Partner Article

Data science is vital to hiring success in an SME

Recruiting new staff for SMEs has always been too time-consuming, expensive and error-prone. The cost of making a bad hire is huge but businesses make them all the time. It’s become such a norm that we’ve all become immune to just how painful hiring is.

The scale of the recruitment challenge for businesses was highlighted by our recent research which revealed that 41% of hiring managers have compromised on the quality of recruits because they couldn’t find suitable candidates. Reducing the time to hire was one of the top priorities for the coming year, according to 42% of the respondents.

The good news is, recruitment needn’t be such a hassle and drain on your resources. As an SME, time is precious and you can’t afford to make a wrong hire. There is technology out there, in the form of deep data science, which can and imminently will, change the recruitment landscape forever. SMEs need to be aware of what this powerful technology can do and how they can leverage it to benefit their recruitment processes.

Harnessing data science

Data science is key to making the right hire. Together with the benefits of a genuinely commercial marketplace, today’s hiring problems could soon become a thing of the past. It’s not just about improving the recruitment process; what’s needed is a complete paradigm shift, bringing the average time to recruit someone from 60 days right down to 10. Add to that higher quality candidates, easy-to-use and inexpensive processes, and you have a much better chance of success.

So what does data science mean for SMEs?

Data science is the new oil powering the information economy. On a large enough scale, it can enable businesses to cut the time it takes to recruit high quality staff considerably. But for this to become a reality you need algorithmic processes that analyse every detail across millions of CVs and in seconds present a shortlist of individuals that meet all the criteria. Analysing someone’s CV can help build a more accurate picture of them so you can predict which candidates are likely to be best suited to a role, based on their career paths and qualifications.

Finding and hiring new staff should be exciting for SMEs. You’ve got a vision for your business, you know what skills you need to bring in but when you go looking for them you hit a brick wall. The reality is that all too often your search for the best candidate is like looking for a needle in a haystack and ends with you signing on the dotted line for the best of a bad bunch. Sound familiar? Be assured, you can do something about it!

What can SMEs do about it?

Businesses need to realise the power of big data to help them find the talent they would like to hire. Rather than leaving it to the tech experts, businesses need to help their whole organisation understand and learn to embrace big data. It’s influencing the way everyday processes occur – it’s the same technology behind Google which sifts through the entire internet to find exactly what you need. Apply this properly to recruitment and the results are extraordinary.

We’ve hired someone for our UK team in four days from start to finish this week. That included three rounds of interviews so rest assured if we can do it, you can! It will be quicker, cheaper, and easier than you ever thought possible.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Talent Party .