Big online recruitment data sounds like big intimidation to people who don’t get it. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people who fit into that category. It’s one thing to know that the data is there. It’s something else to know how to use it or even understand its real value.
The promise of big data isn’t the fact that it can be collected and stored. Hoarding data is no more useful than saving old newspapers. The real promise is in the way that some, not all, of that information generated by the people you want to know more about – job candidates – can help you work with optimum efficiency and get better results.
Read more about online recruitment data and where the industry is headed.
Big Online Recruitment Data is Almost Literally Everywhere
What’s one of the biggest challenges that any recruiter contends with? It’s connecting the right job candidate with the right job ad to get them on board. Your ideal candidates use social media, visit job boards and perhaps have a resume at LinkedIn. They use email, shop online and, like most people, leave tasty trails of breadcrumbs.
The breadcrumbs represent data. It’s worth its weight in gold because it helps you understand existing habits and predict a candidate’s response. Knowing that a person is open to receiving an email doesn’t mean she’s likely to leave her job because you offer her another. But it puts you on the right track, which is a much better one than post-and-pray.
If you can pick up on those bread crumbs, you can understand more about behaviors and figure out how best to reach those candidates. Or in other words, knowing where your candidates spend their time lets you target the right people with the right job ads, which they’d otherwise probably have never seen.
Candidate data tells a story. And it’s the one you’ve always wanted to hear.
Who Makes Sense of Big Data
Where the big disconnect happens between recruiters and data is the analytics. Analytics takes the puzzle pieces and helps you put them together. In some cases, it puts them together for you. You can take the long way around, or you can make analytics a whole lot easier on yourself by going automated.
Data analysts with their big brains can dive into the information and carefully build a story about it. This is a highly specialized discipline, although the Society for Human Resource Management also says some HR educational programs do touch on the topic slightly. Analysts might be in-house or a third party.
Alternatively, data analytics might be built into something else that you use every day, such as candidate matching and programmatic advertising. These options let you skip the voluminous data that you honestly might never need or use, and you definitely don’t need to keep and get right to the heart of what’s important. Automation at this level doesn’t limit a recruiter’s ability to make smart gut decisions, it gives recruiters more time for focusing on them instead of worrying about the best site and time for an ad buy.
What All of This Data Can Tell You
First, it should be said that data analytics isn’t akin to privacy invasion. You aren’t building files on people to keep tucked away in a cabinet. You’re analyzing data about the type of people you want to attract to your company, not about one specific person you want to monitor. Big difference.
The data analytics built into your candidate matching and programmatic advertising solution boil down to one thing: smart job ad placement for optimum results. It helps place the right job at the right place for the kind of person you want to hire.
To do this, analytics needs to determine who the right person is. Comparing online recruitment data from other successful candidates pulls out clues. Then it needs to sort out where that hypothetical person is more likely to see a job ad.
Ad placement matters because not every great candidate is looking for a job. Some of the best ones are already taken and might not even realize that they’re open to a new one until they see your ad. And naturally, data analytics is much more involved than this. You can drill down as deeply as you want, even as far as comparing personality types of people who use a certain resume font. But for the average recruiter, simply matching job ad to candidate in the right location without as much guesswork makes the whole endeavor worth it.
If you’re still not sold on the idea of Big Data, you aren’t really alone. Confusion about it still abounds. But embracing instead of rejecting Big Data gives you an edge that’s almost unfair. Almost, but not quite.
Cliintl even offers up a few markers that show whether you’re too resistant.
- Do you ignore Big Data? Maybe that’s just because you don’t understand it.
- Do you think the goal is to collect data? That’s actually just the first step; it’s what you do with it that matters.
- Do you think that the more data you collect the better you’ll be? Perhaps, but only if you use what you have and if it benefits your work.
- Do you believe that every speck of data must be analyzed? Nope. Even with RealMatch technology available today, that would take ages and might not produce measurably better results.
If any of those points apply to you, you are genuinely missing out. Recruiters who really want to home in on the best candidates, spend the advertising budget more wisely with less waste and dramatically reduce turnover need online recruitment data and the analytics that makes it sing.
Ready to learn more about programmatic advertising and how it can save money and free up your time?