Four HRMS data sets that can boost recruiting analytics

When it comes to HRMS data and HR analytics, some of the most valuable are those linked to the hiring process: time to fill, time to hire, cost per hire, and so on are commonly used recruitment metrics. However, the quality (and usefulness) of these and any other metric or report from your HRMS recruitment module depends on the available data. The following data sets have the potential to provide new insights into your recruitment processes, leading to refinements and greater efficiency.

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1. Analysing existing staff to find a good fit for culture

Cultural fit is becoming as important a hiring criteria as qualifications and experience. A common understanding of the ‘way we do things round here’ can be the glue that holds a team together and has a direct impact on performance.

You can analyze your current team culture and derive ‘points of fit’ that can then be applied by HR and hiring managers to resume parsing, candidate shortlisting, and the interview and assessment process. The result is new hires that mesh well with your current modes of collaboration, production and customer service. What is most important to your organizational success? Is it entrepreneurial spirit, transparent communication, logical decision-making? Even it’s all three, the data can allow you to identify clear priorities and recruit accordingly.

2. Better hiring decisions based on current staff performance

You can also look at the performance of current employees as a way of informing your hiring decisions. Once option is to track the performance of new hires during their time with the company, correlating, where possible, performance with features of their recruitment. In other words, you’re looking for which kind of candidate makes the best kind of employee and then feeding that information back into future recruitment campaigns.

3. Sources of new hires

Once again, trawling past data for future insight, where do your best recruits come from? Any organization has a wide variety of potential sources for employees: fresh from education, competing businesses, the currently unemployed. Past data should help you identify which recruitment routes offer you the best quality employee.

Another source of new hires is a referral from a current employee. However, that only works if your staff see the organization as a good place to work. Staff engagement surveys and other methods of gauging employee opinions offer metrics to help you determine how rich a source of job candidates the referral process is likely to be.

4. Turnover and retention

And then there’s the question of how to retain the best employees once you’ve hired them. In data terms, there are two sides to this coin: turnover (proportion of employees leaving during a set period), and retention (the proportion who stay). This data should help you anticipate what areas (by role, team, discipline, or location) have more ‘churn’ and why. This data, when analyzed, may lead you to look at improvements to your employer brand, or the composition of the compensation packages you’re offering to new recruits.

The focus here, with all four data sets, is the quality of candidates and not quantity. It’s easy to feel satisfied with response rates to a job advertisement when you receive large numbers of applicants. However, every business knows that long-term,. It’s quality that counts.