How Big Data Can Improve Hiring Decisions in 2014
This is why I thought it was a good time to take a fresh look at big data in HR and hiring, as it can no longer be consigned to the wings, like it still is in many talent management teams.
Admittedly, big data has been center stage for some time amongst the powerful employer brands, but big data should now be center stage in HR across the board. It’s not enough for HR professionals to walk into the boardroom with gut instinct and say, “I think this is going to happen, and so I’d like this.” HR now needs to be saying, “Our statistics show this is not working and that this approach is twice as effective; so, I recommend doing this…”
But, I guess many big data laypersons are still wondering how exactly big data can actually help them boost hiring – and the simplest way to find this out is to have faith and start measuring and analyzing the data in order to spot trends.
However, in the mean time I have outlined some of the key ways that big data can boost hiring, which I hope will serve as impetus for your own big data initiatives.
Food and Hospitality Sector
Big data is not the preserve of the hi-tech knowledge intensive sectors; Olive Garden (the American casual dining chain) uses its predictive analytics data to forecast its staffing needs and has been able to manage its employees much more efficiently as a result.
Sales Roles
Do you hire sales people for your team? How do you choose your ideal sales profile? Is it a hunch/gut instinct or do you rely on the conventional wisdom that outgoing, friendly, likeable, social types make the best sales people? Well, big data can help to remove some of the guess work from this by giving hard statistics on what makes good sales people. For example, Kenexa’s team of 100 behavioral scientists looked at 1,000 sales people in several companies across a diverse range of sectors and found that success was most likely when the salespeople demonstrated “emotional courage” and “persistence.”
Of course, it’s no surprise that a mathematically intensive hi-tech company like Google has been leading the way with big data in HR – and since it is the most powerful employer brand in the world and the 3rd most valuable tech company in the world, it’s clear Google must be doing something right. And it’s for this reason that we need to look at how they have been using big data to boost hiring, as it’s a sign of current best practice.
- Google recently denounced their famous “brainteaser” interview questions based on their big data analysis, which showed that these questions predicted nothing about performance. In fact, behavioral questions were a far more effective means of predicting candidate performance. They have shown that big data is a great way to assess the predictive accuracy of different assessment methods, allowing them to adopt the most effective selection methods going forward.
- With its “project oxygen,” Google looked at data and found that great managers drive performance and retention and also identified the eight characteristics of great leaders, which included ability to coach, personalized feedback and showing an individual interest in an employee. This ranked above their technical knowledge. Google now has a data driven success profile to use in hiring that will be more predictive of successful hires.
- Google also developed a hiring algorithm, which predicts which candidates have the best chance of succeeding, and it developed a retention algorithm too. While doing this, the company also found that there was very little additional value in going beyond four interviews.
As you can see, big data is currently being used by leading companies to boost their hiring processes, making it, in my opinion, an industry best practice that all HR companies should be looking to adopt. I would even go as far to say that given the insights that big data can offer, it is foolish to ignore it.