As I prepared to leave my last role, I was fortunate enough to meet with recruiters and talent acquisition leaders with whom I had worked closely as a people analytics partner. Many of these colleagues credited our close collaboration as a key factor in their professional development as recruiters and recruiting leaders. “When we started working together, my initial reaction to a new dashboard was dread,” one colleague shared. “Now, my first feeling is delight.”
A Challenging Landscape
Dread is an understandable response to the seismic changes to the talent acquisition landscape – (the pandemic and the rise of GenAI), and the data shows the impact – “53% of talent professionals feel their job is stressful,” according to Employ’s 2023 Recruiter Nation Report. At the same time, comfort with technology and data is becoming a required skill for success, according to AIHR’s ’17 Recruiting Skills You Need to Hire the Best Talent‘.
Managing change means preparing talent teams for what’s next. Leaders who fail to adapt risk low retention, faltering team morale, lower productivity, shrinking capacity, poor tool adoption, and stymied innovation, among other concerns. How can leaders avoid these outcomes and steer their team from dread to delight?
Seek to Understand
When I advise leaders on data adoption for their teams, I encourage them to start from a place of empathy. Why wouldn’t a recruiter be eager to use analytics to enhance their conversations? Consider this.
Recruiters are the primary point of communication for several parties in a job search with various communication needs. Recruiters communicate directly with candidates, update leadership with productivity and performance metrics, strategize with hiring managers and business leaders, coordinate essential tasks like interviews and offer generation, and even nurture prospective candidates through talent pools.
Multiply that by the number of current and future requisitions they manage, and a recruiter’s attention is quickly consumed by high-priority communications with little or no time to search for relevant information when it’s buried behind filters in a dashboard.
Quality Data is Valued Data
“How do you define success in your role?” I’ve both asked and answered this question countless times in my career. As a data analytics professional, it comes down to Time to Insight (TTI) and Size of Impact. If I do my job well, my users swiftly and seamlessly get the information they need to drive high-impact business decisions.
When talent acquisition leaders add a data analytics professional to their team, they prioritize data access. Then, it is the analytics professional’s role to align data access to how the organization communicates value. This professional’s success can be measured by how quickly they can provide insights that have a meaningful impact on the talent team. Leaders who understand this relationship empower recruiters to ‘delight’ in easily accessible data that enhances their efforts.
Quality Data is Accessible Data
When leaders ensure recruiters can access data in a format that reflects how they communicate, the quality of communication across the organization will improve. Data and analytics can become part of every stage of the recruiter lifecycle through training where recruiters are encouraged to ask questions and document learnings.
My colleague shifted from data dread to delight as a collaborator in developing our analytics. We had a shared goal and a common purpose. In training, I could rely on my colleague as a ‘data champion’ to help new members get up to speed.
Establish the ‘Five W’s’ of your organization’s talent acquisition data:
- Who is involved in collecting, calculating, or reporting this data?
- What is your organization’s definition for this data?
- When (which conversations) is this data used?
- Where is this data located?
- Why does your organization use this data in these conversations?
You will prioritize your organization’s trust in these resources by ensuring their relevance. Review them regularly and broadly communicate any changes to key definitions or metrics. With so many responsibilities to keep afloat, it’s easy for recruiters to lose track of where to seek help.
Quality Data is Trusted Data
When I ask recruiters what they prioritize in their analytics, confidence in the data quality tops the list. No matter how well-crafted or readily available a report may be, recruiters will not use data they do not trust, and rightfully so.
Digging into this concept of trust, I’ve found that a recruiter’s functional definition of ‘quality’ data may go beyond whether the data is numerically correct. To paraphrase: “As a recruiter, I believe that ‘quality’ data must show the correct numbers, must be up-to-date, and must accurately reflect my process.”
To ensure recruiters can trust their reporting to reflect their process, I recommend leaders take the following steps to promote a dynamic, continuous conversation between recruiters and their analytics function.
Create Multiple Feedback Channels
Create a variety of channels where recruiters can provide feedback on the data they need and how it is presented. This could include surveys, suggestion boxes, or regular meetings. This also includes establishing a regular practice for ‘data hygiene’ as part of recruiter responsibilities. This should occur regularly before leadership discussions on recruiting capacity and the plan for upcoming hiring goals.
Prioritize Transparency
Your data analytics professional should establish a transparent process where recruiters can submit requests for support and receive timely responses. Even if the request is denied or cannot be immediately addressed, transparency on how their requests are received, prioritized, or implemented gives recruiters the confidence that their feedback is documented and thoughtfully considered. The information captured in this process can help inform future updates to the organization’s knowledge resources.
A ‘Self-Service’ Approach
Provide recruiters with tools that allow them to explore and visualize data that describes their process. This approach can help increase recruiter’s confidence in the accuracy and utility of their analytics. Self-service can also reduce your organization’s reliance on a central analytics function to manage nuanced data requests. When coupled with a robust knowledge base, self-service resources for analytics are a powerful tool for cross-team learning and knowledge-building. Power users of these tools often become champions for promoting data quality and may help you identify future analysts and leaders among your team.
Leaders Light the Path
Leaders encouraging their teams to shift from data aversion toward data advocacy will foster a more engaged, productive, and innovative TA organization. When recruiters can make more informed decisions, hiring outcomes improve. When recruiters feel confident in the quality of their data, they are empowered to maximize their contribution to the organization’s success. I’ve witnessed the achievements talent acquisition leaders unlock when they enable their recruiters to embrace data as an accessible and dynamic part of their process.
About The Author
Matthew Beck is the Lead Value Consultant for Reporting & Analytics at Findem. He has earned a reputation as an effective leader, relentless innovator, and authentic partner in the HR space, with ten years of experience empowering strategic decision-makers with innovative data solutions tailored to their needs.
Check out Matthew’s other feature article, “Focus on the Big Picture: How to Get More from Less from Your Talent Analytics,” to learn how to optimize your talent analytics for organizational success.
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