In the world of business, all eyes are on data. In the last two years, 92% of Fortune 1,000 companies have begun or continued to invest in big data, with this currently being one of the leading places of worldwide investment. Due to this, more money than ever is pouring into the data industry, with this funding allowing for even more deployments to be discovered. Big data is currently predicted to reach a valuation of over $75 billion by 2023, with no signs of slowing down yet.

When discussing data-driven business practices, most companies focus on marketing or sales techniques, using data to inform how they structure advertisements or word copy. While these are valuable opportunities, one area that's often overlooked is the effectiveness of data-driven human resources.

HR is commonly known as a very human-orientated field; it's even in the title of the job role itself. However, the level of person-to-person contact that HR requires also leads to subjectivity, with many decisions being made from an emotional or reactive standpoint instead of due to any solid reason.

One of the prime examples of this is the hiring process. Applicants will send their resumes in for a job, HR will select their favorites, conduct interviews, and once again select their favorites for the job role. Yet, the best person at interviewing might not actually be the best person for the job, meaning this human-human contact impacts the effectiveness of hiring.

In this article, we'll explore how HR teams can use data-driven techniques to streamline their hiring process, boost its efficiency, and even optimize the sort of candidate they're looking for. Let's get right into it.

What Are the Benefits of a Data-Driven HR Recruitment Process?

Incorporating data analysis into the recruitment process removes emotional hiring from the equation. While an HR director may form a bond with a candidate because they went to the same university or share a similar background, this isn't conducive to an effective or fair recruitment process.

Using modern technology, HR departments can analyze thousands of job applications at once, pulling information from them and creating a shortlist of the best candidates automatically. By using technology for this initial stage, you also ensure that every single element of each CV is looked at and given a fair chance.

Currently, HR managers only spend around 7 seconds looking at a CV before deciding to give a candidate a chance or not. When using technology, each CV is analyzed fairly and equally, providing a much stronger final pool of applications. With this data-driven technique at the core of the hiring process, HR teams are set to experience a range of benefits:

• Faster Time To Hire – The average time to hire is currently between 20-30 days. However, when incorporating technology that can look through all candidate profiles in a matter of seconds, HR teams are able to significantly decrease the TTH period, streamlining the process and ensuring positions are filled as quickly as possible. 
• Lower Hiring Costs – With a faster time to hire and fewer resources spent on laborious parts of the hiring process, companies will be able to hire without spending as much money during the process. Speeding up the hiring process will radically decrease the total amount of money it takes to hire an employee, benefiting both HR departments and the company as a whole. 
• Higher Quality Hires – With no internal bias, either purposeful or unconscious, the candidates that make it to the final round of the hiring process will be the very best in the group. With this, HR teams have a much higher chance of picking the very best candidate for the job.

By making the hiring process data-driven, data provides a level of concrete certainty that significantly increases the efficiency of HR departments. 

Turning Inwards With Data-Driven HR

While many companies focus on data that comes inward from new candidates, this isn't the only area that produces information that HR teams can take into account. Conducting HR gap analysis can provide a range of important details about the current structure of a business and what they're lacking.

Gap analysis is all about collecting information from your current workforce and trying to discover what's missing. There are two general ways that HR teams can do this:

• Skill Gaps – By collecting data about all the various skills that each team has, an HR department can build up an understanding of what skills the team already possesses. For an SEO optimization company, an HR team could poll the current team and see that they have members that focus on link-building and on-page SEO, but no one there that has technical SEO skills. With this information, the HR team can then change their job postings to directly focus on the skills that a team is missing. Over time, this ensures that only people with specific skills that are needed within the company are hired, making the hiring process much more effective for long-term company growth. 
• Flagging Outputs – Another fantastic way of understanding more about who an HR team should hire is by focusing on output data across all of your teams. If you examine certain teams and see that their output is flagging, you can then schedule meetings with those team members to find out more. By doing this, and by looking at the output data, you can work out which teams desperately need a few extra pairs of hands. By adapting your hiring process to be completely aligned with internal needs, based on data, you'll be in a much better position to make smart hiring decisions.

Over time, creating a data-driven hiring process is by far one of the most effective ways of streamlining your hiring process. Instead of just focusing on generic job descriptions, HR teams can use data to find people that will help the company as much as possible. 

From skill gaps to supporting flagging teams, data will pave the way toward more successful hiring. 

Final Thoughts

Data-driven has become one of the largest business focuses that seems to transcend specific industries. As a concrete practice, the hard validity of data can bring much-needed rigidity to the human-driven practice of HR. By collecting data and continually referencing it, HR teams can plan more effectively for the future.

From streamlining the hiring and onboarding process to creating more meaningful job postings, data analysis is essential for business growth. In HR teams and beyond, turning to a data-driven strategy is creating a more certain pathway to success.