The importance of big data in HR & Recruitment
The use of big data is increasingly becoming popular as a tool in HR & recruitment. Many companies are utilizing data and analytical tools to automate the hiring process and the management of human resources within the organization.
Recruitment and hiring have always been time-consuming and costly. At the end of the recruiting process, it’s never assured you’ve hired the right person. Will that person be a good fit for the company? Will they stay long-term or leave within a few months?
In addition, employee engagement and retention can also be time-consuming and costly. Big data can help here, too.
What is Big Data?
The term “big data” has been around for quite a while, but what does this term mean? Big data is the process of collecting information and data, then using this information in a way that’s advantageous to the business.
There is a wealth of data available today through the computers and the information they gather, the Internet and other technology that captures data.
Such platforms as LinkedIN, Twitter, personal blogs, YouTube can be used to gather information on specific individuals. A person’s digital reputation can be a valuable dataset when considering a candidate for a job opening.
Not only that, but big data is also a valuable resource when it comes to employee satisfaction and retention.
Benefits of Big Data in Recruitment
In the past, the recruitment process was long, tedious and expensive. Recruitment took staff time and money to find what they thought were the best hires. However, data-driven recruitment can significantly stream-line the recruitment process—not only that, but this method has many benefits:
1) Logical decision-making: using big data to recruit new workers eliminates the guess work involved in traditional hiring practices. Big data helps recruiters use a logical analytic process to find the best person for the job. With all the available data available online (including employment records, social media profiles, test scores, etc.), recruiters are better able to gather hard data on each candidate. A logical decision-making process removes all guess work from the hiring process, winnowing the possible new hires to the best available for the job.
2) Better quality of hire: as mentioned above, the compilation of hard data on each candidate helps improve the odds that only the best employees will be hired.
3) Shorten time to hire: big data allows HR organizations and departments to create strategic recruitment processes which shorten the time to hire.
4) Cost effective hiring process: another benefit is that big data helps make the hiring process more cost effective, therefore saving money in the long-term.
Benefits of Big Data for HR
1) Training & employee success rates improve: big data helps a business determine the most effective training and development for their employees and new hires. For instance, data can be gathered from performance evaluations at regular intervals. This information helps HR to determine if their programs are effective or not.
2) Better employee engagement and retention: in a similar way, big data can help companies to analyze employee engagement—they can monitor trends such as poor morale, absenteeism, and high employee turnover. Some sources of this type of date include monitoring of social media, team assessments, employee satisfaction questionnaires and exit interviews. Applying this information, HR can find the right way to address these issues and improve employee satisfaction and retention.
This is an overview of the ways big data is important to recruitment and HR. When used effectively and with the right tools, big data can provide HR with a wealth of information not only to find the best workers, but also improve employee engagement and retention.