Commenting on the evolution of recruitment, Greg Savage, 35-year veteran recruiter and HR expert, states: “We have to understand that we are now marketing to candidates. Not screening them. Not advertising for them. And we have to use consumer-marketing techniques to amplify our positive brand with a wide pool of candidates.”

One of the most significant tools that recruiters can borrow from marketers is data analysis. Marketers have long used metrics and data to inform their marketing strategies. Similarly, harnessing candidate data is undeniably an important way to bolster your recruitment efforts and propel your firm ahead of the competition when it comes to effective recruitment solutions.

What Data Should Be Captured

State-of-the-art recruitment solutions enable you to capture metrics that truly matter. In addition to candidate-specific data such as contact information, compensation information, job preference, and all communication with a candidate, you can also capture KPIs that are essential to recruiting. For instance, at a bare minimum you might track:

  • Time to hire
  • Cost per hire
  • Employee retention
  • Onboarding progression
  • Source of hire
  • Current employee performance

Of course, metrics only matter if they provide actionable intelligence. Therefore, before deciding which metrics to track, you will likely need to define your recruitment objectives and set appropriate goals and measurement standards based on those objectives.

How to Use Data to Inform Recruiting Strategy

Ideally, when you analyze your chosen KPIs, patterns will emerge. For instance, by analyzing your source of hire information and comparing it with data about your most productive hires, you will be able to quickly zero in on which recruiting sources are most valuable to your firm.

Similarly, looking at your cost per hire when compared to your source of hire, you may discern that certain recruiting sources are not netting you a positive ROI for your efforts. Comparing time to hire with cost per hire may reveal a “sweet spot” timeframe for which to aim when recruiting a potential hire.

A Deep Data Dive into Your Candidate Pool

A strong recruitment software solution should also help you aggregate information about your candidates from multiple sources into one centralized database. This database should serve as a repository for all candidate information from every person in your hiring process who has contact with the candidate and input into the hiring decision.

To be effective, the database must have real-time functionality, so that at any given time, anyone in your firm involved in the hiring process should be able to quickly come up to speed on any candidate in your talent pool.

The more data you gather about your candidates, the more targeted and focused your recruitment strategy becomes. Data enables you to define the ideal candidate persona for your position, and then match candidates in your talent pool with that persona.

Template: Creating Ideal Candidate Personas – Our free persona template will help you improve your talent acquisition by identifying who your ideal candidates are and how best to reach them.

Benefits of Data-Driven Decision-Making

Basing recruiting decisions firmly on solid data nets a large reward for your firm. LinkedIn reports that when talent acquisition teams use data to hire, they are two times as likely to improve their recruiting, and three times more likely to improve efficiency. Additionally, it is predicted that by 2021, utilizing data in the hiring process will increase hiring success by more than 300 percent. That is compelling reason to pay attention to using data in your hiring process!

ThriveTRM is a recruitment solution that enables robust data collection and analysis. Schedule a demo today to see how ThriveTRM provides the tools you need for a successful hiring process.