Recruitment analytics are playing an increasingly important role for recruiters and HR managers. With the help of recruitment analytics, you can make better, data-driven choices when it comes to sourcing, selecting and hiring. In the 6-part series, we will take you step by step and teach you everything there is to know about recruitment analytics. In part 4 we look at what people analytics is and why it is important in recruitment.
What are people analytics?
People Analytics start with a focus on people. It does include work outcomes, such as productivity, but it goes beyond recruitment analytics and primarily measures things about the individual. Here we are talking about analyses such as work-life balance, and the balance between well-being and prejudice. Many companies still rely on instinct and general experience to determine who to hire, but people analytics can play an important role in helping managers use powerful data to hire and retain the right people.
The benefits
Using people analytics can have many benefits in recruitment. Instead of using your gut feeling when you have to choose between three top candidates for a position, people analytics makes decisions based on accurate data and facts. This gives you a better quality of hire and avoids unconscious bias early on in the recruitment process, resulting in a more diverse talent pool. Evaluating candidates more effectively on relevant characteristics and qualities generally leads to a faster recruitment process. As an organisation, you also gain more insight into your past and you learn to recognise trends that you can respond to in an early stage. Organisations are thus able to improve their performance and adapt their decisions to future trends.
In short, some of the benefits are
- Better quality of hire
- Shorter time to hire
- Higher diversity
- Insight into future trends
Hidden talents
People analytics can help you with the search for candidates. But within an organisation, there are often already a variety of talents walking around. Something that many organisations are often only partially aware of. With people analytics, you can therefore also check whether certain employees would be better suited to other positions within the company. Sometimes employees are also completely unaware of their talents. According to the Ivyworks white paper on people analytics, organisations spend an average of 1200 euros per employee per year on things like development, training and courses. However, many organisations have no idea what the exact results of these investments are. People analytics can give an organisation much better insight into this, both retrospectively and in real-time.
Reading material
If you want to delve deeper into the subject of people analytics, Ira S. Wolfe’s book is highly recommended. In Recruiting in the Age of Googlization Wolfe teaches you how you can (or should) use data to optimise your recruitment. To excel as a recruiter or to grow your recruitment consulting business, understanding people analytics is a must.
Series
In the 6 part series, we will take you step by step and teach you everything there is to learn about recruitment analytics. This was part 4.
In part 5 we will discuss: Five interesting tools for recruitment analytics
