Recruitment can be a difficult process to get right. Finding suitable candidates can be a challenge, and you can only get so much information from job seekers’ CVs, interviews, and LinkedIn profiles. Relying solely on traditional recruitment methods may risk missing out on vital talent.
Data visualization is a powerful way of presenting analytical data to help drive recruitment decisions and improve the hiring process. When used well, it can help predict recruitment needs and improve the quality of hires.
What is data visualization in recruitment?
Our world is powered by data, and we must understand how to use it to make data-driven recruitment decisions. Data visualization is a way of presenting data in a format that can be easily interpreted, such as graphs and charts.
Essentially, you would gather data from wherever you keep it – be that a free cloud storage service or on-premise device – and turn it from random numbers into something you can make sense of and draw insights from. This makes data more useful to non-technical employees and more accessible to different departments within businesses.
In recruitment, HR personnel previously relied more on intuition when sourcing new hires. As businesses have evolved, the need for data in recruitment has become more apparent. A strong recruitment policy now has data at the heart of it. Key metrics such as cost per hire, best sourcing channels, and time to hire can make the recruitment process more effective.
Why is visualizing data important in recruitment?
Data-driven recruitment provides key insights at a glance. This could mean tracking the KPIs of each source so you can see which channels your best hires have come from. You can even compare the geographical location of remote staff to spot patterns.
For example, if you have several outstanding candidates from the 512 area code, Texas might be a potential hub of future talent to consider during your company’s hiring process.
There are several key reasons to use a data-driven approach in recruitment. These include:
- Real-time insights into your hiring funnel via a dashboard give recruiters a quick overview of the number of applicants in the talent pool and the stage they’re at in the recruitment cycle.
- Visualizations can help show you which recruitment channels drive the most applicants and where you attract the best talent. They can also help you calculate the return on investment (ROI) for each new recruit. This can help drive future decisions on where to spend money to recruit the best talent.
- An analytical overview of candidates can help you compare their skills, education, work history, interview scores, and so on. This can help recruiters make faster, more accurate hiring decisions.
How to build visualized recruitment data into your hiring practice.
Visualized recruitment data improves efficiency, streamlines the process, and helps you attract a higher caliber of qualified candidates. But for the data to be useful, you’ll need a careful implementation process. Here, we’ll look at some of the best ways to build data into your recruitment strategy.
- Choose relevant metrics
Knowing what data to track is the first thing to consider. Knowing the weak spots in your current recruitment practice can help. For example, do you have high staff turnover? Is your ROI too low? Or is it taking you too long to find the right people to fill roles?
Adopting flexible budgeting strategies, inspired by dynamic pricing, can allow you to adjust recruitment investments dynamically based on the talent market’s supply and demand. This strategy enhances spending efficiency and ensures that financial decisions are backed by solid, data-driven insights.
Some common key recruitment metrics to track are:
- Cost per hire
- Time to hire
- Source of hire
- Job offer acceptance rates
- Turnover rates
Gathering the right data can help recruitment teams bridge gaps and improve the recruiting process by giving you a clear overview of your ROI. For example, if the data shows the company has a low acceptance rate, the hiring team could look at creating a more positive candidate experience or putting together a more attractive job offer next time.
- Identify the best data sources
Once you know what data to track, you’ll need to decide how to obtain it. This could be through Google Analytics for source tracking, ATS tools (applicant tracking systems), candidate feedback, budget data, and recruitment managers. The source of your data will depend on what metrics you want to track and what you can access.
- Use the right tools and software
There are plenty of options out there for recruitment analytics dashboards, and they play a crucial role in visualizing recruitment data. This is because they don’t just analyze large data sets; they also allow you to extrapolate and segment the data and convert it into an easy-to-understand visual format.
A VoIP system is also a great tool for recruiters, allowing you to conduct phone interviews easily and seamlessly. Once you can answer the question “what is VoIP phone technology?” you can leverage it to bring a human connection back into recruitment when paired with your visualized data.
4. Use the data to take action
To make the most of your data, you should have actionable points for everything you uncover. For example, you may find that your time to hire is too long. This should prompt an actionable response such as a review of the recruitment funnel to see where the hold-ups are.
Allowing data integration using APIs can help your departments share visualized data. But what is an API? It’s an application programming interface that helps developers make use of valuable data. Once you start to take action on the data, you’ll soon see results.
Final thoughts
Businesses need to evolve to stay afloat. One of the most important things HR managers should focus on is ways to improve efficiency in achieving good hiring outcomes. The real power of data visualization is using actionable insights to improve your recruitment process and reduce the risk of bad hires.
Data visualization helps you get an overview of the entire recruitment process at a glance. It’s much quicker to look at a well-presented chart than sifting through interview notes and CVs to find an elusive piece of specific candidate information. As well as helping you see which job seekers stand out, and it can also help flag up weak spots in your recruitment process.
