The Time for Data-Driven HR Is Now

For decades, HR has lived by the adage, “Go with your gut”—trusting our instincts when it came to hiring decisions, recruiting, selecting perks and benefits, and even completing employee assessments. But today’s technology brings us something far more reliable on which to base the future of your company and the management of its most valuable resource: Big data.

Data-driven HR is here, and the time to adopt it is now. Public companies that use data-driven HR methods, or “people analytics,” show 30 percent higher stock market returns than the Standard & Poor 500 index. Additionally, HR teams who use data-driven methods are four times more likely to be respected by their business associates, according to a Bersin by Deloitte study.

But which data should you use, and how can you employ it to make the best hiring decisions? While you may be accustomed to using historical data—for instance, analyzing exit interviews to find out why talent leaves your firm—big data’s biggest strength is in predictive analysis and future casting. Big data can help you determine where your business is headed if you make a certain decision or choose a particular path.

From recruiting to pinpointing how a new hire will work out, here are just a few ways you can adopt data-driven HR practices.

Clearly, social media puts more job prospects in our field of vision today than ever before—so many that it’s virtually impossible for any single human being to sift through the vast pool of applicants or potential recruits to find the people with the best chance of becoming long-term hires.

But when we combine big data with deep-learning algorithms, not only can we sift through the data quickly, we can also pinpoint the best candidates with a high degree of accuracy. We can even find those new hires most likely to be top performers and make sure we give them the tools and resources they need to shine, along with the benefits that will make them stay.