A study from Visier, a Workforce Intelligence solution provider, has found that although organizations today are spending more money than ever on recruiting, 52% of hiring managers are unable to predict the long-term success of their new hires.
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Furthermore, the study found that 71% of hiring managers said that to increase the quality of people they hire, HR needs to improve its recruiting process. An October 2016 study—conducted by Research Now on behalf of Visier—surveyed 200 hiring managers at companies with annual revenues of $1 billion or more across the United States. The hiring managers were asked about their views on the talent acquisition process at their organizations, and the results reveal significant frustration due to the lack of ability to measure long-term impact.
The challenges faced by hiring managers extend to the day-to-day decisions they need to make, as well as to their ability to make long-term hiring plans. The survey also found:
- Long-term impact of recruiting is hard to measure: 61% said that it is difficult to measure the long-term impact of the overall recruiting process.
- Time to hire estimates are not accurate: 66% of hiring managers agree that when hiring for a role, it is difficult to get an accurate estimate of how long it will take to secure the hire.
- Hiring plans are not effective: 55% of hiring managers agree that hiring plans were not as effective as they could be due to the difficulty in getting accurate hiring and turnover projections.
- Recruiting programs need to be more data driven: 70% said that to improve long-term business impact, recruiting programs at their organization need to be more data-driven or fact-based.
In the survey, hiring managers also expressed their need to access more information about the talent acquisition process and the candidates they were considering. In particular:
- 95% said they need to know why good candidates are lost during the hiring process.
- 82% said it is important to track diversity and ensure equity during the hiring process.
“With hiring managers unable to determine the long-term success of half the candidates they hire, hiring is reduced to a coin toss. This highlights the critical need for organizations to improve the way that they measure the effectiveness of their talent acquisition,” said Dave Weisbeck, chief strategy officer of Visier, in a press release.
What Is Holding Recruiters Back from Taking a More Data-Driven Approach?
First, the technology. Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) can be great for sorting through applications, tracking candidates through the hiring process, and getting data such as time-to-fill and cost-of-hire. However, its usefulness to recruiters stops at the point of hire. From this point, data on hired employees are kept in other systems, making it difficult to get a big picture view of the long-term success of a hire. It also limits the recruiting team’s ability to find candidates who share the attributes of a high performing employee. In fact, some ATS may even eliminate suitable candidates from the pipeline if their job experience doesn’t exactly match what’s stated on the job description.
Second, the data is siloed. As mentioned above, all the valuable data recruiters need is contained within several different systems, and it takes a long time to collect and organize all this information. Without this data, you won’t be able to tell if your recruiting process is working effectively—or if not, why not. Any stalls in the process can backfire and cause you to lose a potentially great employee.
Third, forecasting ability is limited. Recruiters need a clear vision of hiring plans to help them determine when is the right time to hire talent. These plans should be based on historical data and optimize the spend on recruiting to ensure you’re hiring at the right cost as well. Without better technology and all employee data available in a single system, recruiters will be hard-pressed to deliver the optimal headcount needed to deliver on business goals.
Future-Proof Talent Acquisition
The results uncovered by the Research Now and Visier study highlight the critical need to improve the way that organizations track the effectiveness of their recruitment process.
Recruiters and hiring managers need a comprehensive collection of insights from the full employee lifecycle (obtained by connecting disparate HR systems into one solution) to answer the critical questions that will improve the impact of recruiting on the business and allow them to identify and hire quality talent faster and more effectively.
With 2017 underway, now is the time to seriously consider the necessary steps towards the datafication of Talent Acquisition.
For more information on this survey, click here.