Big data in Recruitment

What is Big Data?

Extremely large data sets that may be analysed computationally to reveal patterns,
trends, and associations, especially relating to human behaviour and interactions. It is in
the form of both structured and unstructured form and is being increasingly being used
to gain insights into behavior patterns and predict better strategic moves and business
decisions. It can be encompassed with the following three Vs;

Volume. Organizations collect data from a variety of sources, including business

transactions, social media and information from sensor or machine-to-machine data. In
the past, storing it wouldve been a problem but new technologies have eased the
burden.

Velocity. Data streams in at an unprecedented speed and must be dealt with in a timely
manner. RFID tags, sensors and smart metering are driving the need to deal with
torrents of data in near-real time.

Variety. Data comes in all types of formats from structured, numeric data in traditional
databases to unstructured text documents, email, video, audio, stock ticker data and
financial transactions.
FUN FACT!

The data that is encompassing the term Big Data is being By 2015, 90% of the entire
generated by us at all times including various social media data in the world was created
in the preceding two years!!
formats emails, search engines, digital transactions, along
with various other sources. This huge amounts of data
presents an opportunity today, never present before in history to use it to make better
informed decisions. This endeavours however require better processing power,
analytics capabilities and skills.

Big Data and Talent analytics

Talent Analytics is the application of statistics, technology, and expertise to large sets of
people data which results in better decisions for an organization. Organizations have
always been using sources of both internal and external data to make informed

1
 Big data in Recruitment

decisions and better tailored strategies. However the explosion of data in the age of
internet has provided organizations a vast pool of potential knowledge source that if
tapped in can provide with newer insights. How this data is being utilized is becoming
an important question not just for the financial side of organizations but also the people
side.
Talent analytics, people analytics, HR analytics are some of newer emerging terms
focusing upon usage of predictive analysis of the big data to make informed and
insightful decisions regarding the human resource and talent management practices
within organizations. This can be a helpful tool for recruitment process of any
organization.
Hiring the right individual for any position is a time consuming, expensive process.
Additionally, assessing which candidate would be the right fit for the job is also a
arborous process which makes most HR professional rely upon preconceived notions of
good employee and their gut feeling regarding the candidates. Talent analytics can
allow for better informed decisions to be made based upon results from data mining and
predictive analysis.
This asks for intelligent questions to be asked! Is academic background an important
indicator of employee performance? What kind of experience do your top performing
employees have? Which soft skills do they consistently display during their performance
evaluations? Questions like these can allow organizations to develop a template of a
model employee which can then be useful to predict what a model employee should
possess before he or she is hired, along with what skills and qualifications are needed.
This makes evaluating candidates for new positions more efficient, and more effective.

Josh Bersin founder and principal at Bersin by Deloitte gives the following example in
his Forbes article Big Data in Human Resources: Talent Analytics (People Analytics)
Comes of Age

2
 Big data in Recruitment

Why use talent analytics?

A recruitment process that screens out candidates that best fit the organizational work
and culture requirements can be highly beneficial for an organization. Talent analytics
can help making the recruitment process more streamlined and highly accurate an
insightful. This allows for management and HR to make hiring decisions bases upon
hard quantifiable data and facts, letting go of the old ideas of using psychological tests
and intuition driven decision making to screen out potentially good candidates.

A recruitment process that is successfully hiring best individuals has the long run effect
of increased profitability for the organisation and high ROI of the employees. This can
also help in decreasing the turnover rates of the employees and help the organisation to
better retain them in the long run.

3
 Big data in Recruitment

Lastly, HR function has traditionally been seen as a redundant department in many

organizations. Amongst other reasons behind this view is also that HR has traditionally
failed to show its impact in the overall organizational profits and failed to provide
strategic insight into decision making process. Talent analytics ca help HR departments
to base their suggestions on quantifiable data, making their inputs and contributions
more valuable.

Where is the data coming from?

When it comes to data sources for an organization, there are many. They can more
broadly be divided into three areas

Perform ance
People Data Program Data
Data
Data such as Data such as Data regarding
dem ographics, attendance, perform ance
skills, reward, participation in ratings and
engagem ent, program m es data captured
and so on ranging from from the use of
training and instrum ents
developm ent such as 360,
and leadership goal
program m es to attainm ent,
talent talent,
m anagem ent succession
and key program m es
projects and and talent and
assignm ents assessm ent.

Sources of data can include application tracking system (ATS), HRIS, performance
appraisals, surveys, etc.

4
 Big data in Recruitment

Bersin by Deloitte Talent Analytics Maturity Model

Bersin by Deloitte which is a HR consultancy firm did a research regarding talent

analytics and the use of Big Data in HR. The research included 435 U.S. and Canadian
organizations.

Their study found that a staggering 86 percent of the organizations we surveyed are
focused primarily on reporting. Many of these organizations produce metrics for
compliance purposes and operate in a reactive mode, fielding ad-hoc requests for data.
Others may take a proactive approach to reporting, using benchmarks and trends to
highlight what is working (and what is not), but the focus is still on reports or
dashboards.

Just 10 percent of organizations in our study have taken the next step toward advanced
analyticshelping business leaders solve their talent challenges through statistical
analyses. A mere 4 percent are using predictive analytics to forecast future talent
outcomes.

5
 Big data in Recruitment

Talent analytics Google

All people decisions at Google are based on data and analytics
Prasad Setty,
Vice President of Analytics, Benefits and
Compensation

The Google People Analytics team first gained fame when they admitted their entire
interview process was full with mistakes. They used to conduct several interviews with
each job candidate but decided to test whether all those interviews were even useful.
Their data showed that after four interviews, each subsequent interview added no
additional benefit.

The Google People Analytics team crunched their interview data and found that their
infamous brainteasers didnt predict performance once the candidate was hired, which
made it an easy decision to get rid of them.

6
 Big data in Recruitment

Further Reading!

Big Data: HRs Golden Opportunity Arrives

High-Impact Talent Analytics: Building a World-Class HR Measurement and

Analytics Function

The basics of Big Data, HR Analytics and Predictive Analytics