By Anca Pirvan
Talent Acquisition Team Leader, Global Brokerage Sales
Data Driven Decision Making is a common approach in Business Management.
But how about Talent Acquisition? How would we implement it in Talent Acquisition? What would be the impact?
A Data Driven Talent Acquisition approach translates the company’s business goals and performance KPIs into a specific candidate persona, profile and target markets. By analysing the existing performant part of the company and gathering data related to their professional background and ramp-up time, professionals in Talent Acquisition would identify any pattern of efficient company cultural fit and an ideal performant candidate persona.
Similarly, the TA strategist will map the potential talent pool, processes, approach patterns, costs, blockers, resources, timeline, thus creating the success prognosis roadmap. Rolling out the strategy means also rolling out an effective, in-depth data collection of the progress and measuring qualitative and quantitative KPIs. Analysing the data on a bi-weekly, monthly and quarterly basis creates the opportunity to take decisions, review the next steps or change the approach going forward.
These Data Driven decisions will ensure a cost-efficient and performance-oriented approach to Talent Acquisition. Last but not least, a Data Driven approach in Talent Acquisition aims to track and evaluate the performance and ramp-up time of the newly hired manpower vs expectations. Understanding the ROI of the strategy is crucial, and offers the opportunity for an ongoing review focusing on obtaining a better return: a better cultural fit, re-shaped candidate persona, expanding into new markets and talent pools, etc.
When deciding to implement a Data Driven Approach, ensure you have a good understanding of the targeted markets and talent pool quality and quantity. You can access surveys or polls, market analysis on salary or industry benchmarks.
However, niched industries, higher level profiles or sophisticated products, require a customised mapping and an internal TA professional review. Collaborate with internal stakeholders and understand the competition of your company on that market to map the distribution of potential skills and the volume of the talent pool. This will direct the approach and the type of Talent Acquisition Process to be used and create clarity on how your Employer Value Proposition will be positioned and received by the market, how it needs to be presented and if it requires any adjustment.
The first obvious effect of a Data Driven Approach is creating relevant expectations and guidelines for the stakeholders and Hiring Managers. Also, it gives structure to the process and defines the roadmap of progress. Expectations will be translated into business costs and ROI, thus linking TA with the overall business strategy.
Another immediate effect is clarity over the progress giving you obvious flexibility and an agile approach. During a growth period with ambitious goals or within a niched industry, having a clear view on the progress and the possibility to take fast data driven decisions will impact the speed of hiring, the volume and the performance of the strategy.
Let’s discuss some examples. Analysing candidates' response rate or traction vs talent pool volume will indicate the efficiency of your market approach in terms of employer branding and visibility. Adding to the above, the rate of offers accepted will indicate the efficiency of the Employer Value Proposition on the specific market.
In conclusion, without criticising more traditional approaches, a Data Driven Decision Making Approach to Talent Acquisition is crucial for an effective delivery in line with the company’s business goals; a Data Driven Decision Making process is the basis of an agile and flexible approach to Talent Management, absolutely needed in our competitive talent market today.
