What would you say are some of the ‘hottest’ topics within HR and recruitment at the moment – Talent shortages? Mobility? Technology? Well, for Andy Headworth it is the subject of data, and how that relates to recruitment, the workforce and more importantly, the business itself.
Later this month Andy will be at the People Analytics conference and will be reporting back on it for UK Recruiter. We chatted with one of the organisers of the event and one of their speakers on a recent RecHangout. Such is the demand for learning more about predictive analytics, talent analytics and people analytics the London event on the 27-28th April has doubled in size. Here are a few notes from Andy ahead of the event:
The systems we use today capture many different recruitment metrics, but have you considered for a moment that they may not directly meet the needs of the business? What if the ‘standard’ data being measured is the wrong data? For example, is cost per hire, time to hire or hire source metrics that people in the business really care about?
Of course I appreciate that cost will come into it, but what about quality of the talent being hired – isn’t that a better measurement for the future success of a business? Of course it is a harder metric to measure, which it is one that companies keep putting off trying to measure. There are some good examples of companies like Lyst, which are measuring their quality of hire.
If you bumped into your CEO and he asked you how strong your talent pipelines are for this year, would you even have an answer?
Every company is different in the information they need and use for their HR and recruitment reporting. With the trend towards to predictive data analytics, we need to use recruitment data and insights that will help you predict and improve the quality of your hires, rather than just examining year-on-year historical comparisons.
One of the conference c-Chairment, David Green, Global Director People Analytics, IBM made the statement on The Recruiter Hangout – Using recruitment and talent analytics to transform performance – and highlighted one of the issues in recruiting:
“Analytics is not reporting”
Analytics provide the insight into recruitment metrics you measure and these are what you use to help the business understand what really matters with regards to talent. These analytics provide essential information on things like workforce planning, potential new locations, talent pools etc. These are the people analytics that we need to be looking at.
The recruitment process is full of many different data points and the quicker we provide recruiters with the additional insights then the quicker we will improve recruiter effectiveness.
