Workforce analytics plays a crucial role in helping you find the right people at the right time. The truth is, you’re likely sitting on piles of big data, but that data is worthless if it’s not accurate and applicable to your organization’s specific needs. To stay competitive in today’s rapidly evolving labor market, you need to get creative in the way you recruit candidates, and that involves finding and applying workforce analytics in new ways.
If you don’t feel comfortable using workforce analytics in your recruitment strategy or don’t know where to start, don’t stress: Our six-step list below, created in conjunction with Tony Stemen of Novo Group, Inc., will help you break down your own strategy and ensure you’ve checked each crucial data point in your process. Tony shares six steps his own company uses when incorporating workforce analytics and intelligence into their recruitment strategy. These steps are broken into “external data” for the first part and “internal data” for the second (explanations for each are below). Use these steps as a template to start applying workforce analytics to your own recruitment strategy.
External Data: This type of data helps to kick off a candidate search and influence your organization’s search strategy. It can also be helpful in client conversations to let the client know if salary is out of line or something seems off.
Tony says: “We look at competitive intelligence as the very first thing, and normally that’s in the geographical area where the new project and new search is going to be based.”
Steps in the external data phase include supply and demand, compensation, and diversity. Here are questions you should think about for each of these steps:
- Supply and demand: In this phase, Tony says, you should ask things like where your ideal candidates are located. Who is the competition, and which companies do passive candidates work for? Are there passive candidates in the position’s location, or will you need to look at relocation? Who are your competing companies who may be within the industry, and what companies are hiring for similar positions to yours outside of your industry?
These kinds of questions give us the immediate landscape of where you need to go to pursue passive candidates to get the most immediate results.
- Compensation: Is the salary that you’re offering, or that the client is offering, competitive and in line with the market? If it’s not, knowing this upfront enables you and your team to reevaluate and adjust early on in the process so you don’t lose valuable time and miss out on a wider range of candidates.
- Diversity: How can you attract a diverse set of workers and increase your candidate pool? What other associations and memberships can you network with and add into your recruitment mix to increase your candidate pool within your desired location?
Internal Data: This data, looked at after external data is analyzed, often occurs mid-process. Internal data influences conversations during and after the candidate search, enables you to make needed adjustments and influences your strategy all the way through.
Steps in the internal data phase include applicant drop-off, talent drain, and relocation.
We ask questions like, ‘Why are candidates declining? Why are we not converting candidates? Are we losing candidates as we hand them over to the hiring team?’
- Applicant drop-off: Are you attracting the right candidates, but losing them during the application process because of a delayed candidate response time, or for other reasons we should be taking a closer look at?
- Talent drain: Which companies do your employees typically leave to come work for you?
- Relocation: Are job seekers willing to relocate? Sometimes, you can’t get all the puzzle pieces at the beginning. Example: plant closing in 6 months- target those individuals that are going to need a job
Now is a great time for data – but it needs to be easily understood and interpreted before using it to influence your strategy; otherwise, it’s of no use to you.
And remember: Any piece of applicable, accurate data is better than no data at all.
Learn how a tool like Supply & Demand can help you and your entire team start using the right data in your candidate search strategy.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Tony Stemen has been a sourcing and research recruitment and technology professional for the past 10+ years. He started at the ground floor in the RPO industry and has progressed to now manage all recruitment technology implementation and partnerships for Novo Group, Inc. When he is not working in human resources technology, he enjoys spending time with his family, and providing contractual public relations management to the YouTube video game community. He currently has two YouTube clients who hold a massive 2.5 million-person subscriber base.
