Reinventing Processes to Compete in Today's Hiring Game

Today I’d like to discuss something interesting that combines two of my passions and mirrors a lot of the features and philosophy surrounding ApplicantPro: Google’s “People Analytics” process. For those of you that aren’t familiar with the term; it’s based on the premise that in order for your management team to make decisions that will impact the company in a positive way, you need to hire people that are aligned with the overall vision of your organization. The way to do this of course, is by using data or what we call in my Internet marketing world – analytics. What always strikes me as comical is that of all “bigger” departments, HR is the least likely to rely upon or use data to make its hiring decisions even though hires comprise a huge amount of a firm’s budget. Sales/Business Development, Marketing, etc. usually make a case for how they spend their money with percentages of which expenditures go where.

What fascinates me the most about Google’s method is that their entire hiring strategy for the last few years is a product of this data match theory and the company’s employee productivity is mind-blowing; and yet, most HR teams are completely reluctant to entertain an idea that doesn’t fall in line with the processes they were using 50 years ago to hire people. The fault in this logic is that technology has completely changed the way in which we find candidates and the way in which job seekers find us so it stands to reason that recruiting/employment methods also need to evolve.

With ApplicantPro ; I like Google, am trying to help reinvent HR in a sense and this is often met with resistance because people assume that by adopting a more streamlined process, they’ll eventually be out of the job. This simply isn’t the case, and it’s just as true for a huge and innovative corporation like Google (who’s every process hinges on analytics) as it is for you. The two work in unison; you use research to produce the right job ad, application process, screening questions, and assessments to get them in the door and then you use your HR sixth sense backed by years in the field to determine the best possible candidate fit.

Piggybacking their analytics based hiring approach is conducting regular surveys internally to help determine what makes their employees “tick.” They gather information about what qualities good managers embody, how to boost retention by asking what motivates employees to come into work daily, etc. and then they use this knowledge to create a benchmark for hiring their employees. From a business owner’s standpoint, this makes perfect sense because it creates a process that is molded by the employees and we all know that happier employees = greater satisfaction/productivity/quality.

Obviously, I’m a little biased because I am a data guy whose background is Online Marketing, but I can’t help but be enthusiastic about this process because evidence doesn’t lie and it won’t lead you astray. If more companies were willing to take a leap of faith and reinvent how they hire, I guarantee the results will be tremendous. It works for my clients so it can work for you too.