Why Too Much Information Can Lead to Worse Decisions in Talent Acquisition

I love data but it can often lead to worse decisions.

You’ve got dashboards full of metrics, reports coming out of your ears, and everyone’s chasing the same old KPIs. Time-to-hire, cost-per-hire, applicant-to-hire ratio. Sound familiar right? Everyone’s measuring them because they’re easy to track, not because they’re the right drivers of success.

And what happens? Analysis paralysis. Meetings get longer, decisions get slower, and the actual hiring gets worse. So here’s the real question: Are you looking at the right data, or just the data that’s easiest to find?

More Data Does Not Always = Better Decisions

What we need is the right data! More of the right data.

Take Adrian Newey, the F1 engineer I mentioned in my last post. He’s still sketching things out by hand in an era when every team is buried in digital simulations. Why? Because he knows what matters. He’s not distracted by the noise. He’s picking the right information to guide his decisions, combining data with gut instinct and experience.

That’s what we should be doing in TA. Too many teams are obsessing over the best next silver bullet tool or popular metrics being pushed by influencers, or worse, relying on data to replace their judgment entirely. What we need to remember is that it is you who makes the final decisions!

Most teams pick the ones everyone else is using because it’s easy. But how do we choose the ones that will move the needle for your hiring teams?

Let's take a common example of you wanting to get fit. You can track everything these days steps, calories, heart rate, but if your goal is building muscle, none of that matters if you’re not tracking your strength progression. The same goes for talent acquisition. If you’re trying to improve the quality of hire, tracking time-to-hire might give you operational insight, but it won’t tell you if you’re actually hiring better people.

The key is to take the time to figure out which metrics are actually driving results, and focus there. And yeah, sometimes that means letting go of the 'comfort' metrics that everyone else loves which may be concerning but will help you in the long time.

If you’re waiting for perfect data to make a decision, you’ll be waiting forever. Recruitment isn’t about spreadsheets, it’s about people again as I said in my last post. The perfect dataset doesn’t exist because people are messy. There will always ALWAYS be gaps, outliers, and noise. And that’s okay, your job is to make the best decision with the information you have.

At Presage, we’re obsessed with this idea. Our goal isn’t to give you endless data, it’s to give you reliable data that helps you make a call. For us we believe that making decisions isn’t about perfection, it’s about clarity.

So, here’s my advice: Don’t just track the metrics that are easy or popular. Dig deeper and be curious. Find the ones that actually matter, the ones that drive results. And don’t wait for the data to be perfect before you act. Trust your gut yes I said trust your gut, use your experience, and remember, at the end of the day, it’s you who makes the call, not the numbers.

Do you every feel like you are lost with talent data?