With so many trends in talent acquisition, how can you know which ones deserve your attention and which might waste your time? It’s easier than you think. New processes and technologies that make your life easier while getting better results with the least amount of budgetary waste should rise to the top.

That’s what’s happening with data, predictive analytics and programmatic. They don’t reinvent the wheel, they help the wheels run more smoothly on any terrain.

Data and data analytics have been around long enough to fit comfortably into everyday language. But the way that talent acquisition uses those tools is about to change again. Data is complicated. It’s becoming less so. Analytics is great at pulling out what you need. It’s becoming more so. With automation, you can set the wheels in motion and let them find the best course based on facts, not guesswork.

Analytics Knows What You Need

The problem with all of that data has always been too much of a good thing. There are answers in data for myriad recruiter and HR problems if you know where and how to look for them. But they share space with data that doesn’t have a real place in your work sphere, at least not at the moment. That’s changing as new talent-focused analytics tools emerge.

Analytics isn’t one thing. It’s customizable by nature. It doesn’t just find answers, it finds what’s relevant for you, which is the whole point.

Information Week uses time-to-hire metrics as an example. Using analytics, you can see the surface of time-to-hire metrics clearly. But you can also see what’s happening underneath, which affects the bigger picture, quality-of-hire. Further, you can access those answers without drowning in irrelevant data so you can work on improving what you might never have seen before.

Marketing has used analytics for years to help them learn more about their target customer. And plenty of similarities exist between sales/marketing and the talent industry. One needs to understand more about the behaviors and qualities of customers or clients; the other needs to learn more about job candidates.

There is some overlap, as candidates and customers are similar. But marketing and sales have refined their tools for their needs. What’s happening now is a new refining for HR and recruiters.

While marketing and sales departments have cultivated their approach to analytics for years, talent acquisition is just getting started. That means there are great things ahead.

Analytics for HR and recruiters can measure metrics that have remained somewhat mysterious. It can also lighten much of the workload for those in the talent industry to focus on what they know best: people.

Data Can Help Predict the Future

Analytics takes a truckload of data and pulls out only what you want to know. Predictive analytics uses what’s relevant for you and models the most likely path of the future. It’s based on what the technology has learned.

Predictive data analytics flips the light switch to illuminate what’s always been there, but you couldn’t see. Recruiter.com says it can help you make better decisions by understanding what’s most likely to happen in a given situation.

Here are just a few of their examples:

• Turnover: what common factors influence the loss of employees? Maybe it’s the length of time since an employee’s last raise. Or maybe it’s a trend where employees become less and less engaged.
• Recruitment advertising: which campaigns are more likely to get the results you need? If you know in advance, you can make better choices and use your budget more wisely.
• Retention: when you know what factors indicate an employee that’s a turnover risk, you can intervene to help prevent it.
• Risk management: data can develop a relatively complete profile of job candidates who bring with them a higher risk of turnover from the start. That way, you can make better hiring choices that improve your quality-of-hire stats.
• Talent forecasting: know early which candidates have a high probability of success.

Predictive analytics uses what’s known-good and bad-to give you likely scenarios. The next step is automation.

Automation removes the human element from decisions you’d make, such as campaigns. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. For some decisions, artificial intelligence gets better results in much less time. It can analyze data quickly based on parameters you’ve set and then take the same action you’d take if you weren’t busy making memorable, human connections with talent.

Budget Spend is Optimized

Wouldn’t it be great to know that every dollar spent would yield the best results? Using predictive analytics and automation, you can. Not only that, you can apply it across multiple jobs at the same time and still use your budget in the most efficient way for every requisition.

Let’s say that you have only five jobs to fill at the moment. Three of them are moderately difficult to fill. One of them is an entry-level position that is likely to fill quickly. And one of the jobs is notoriously difficult.

With automated, dynamic budget allocation, each job gets the budget portion it needs to support time-to-hire, quality of hire and maximize your return on investment. It works because it predicts the future using data from the past.

Now imagine that you have dozens of open positions that fill with varying degrees of difficulty. Using the same dynamic budget allocation, you can get the same results, the same ROI, with little or no human involvement.

Budget optimization begins with natural language parsing, skills indexing, and performance predictions. When a campaign is activated, automatic targeted distribution kicks in. You can monitor perforce and make adjustments if necessary. Or you can let it work its magic with continual campaign optimization in real time.

Because every step you and job seekers take creates more data, every new campaign has a stronger and stronger foundation for success. That’s because it’s built on facts from the past. Jobs that are easy to fill don’t need the same budget allocation as hard-to-fill positions. When technology takes over, every job gets the attention and budget portion it needs with much less waste.

There’s always a new trend in talent acquisition. When applicant tracking systems were developed, life became easier. Then talent management systems improved on the typical ATS. When a trend gives you better results, it’s worthy.

Data analytics, predictive analytics, and automation are huge steps for talent industry efficiency and effectiveness. They’re meaningful advances that make your life easier and produce the best possible results every time.