The finance industry thrives on data because dollars are very much about the numbers. Marketing teams require data analytics to effectively understand their reach and their audiences. But people don’t often think of HR as data-centric, because it is primarily people-centric. HR, however, is an industry uniquely poised to benefit from incorporating data into the hiring process and employee management. The main reason is that HR already produces lots of data at every turn in the hiring process—it’s almost a natural byproduct of the hiring process. The smartest HR teams are leveraging their data and using AI technology to foster the talent of their organizations and help drive business outcomes.

Data Collection Is Easier Than Ever Before

Because candidates can apply to jobs with high-speed ease, more resumes are crossing your desk than ever before. When you can collect hundreds of resumes for a single job opening, that’s a ton of data. And HR teams now largely manage this candidate data for the hiring process through ATS software. When you combine ATS data with AI tools that can communicate with ATS platforms, you can easily sort through copious amounts of resumes to select top-tier candidates based on the criteria selected and “read” by the technology.

But the data housed with the ATS can do a lot more. The need to deal with all this data has driven the HR industry further into high tech solutions, turning what once was a problem into an advantage. Correspondingly, data analysis has become one of the core skills for talent acquisition teams. It’s not just about reading people—it’s about reading the numbers.

Data Leads To The Best Candidates For Your Open Positions

We don’t like to think of people as data points or tabulate psychology in a probability matrix, but because a lot of our lives are spent online, we can understand people and trends using AI technology in really interesting ways. For example, the way a person searches the internet, the sites they read, the online communities they populate, the things they post about themselves, and even where they search all create a digital footprint. This modern form of human behavior is all quantifiable as data.

Using this information is how a program like programmatic digital advertising is able to source candidates in a strategic way. It combines powerful algorithms and data to place job ads in front of qualified candidates, based on where those candidates are likely to search the internet. This is certainly an instance where decision-making based on data, rather than a hunch as to where to place a job ad, has vastly improved HR outcomes—from streamlining the hiring process to producing better quality candidates, to saving money by gauging ad effectiveness.

Data Can Maintain A Thriving Workplace

This same data-driven approach can continue through an employee’s lifecycle. Employee satisfaction turns into employee satisfaction scores. HR teams don’t have to engage in guesswork to discover who is happy, but can instead build data, discern patterns of employee behavior, and engage people analytics to make work a better place for employees. Employee engagement software can further enhance the employee experience, as well as help HR understand what works for people and how to retain talent.

Taking analytics one step further, HR teams can be proactive in fostering the talent of their organization—rather than reactive. For example, what if you could predict the next vacancy within your organization? AI technology with predictive analytics features allows HR to anticipate hiring needs, consider the growth of the organization over many years, and get out in front of finding the skill sets and talent they will seek in the future.

While data analysis is an increasingly important skill set for HR professionals, AI technology combined with data offers a winning combination. From decision-making to automated processes, to up-to-the-minute data reports, this AI software is helping HR teams in their efforts to foster talent and grow their organizations over the long haul.