Recruitment analytics: The 8 benefits of data driven recruitment

Now let’s start with the obvious. We LOVE recruitment analytics and data here at Hireserve. 

It’s undeniable – we’re big old HR and recruitment data geeks. (Although, given that you’re reading this post, we imagine you might have a passing interest too!)

So, what can we tell you that’s new or valuable about the world of data driven recruitment? In this post, we’ve collected the most compelling benefits of recruitment analytics. If you’re considering a new ATS (perhaps because your reporting and data isn’t up to scratch), these points could be valuable to include in your business case for a new system.

Or perhaps you’re the data analytics champion in your organisation, and need to convince your stakeholders of its worth in the hiring process.

Wherever you are on your talent acquisition reporting journey, we hope this is a valuable resource for you and your team. And if there are any benefits we’ve omitted from our list, please let us know in the comments!

1. Measure your recruitment spend

With the right ATS reports, you should be able to easily keep track of your recruitment costs (some may provide something like our ‘Cost Mapper’ tool, to help you plan your talent acquisition campaigns).

Similarly, you should have access to a standard report called ‘Cost-per-hire’. This enables you to see which vacancies incurred the highest spend and, crucially, where. When cross-referenced with other reports, such as ‘Time-to-hire’ or ‘Candidate source’, you should be able to identify where, how and when costs were accumulated.

With the right insight, you can also start to benchmark average costs for a job. If you hire for a diverse range of roles, keep track of the similarities and differences across each department or area. If you work in a university, for example, does it generally cost more to recruit for an academic role vs. an operational one? If you can start to pick out consistent trends and costs, you can begin to better plan (and budget) for future hiring campaigns.

2. Measure time and effort

Time is our most precious commodity. And we know that for a typical Recruitment and HR team, that time is limited!

ATS reports such as ‘time to hire’ can help you to identify where internal bottlenecks or inefficiencies may be slowing up your recruitment process.

At the moment of course, timing is not only an issue in terms of workload. In today’s ultra-competitive hiring landscape, a simple and efficient candidate journey is essential. The ‘war for talent’ rages on, particularly in certain sectors, so it’s never been more important to hire the talent you need quickly.

Don’t fall victim to the curse of the counter-offer! In this fab panel discussion with recruitment leaders and IHR, we explore how to bridge the gap between offer and hire – and how to improve onboarding for new employees. Watch now.

3. Improve your hiring processes

We touched on this briefly above, but the right talent analytics can help you to enhance your candidate experience.

Again, use metrics such as ‘Time-to-hire’ to establish a benchmark within your organisation. What is a ‘good’ time, and what indicates that you need to make improvements?

Another useful insight might be the ‘Section stats’ report (your Applicant Tracking System may call it something else), which again should be included in your suite of standard reports. This data enables you to see where and when candidates are dropping off your application forms.

For a fully data-driven approach to recruitment., it’s essential to analyse these insights across a period of time, and across different roles and areas of your organisation. It may lead you to make changes, such as developing different application forms for different positions, or enabling ‘Quick Apply’ methods for particular vacancies.

Your ATS analytics should also give you an insight into the internal processes which may need improving. For example, do you have a time-lag between offer and hire? It may be that your pre-employment and onboarding actions need to be more efficient. Or what about between interview or offer? Perhaps your Hiring Managers aren’t sharing their feedback as proactively as you need them to.

Would a Hiring Manager Portal be useful here? Find out more about the Hireserve ATS Manager experience…

Use your ATS reports and recruitment metrics to help you provide a better experience – for both your candidates and internal stakeholders.

4. Widen your pool of candidates

This links to your ‘Candidate Source’ reporting. Using your ATS data, review the performance of your commonly-used sources to understand which ones are delivering the highest volume of candidates. You may also be keen to use these data points to identify which sources generate the most diverse range of candidates (again, cross-referencing data sources is key here: for example, you could compare your ‘Candidate Source’ against your ‘Diversity and Inclusion’ analytics).

To really benefit from the full picture, we would always recommend that you go beyond volume and also link your candidate source with quality of hire.

Looking at your source reporting will enable you to focus your budget on the highest-performing platforms. This may also free up spend for you to use on new sources – and welcome a little experimentation in your recruiting process.

Crucially, of course, you’ll be able to use your ATS and recruitment data to understand whether they are delivering the results you need.

5. Test new things

Again, we’ve touched on this above. Taking a data-driven recruitment approach should equip you with the confidence (and information) to try new initiatives – and to measure whether they work or not.

It’s not just your ATS insights. Look at your Google Analytics (or similar service) to gauge the performance of your careers page. Are candidates engaging with your content? Are you losing potential applicants on certain pages? Tie this with the previous ‘Section Stats’ report we mentioned, and you may be able to paint a fuller picture of candidate engagement – and, of course, how you can optimise it.

6. Share results

Having confidence in your recruitment data should help to encourage a culture of sharing results and performance.

Regularly sharing the results of recent recruitment campaigns demonstrates transparency and accountability. it can also help to foster a more collaborative attitude, as team members can help to suggest improvements and new ideas.

When hiring drives are successful, sharing the results can also really bolster team morale and focus.

Again, coming back to benchmarking: Openly sharing your analytics and results also enables your team to gain a sense of what ‘good’ looks like and what they should be working towards. This shared focus and objective can enhance employee engagement.

7. Align your work with tangible successes

What’s more, sharing the results of your campaigns with senior stakeholders can enhance the Recruitment and HR Team’s reputation within the wider organisation, and instil the value you deliver.

With the right data and analytics, you should be able to clearly link time or money spent on activities with outcomes – be that speed of hire, quality of candidates or volume of applicants.

8. Pave the way for future change

Knowledge is power (yes, we had to include a classic quote like that).

With a data-driven approach to recruiting, you and your team have the power to make informed decisions. You have the evidence you need to justify change, to increase spend, or to change suppliers. And by sharing data and analytics with your team and stakeholders, you should have the confidence to make those changes and share the outcomes.

Is your Applicant Tracking System a barrier to data-driven recruiting? If you’re not confident in the accuracy of your analytics, or frustrated at a limited range of reports, it could be worth exploring new providers. And we might be able to help with this! You can download our Buyer’s Toolkit today, which includes a library of templates, interactive resources and even an ROI calculator to help you begin to build your business case.