Feature

Business intelligence in recruitment

The use of business intelligence software will change the IT recruitment scenario in the near future, predicts Sudipta Dev

IT recruitment is caught in a paradoxical situation. On the one hand companies are eager to induct new hires, while on the other the right candidate often proves elusive. On the other hand, hundreds (even thousands) of hopefuls who have sent in their particulars wait anxiously for an interview call. The twain seldom meet to their mutual satisfaction.

Data analysis can go a long way in making the hiring process faster and more efficient. This is where the application of business intelligence (BI) has a considerable impact on the hiring process.

BI relates to the tools and systems that play a key role in the strategic planning process of an organisation by gathering, storing and accessing data. Traditionally used by companies to solve problems related to distribution, sales, marketing and logistics, the next step is to use BI to supercharge the hiring process.

To make 250 offers, our team met 5,000 people and went through 20,000 biodatas Kris Lakshmikanth Managing Director Headhunters India	BI tools can be used to track blacklisted candidates. It becomes easier to weed them out Rajaram Agarwal Managing Director TalentAhead India

Bangalore-based Headhunters India has been using an in-house-developed proprietary BI tool for the last two years. Says Kris Lakshmikanth, its founder and managing director, “Search or recruitment companies like ours conduct recruitment day-in and day-out. In December, we generated over 250 offers with an average CTC of over Rs 3.5 lakh.” As a rule of thumb, Headhunters India would have to meet 5,000 people in order to make 250 offers. To meet 5,000 people, its team would have gone through 20,000 biodatas. “This is a massive task anytime, so BI tools are useful to us,” says Lakshmikanth. For executive search companies, whose earnings are solely dependent on the joining of the candidate, the BI tool is vital for converting offers into hires.

BI can help recruiters:

• Identify cities, companies or media from where they can recruit talent.
• Find the right recruitment company to partner with.
• Pick the college campuses that must be targeted.

Experts agree that the hiring process can be made more efficient by analysing data regarding existing employees to create a hiring profile. An organisation also needs to know the right mix of skills needed to achieve its business goals. Nirupama V G, executive vice-president, TeamLease Services, points out that some employers use data mining techniques to understand the characteristics of their top performers. “By understanding the characteristics of this group and rating them on parameters such as education, years of experience, skills and personality traits, a hiring profile can be established to recruit individuals who possess similar characteristics,” she says, adding that while this technique has been used many times, one must realise that the profiling is based on historical data which may not always successfully indicate who will be a top performers in the future as changes in social, economic and environmental conditions can throw a spanner in the works.

Improving the accuracy of hiring

BI can go a long way in improving the quality and accuracy of hiring, apart from ensuring faster recruitment and getting people on board quicker. Nirupama V G explains how: “The value that data mining provides is knowledge about patterns or events that you may not know. Data analysis gives you a direction in terms of the geographic spread, profile and companies that you can look to for hiring candidates with the required profiles. It helps us gain enterprise-wide visibility on cost management, resource allocation, staffing and talent acquisition processes.”

Gautam Sinha, CEO of TVA Infotech, believes that from an assessment point of view, accuracy of hiring can be improved if a company has BI tools that show a particular trend in their hiring process. For e.g., a company may find that people hired from a particular kind of company in the past have proved to be good fits with its own culture.

Providing false information in resumes is not an uncommon occurrence, and this is where tracking software can make a difference. “BI tools can be used to track blacklisted candidates. It becomes easier to weed them out,” notes Rajaram Agarwal, managing director of TalentAhead India.

Strategic decision-making

BI tools are useful for mapping software talent across geographies, particularly when a company wants to make the strategic decision of setting up a development centre and needs local talent. “It enables an organisation to pick the right city and create an infrastructure compatible with the availability. This is only possible when the company possesses intelligence that gives it a good idea of availability,” states Sinha. He adds that BI can be exceptionally useful in building potential pipelines for skills that are difficult to hire. A good recruiter needs to have a reasonable map of pools of talent across a city, company-wise and experience-wise. “In fact as an organisation we have mapped the entire software population of India across skills, companies and cities. We have a fair idea of how many people are available with which skill in which company and in which location. This map enables us to be able to target specific locations for a certain skill and quickly turn around relevant profiles,” informs Sinha.

Future wave

BI in hiring is all set to become a wave which will immensely benefit larger organisations and change the recruitment scenario in times to come. “The current trend is a fire-fighting exercise. The industry will mature, and perhaps two years own the line, it will be more meaningful,” opines Nirupama V G. She believes that in future, data analysis will have a significant impact on the hiring process. It will throw light on where to recruit from, what kind of timeframe companies need to budget for while acquiring talent with different skill-sets and so on.

Sinha concedes that BI is being applied to the sourcing side of the business to some degree, especially in the IT recruitment space. “This will accelerate in the current year as hiring will become more dependent on a company’s ability to harness intelligence data, and it will change IT recruitment in the next few years by making it more process- and systems-driven as compared to now.” Further, it will help hiring managers to make their decisions based on some factual inputs. All in all, it will be about getting the right candidate at the right time at the lowest possible cost.

sudipta@expresscomputeronline.com