Four ways in which data can drive recruitment decisions

The days of making traditional recruitment decisions based on hunches and intuition are over. By harnessing the power of data, organisations can base their decisions on hard facts and statistics instead. Whether you're looking to diversify your workforce, expand your team, acquire in-demand skills or even relocate a business function, data-driven recruitment can help you make more informed decisions. In this article, we elaborate on four ways in which data can help you make better recruitment decisions. 

1.      Improve the quality of hires
It's a challenge all hiring managers have faced: having to choose between two suitable, qualified candidates, both of whom would be great for the role. In these situations, it is not uncommon to be guided by (unconscious) bias or emotion. However, if you want to make more objective and informed decisions, data can help. For example, you can use assessment scores and structured interview results to make an effective hiring decision and gain insights you might otherwise have missed.

2.      Reduce hiring costs
Using data-driven insights to guide your hiring decisions increases the quality of your hires. But it also helps you allocate your budget and increase productivity and efficiency. Knowing where to find the right talent and which recruitment channels to use to reach them, will help you spend your budget wisely. For example, these insights may indicate that a platform on which you are spending a lot of time and money advertising may not be the best way to reach the candidates you are looking for. Being able to back up these decisions with data makes it much easier to eliminate these inefficient platforms altogether and allocate your budget to more efficient resources.

3.      Optimise compensation & benefits
Once you know how to access the right talent pool, you need to be sure that your compensation and benefits are attractive enough to acquire that talent. Accurate labour market data will help you define a competitive compensation and benefits package. To help organisations benchmark their salaries, Robert Walters' Market Intelligence team offers bespoke salary benchmarking reports. For example, a fund manager requested a monthly salary benchmarking report to keep track of the salaries offered by their competitors. Based on placements across all disciplines in that particular month, our data analysts provided the fund manager with the information they needed to benchmark their salaries against competitors. Continually fine-tuning their offer will minimise turnover and help them position themselves as an attractive employer.

4.      Tap into new markets
By using Recruitment Intelligence, organisations have gained strategic insights to optimise more than just compensation and benefits. Real-life examples show how these insights have guided decisions such as where to locate a new business function. Take the example of a large energy company. They wanted to set up a shared service centre in the UK, but were still to decide the exact location. They needed insights into talent, costs, risks and opportunities to help them compare different options. Our Market Intelligence team mapped the talent pools for their key skills: HR administration and payroll. They produced a report covering supply, demand, growth, turnover, competitors, salaries, contractors and active candidates, giving the energy company all the data it needed to make an informed decision. Since then, our Market Intelligence team has been involved every time the company has wanted to open a new site, demonstrating the importance of data in these complex decisions.

Incorporating data into your recruitment decisions
The key to successful data-driven recruitment decisions is choosing the right metrics and collecting and presenting data efficiently. Our Market Intelligence team can do this for you. We'll provide you with a report tailored to your recruitment challenges, providing you with the data you need to make informed decisions. Wondering how our data-driven approach can help drive your recruitment strategy? Request a sample market intelligence report today.

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