Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/227268
Recruiting the good ones. Perhaps we find out that two of the three qualifications are valid, but that the third is community involvement in the past three years, not sports. Big data allows us to statistically model what qualities the best hires possess." Take home: RPO vendors can validate qualifications and that information can be passed back to hiring managers. This can have domino effect. Ranjan explains: "If you have the right performance information, you can start linking a lot of things to the front end of the recruitment process itself. For example, if you see that several people are high performers, and you have a linkage back to recruitment, then you can identify what kind of people, from what sources they came from, what kind of skills that they have, what kind of training that they have had, that makes them successful in this organization." Knowing the talent pool will allow HR to get a sense of the quality of the available talent given their hiring constraints (e.g., relocation). Those constraints can be tweaked depending on talent needs and availability, to expand or shrink the talent pool, depending on whether HR is pleased with the quality of candidates being presented. 3. Candidate supply and demand The problem: What's the talent pool HR is fishing in? Another way to get closer to the elusive quality of hire metric is to look at all the candidates–who was available, who was contacted, and who was brought in. "Zip codes, skill sets, social media such as LinkedIn, top companies—you start to narrow down a list of top candidates very quickly," says Lange. Supply and demand data allows the RPO provider to "prove effort," Lange says. "What is the list of top people, and how many did I contact?" Candidate supply and demand can give HR confidence they've received the best candidates given the limits, Lange adds. Take home: Knowing the talent pool will allow HR to get a sense of the quality of the available talent given their hiring constraints (e.g., relocation). Those constraints can be tweaked depending on talent needs and availability, to expand or shrink the talent pool, depending on whether HR is pleased with the quality of candidates being presented. 4. Candidate satisfaction The issue: The experience of applying to an organization is something candidates will likely remember, whether hired or not. A good experience–or a bad one–can spread through social media like wildfire. It used to be that you needed your own printing press, or at least a photocopier, to publicize your unhappiness. Nowadays, everyone buys pixels by the barrel and can potentially attract a lot of attention. "Every candidate is a potential customer," says Lange. "So you're recruiting process is not just about talent acquisition, but the business brand." Most applications go into an electronic black hole after hitting submit on a company website. Establish a communication channel for all applicants. When possible, Lange recommends, "to put a human voice" behind your company. Measuring candidate satisfaction, Lange says, should involve getting satisfaction feedback from every candidate who enters the premises. "New hires are biased," she says. "At a minimum, [talk to] everyone who has an onsite engagement with your company. Include the ones who get hired but more important, those that don't get hired." Take home: The application process shouldn't alienate job seekers, even those who are turned down. Candidates who are respected throughout the process will likely tell others, particularly in today's social media society. 5. Time to hire, sliced thin The problem: Time to hire doesn't tell the whole story. Greg Karr, executive VP of Seven Step RPO, says time to hire is a great classic metric, but "increasingly we're seeing a need to parse that out." NOVEMBER 2013 | www.hrotoday.com [49]