Big Data: With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility!

If you’re in HR you probably have seen an upward trend and importance towards data-mining and analyzing. Some may be scratching your head, asking why? Sure, you’re not IT or a finance analyst, but the importance of data in your HR processes is very key to a company, especially with your job processes. So the question now is, or rather Questions, what data do I need to collect and analyze? What am I looking for? How can I interpret all this data? Why do I need to collect data?

Well we touched on the last question of why, but here is the rest of it; HR departments need this data to understand how their job openings are performing. If one job is performing better than the other, it begs the question of how come? Well it could be the level of interest in the positions or it could be the application process for that job or maybe you aren’t utilizing the right resource for that job or other jobs. Data like Drop-Off rate and sourcing charts are critical to analyzing and solving these questions: where are my candidates dropping off from in the application process? Where are most of my applicants coming from? This gives the HR department power to understand and reallocate resources properly to optimize your job openings. Big Data also shows you how many candidates you are hiring and during what period of time you are doing it. Many Applicant Tracking Systems are slowly adapting this “Big Data” culture into their systems (good thing we are already ahead of the curve here!) for their clients to use, the big reason being that companies want more power to understand how their company is operating.

Many HR companies are data-mining and collecting all the data they can but are unsure of how to interpret it; some are hiring people for the purpose of interpreting the data and then presenting it to higher ups in an understandable format (visuals). This is great and all but what if there was a way to just collect information and data throughout the whole application process as well as collecting data on your jobs; all of this while seamlessly and autonomously interpreting and displaying the data in a simple and visually pleasing manner is a trend we are noticing on the rise. This is why we are perfecting the manner of which all this vital information that is being collected to be easily accessible and understandable for clients.

When collecting the data, a top-tier Application Tracking System (ATS) understands the proper data needed to be collected and stores it, rather than HR Departments collecting all data (useful and useless); this process unburdens the department and the best part is, all the data is available with just a couple of clicks! Another integral part of collecting data is the function of reports and also for some companies, staying compliant. Along with functional graphs and charts, reports are just as important; HR should have the ability to run whatever report they need, and these reports are another autonomous function of recording and displaying the relative data. Reports help companies understand their ROI on new hires and where they can cut costs and where they need to expand on. Reports also keep track of the ever-vital EEO data. With the hot topic of having and engaging a diverse workforce, EEO data is foremost the most imperative data needed to be collected and understood.

Though many people outside of HR may think of the department as maybe a kidney, it’s there but doesn’t have much function, it is in fact a vital part of a company that keeps things running. The HR field is ever changing and it’s important to say on top of what’s going on and trends that are happening. One of the biggest currently and rising the collection and analysis of data. Data is not just for IT or finance, it’s for everyone and is critical to every department in a company. Big Data helps you understand processes and allows a person or department to make adjustments to improve on them as well as expand on successful ones. So make sure that you or your ATS is able to collect and store this data and be sure to understand how to utilize it. It is a key component to success!

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