How to Read the Story of Your Recruiting Data [Tips]

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Modern recruiting is no longer about sifting through resumes looking for a story that matches your company’s needs. Rather, it’s about finding a story within streams of numbers that reflect how you are reaching out to candidates and how those candidates respond to you. Today, candidate sourcing is about interpreting the story that your recruiting data is telling you.

But how do you do that?

recruitment data

The Talentify platform does a lot of the interpretation for you by collecting important data and using AI machine learning to guide your decision making. Click here to claim your free demo.

 

Determine the Story You Want To Read

To continue with the “reading” metaphor, books come in different genres. Your data also has a number of different “genres,” and it’s up to you to decide which one you want to read at a given moment.

Are you looking to see how much a qualified candidate costs? Do you want to have a better idea of what the pipeline between first contact and hire looks like? Is your concern that your candidate experience is preventing top applicants from going through the whole process?

The same numbers can tell you several different stories depending on the context of them. For example, a low number of applications can tell you that you’re not spending enough on sponsored ads for the type of job you’re posting. Or it can tell you that your application is too long and people aren’t completing it. Or it can tell you that there is an outside factor inhibiting applications, like several poor job reviews on Glassdoor or a reputation (whether deserved or not) for high turnover at your company.

Take the time to break down what pain points you’re experiencing, then see what data you will need in order to fully grasp why you’re experiencing the problems that you are. 

Once you determine what you’re looking to understand, that can help you to build the appropriate context.

 

Efficient Recruitment Data Collection

There are a number of media that you can use to get the recruitment data that you need, but it’s important to set them up in advance and know how to find the information that you’re looking for.

First and foremost, it’s crucial that you get Google Analytics installed on all of your recruiting and application websites so that you can track where your data is coming from and follow the “journey” that an applicant takes from first touch to hire. This is a powerful, free tool, and if you have any sort of online presence, this is an absolute necessity.

Of course, the somewhat raw form of data that Analytics provides is a just first step toward understanding.

It’s also helpful to have a variety of tools available that can take that information and turn it into actionable intelligence. Ideally you’ll want something that can help you easily calculate your cost per qualified candidate, track your lead time, and answer the questions that are vital to your business. 

Talentify can do all of these and use machine learning to take much of the burden of utilizing this information off your shoulders. Reserve your free demo today by clicking here.

Once you have your tools in place, you’ll want at least 10 days worth of data before making any major changes. Why 10 days? Because that’s generally how long a job posting remains “fresh” and bringing in quality leads before performance starts dropping off significantly. That initial window is a measure of what your recruiting looks like at maximum performance for those parameters.

 

Stories Your Data Can Tell

There are so many things that your recruitment data can show you. More than anything, you want to have a detailed list of what you did from day to day so you can check it against the results and look for patterns. Here are some examples:

  • Candidate Ghosting - If candidates start to just disappear, see if you can pinpoint when in the process that happens. Are they disappearing just before an interview or after you give an offer? Detail your hiring process and see if you can find the stumbling block.
  • High Turnover - Check to see where you’re getting candidates from that leave the company quickly. Are they all coming from the same channel? Are they going to a specific department or team? Did they have a particular interviewer or see a job ad that might have given them an inaccurate idea of what the position entails?
  • Expensive Cost Per Qualified Candidate - Look at what channels you are sponsoring ads on and see if one or more of them is remarkably higher than the rest. You might also check to see if some of your easier to fill jobs can be sourced from organic channels to save you money. Consider whether the cost may be related to your area or the time you’re choosing to hire. 

The list can go on…

More than anything else, it’s important that once you have gathered and interpreted your data, you act on it. “Knowing” is only as good as the “doing” that follows it.

However, now that you understand how to read the stories your recruitment data tells, you should have no problems turning those lessons into positive actions that will improve your hiring results.

ABOUT AUTHOR

Christopher Hopkins

Christopher Hopkins is a marketing specialist at Talentify.io, a mobile-first Results-as-a-Service recruitment platform that helps recruiters reach and attract modern-day job seekers. He lends nearly 20 years of expertise in using online tools to finding valuable data, bringing people to the information that they need. He spends his time sharing what he's learned in order to help people to improve their hiring practices and enhance their recruitment strategies. When he's not doing that, he's fencing, cooking, or looking too deeply into dumb movies and smart comics.

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