9 Ways to Leverage Data to Make Better Recruiting and Hiring Decisions
Welcome to Recruiter Q&A, where we pose employment-related questions to the experts and share their answers!
Today’s Question: What’s one way you use data to inform and back your recruiting efforts, and how does this help you make the right hire?
These answers are provided by Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), an invite-only organization composed of the world’s most successful young entrepreneurs. YEC members represent nearly every industry, generate billions of dollars in revenue each year, and have created tens of thousands of jobs.
1. Conduct Personality Assessments
We use data from the personal assessment tool DISC. We baked in the assessment as part of our recruitment strategy. We know what profiles we need for certain roles (coaches versus sales team), and the DISC test helps us fine-tune top applicants to ensure they are a fit for our staff and clients. Additionally, we hire based on culture and use a scorecard to confirm values coupled with DISC results.
— Libby Rothschild, Dietitian Boss
2. Track Candidate Demographics
You can use an online tracking system to determine the demographics of your candidates. A tracking system can identify patterns in applications and common links. Then you can edit your job profiles accordingly to appeal to the demographics that you desire.
— Duran Inci, Optimum7
3. Give Skills Tests
There are some very useful tests available to prescreen applicants and ensure potential hires have the right skills, knowledge, and personality to succeed as a member of your team. These tests are essential for some roles, like customer service and sales. The data from those tests can help you avoid making expensive hiring mistakes.
— Jonathan Prichard, MattressInsider.com
4. Use Application Satisfaction Forms
I suggest asking applicants to fill out a satisfaction form at the end of their interview. Use the data from these surveys to improve your recruiting efforts. We like asking about the application process and the interview. You can learn a lot about your job listing, pitching your opening to applicants and streamlining the hiring process by sending questionnaires to all interviewees.
— Chris Christoff, MonsterInsights
5. Determine the Proper Applicant Pool Size
We track what percentage of people make it through to each round of the process. This helps give us an idea of what size pool of candidates is too small. It’s important to have a large candidate pool so that we have the best chance of reviewing a qualified and diverse group of candidates for the role. By tracking this data, we now know that we need at least thirty candidates in order to start our process.
— Kelsey Raymond, Influence & Co.
6. Analyze Your Career Pages
Analytics tools can give you powerful insights on your recruitment efforts. Using Google Analytics and other tools, track the locations people are applying from and the devices they use. You can also look at keywords that lead to your career pages and track clicks on links and the rate at which your job form is filled. Such data will help you improve your web copy and design to great effect.
— Syed Balkhi, WPBeginner
7. Leverage Past Experiences
We use data from our previous projects to determine how we hire for future, similarly-paced work. If we needed to hire four developers when we built our last six products, then we would likely hire four more developers if we wanted to create something new. That’s a simple example, but you can see how data from past experiences can help you make informed hiring decisions.
— John Brackett, Smash Balloon LLC
8. Look at Hiring ROI
Look at the ROI of certain activities. For example, if you find social media doesn’t bring any significant revenue, then you know that hiring a social media expert isn’t going to be worth the cost. This helps both sides because people want their work to have an impact. If someone joins a company and works really hard but finds their hard work doesn’t have much impact, they won’t be happy.
— Cody Candee, Bounce
9. Determine Fair Pay
You can use data to make informed decisions about what to pay new hires. Their wage should be based on several factors like experience and the current labor market. It’s important to pay your employees fairly so they can live comfortably off their salary.
— Jared Atchison, WPForms
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