Make Data Your Best Friend

Make data your best friend…

I’ll admit I love data! When it comes to data analysis, I excel! (It sounded much funnier out loud than it reads.) I can look at rows and rows of figures and see patterns, trends, and evidence information. Doesn’t everyone see data this way?

When I presented my first batch of recruitment data many years ago, I was confident that my amazing data, presented in charts and graphs, would be well received. Instead of a standing ovation, all I got was a lot of blank faces. I stumbled when asked what the data meant? Why couldn’t they see what I saw?

Data alone isn’t much more than bits of information. Knowledge is putting them together, but wisdom is about how you transcend them into something meaningful. I’d identified the first part, and to a lesser degree, the second, but I’d failed to transcend the data into something meaningful and practical and I’d certainly failed to share my wisdom. You’ll be happy to hear I’ve come a long way since then.

When I started in recruitment 30+ years ago, data was hard to come by, difficult to understand and even harder to explain. Internal recruitment teams were almost unheard of and the main professionals with recruitment metrics were agency recruiters. KPIs for that group centred around marketing calls, client visits and billings. It was quantitative but the metric lens was about volume, not quality.

Today’s recruitment workforce has access to an overwhelming amount of raw data, and this can often mean that it is difficult to understand and explain. The task is made much easier if you know what you want to measure.

Data can help you tell a story. It can illustrate trends over time. It sometimes confirms that which is anecdotal, your educated hunch. It provides the backdrop to your problem solving. It lends accuracy to your narrative and gives your business proposition both credibility and value. Data is important to the decision-making processes and helps companies and their stakeholders get the results they want and need.

As a talent acquisition leader with 3 decades recruiting in various verticals, I’ve collected, analysed, and interpreted an abundance of data in specific areas for use in talent acquisition – workforce data, economic data, quantitative and qualitative data, funnel and process data, candidate source data, candidate experience data, candidate retention data. The list goes on and on. The real value is not in the collection of the data. The value is in your ability to pull apart massive amounts of structured (and unstructured) data and organise it to reveal trusted insights — insights that can help you as a talent acquisition leader drive measurable business outcomes.

Why? Because this information helps you understand the space between your recruitment processes and the market. It can have a powerful influence on enterprise action through:

1. Improved Forecasting: Big data analysis will help you predict talent needs, educate business partners, build a plan rather than respond to urgent needs.
2. Brand Perception:?Brand perception has a calculable impact on talent acquisition. Big data analysis can help you understand your brand strength and weaknesses, so that you can target candidates more likely to favour your brand and/or make necessary changes, at a cultural operational level, to shift your brand value proposition.
3. Decision-Making:?Complex analytics help talent acquisition stay ahead of recruitment trends, brings speed and focus. Now, talent acquisition can take a long-term role in shaping the business and driving profitability of the company.

?So, what have I learned about presenting recruitment and talent acquisition data over the last 30 years?

1. ?Make sure you are telling a story:?Don’t let your data get in the way of a good story! Guide your audience and take them on the journey. Use your data to illustrate trends over time, identify issues and more importantly the actions needed to address/improve
2. Keep your presentations simple and visual:?Use charts and graphics when presenting your information. It looks better and is more easily absorbed by your audience. Studies show that as much as 90% of the information transferred to our brain is via visual content. Keep your slides simple, with 2-3 points per slide – and use an appropriately larger font size. This will avoid the dreaded death by PowerPoint.
3. Develop Your Excel Skills:?With the rise of big data, advanced Excel skills are a real asset. Excel skills including the ability to?produce graphs, pivot tables, lookups and use spreadsheets efficiently, perform formula calculations and automation to process large volumes of data is hugely helpful.
4. Collect the Right Data: Simple but true. If you’re not collecting it, you can’t measure it. Make sure your ATS or People system is set up to capture the data you need. Once you understand this, the issue of using data falls into place: it is to provide evidence of how your story unfolds.
5. And finally, check and double-check your data:?Make sure your data is 100%?accurate and any anomalies explained.

Making data your friend will help you convert data into seasonality trends, hiring trends by projects, by month, by quarter, per annum. It can help identify skill gaps, gain you a better awareness of candidate fit, candidate experience, process and technology optimisation. It’s become a powerful force in the quest to source, hire and retain top talent.

Paradoxically, the presentation of data should be designed to move the conversation?away?from the data and into action. By doing so, talent acquisition has shifted from making a hire to making a strategic hire. Data has helped talent acquisition earn a seat at the strategy table and for people like me, who love data, this is a fabulous opportunity to influence the recruitment dialogue and make a meaningful difference.?