance by time in their head whilst driving to know their speed!

Talent Acquisition teams demand similar simplicity from their data dashboards, whether built in PowerPoint, Excel or native to their ATS.

A basic dashboard will likely 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 and action: Increase, Decrease or Maintain.

Jobtrain has two applicant tracking systems. Jobtrain ATS is for medium/large or enterprise organisations and JTGO is for organisations looking for a simpler system. Both will provide information on all of the above, and much more if you so wish.

Who do I need to start taking data seriously?

Our observation over many years is that HR teams do not have a data specialist. For the few that do, we often find that the data specialist is good at operating the data extraction / manipulation tools (be that Excel, their ATS or HR system), but they don’t understand enough about the practice or process of recruiting, which limits their capabilities.

Download the free Guide to Talent Data

Similarly, recruiters can struggle to conceptualise their activities into data and vice versa, not to mention they are busy recruiting! Who does the responsibility lie with to apply learnings for continuous improvement or delivering leader’s strategy? We believe a dedicated and appropriately skilled person, or team, can add real value.

We are unique in that our in-house Talent Intelligence team is available to our clients to provide a helping-hand. If you might be struggling with the analysis of that information, that’s where our experts come in.

The steps to follow to analyse recruitment data

P - Prompt

What needs to be done and when?

Operationally, this is ideal for achieving a Service-level Agreement (SLA) 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 an interview; or a list of candidates who have documentation missing that will delay their start date.

At a strategic level, this might be more qualitative than quantitative, such as preparing for a legislation change, or anticipating a future demand for skills (perhaps identified through a report on how many workers are due to retire and when).

P - Processing

What has happened?

Measure what has taken place, why and what it means. For example, it could be used to monitor compliance or standards, to manage resources and expenditure, understand timings. This will inform projections.

P - Prediction

What is planned or expected

Using your analysis of what has happened and any other known or potential factors, you can create projections that predict outcomes or potential against a target. These may be updated regularly for periodic monitoring and review.

The Guide to Talent Data

You may have heard the saying "if you can measure it you can manage it."

Talent Intelligence Director - Gary Towers - has put together this free guide to talent data to help organisations of all sizes with their reporting.

As a data-based provider of recruitment services and applicant tracking systems, we understand the importance of gathering and understanding your talent data.

The Guide to Talent Data covers:

• A list of places you can gather external job market information
• What tools and skills you need to effectively interpret candidate data, and when a third-party might be needed
• What information you'll need to report effectively
• A standard approach to gathering your organisation's recruitment data
• What "Talent Analytics" and "Talent Intelligence" is, and why you it should be on your radar in 2023
• Case Studies of organisations who have restructured their talent data strategy