At the end of 2024, 67% of recruitment industry leaders told us that they would be focusing on re-engaging their existing database as their main candidate acquisition strategy – and for a good reason. With job board prices on the rise, it’s vital that you know how to maximise the return on investments. Making the most out of each candidate isn’t just about browsing through CVs to find that top talent – it’s about making sure you know exactly what candidates you’ve already got and being able to efficiently match the warm talent in your pipeline to new roles.

That’s where data intelligence comes in – and if you use it correctly, you won’t only reduce your spending, but also create a bulletproof growth strategy that won’t falter when the market changes.

What is recruitment data intelligence?

In essence, recruitment data intelligence is the process of gathering data insights from various sources to make informed, data-driven decisions that positively impact your agency. If you have a clear understanding of the market and how your agency is performing on all different levels, you know exactly what adjustments to make when to maximise the output of your agency. Strategic planning becomes a lot clearer, as you have an overview of your recruiters’ performance and where they fall short.

How to enrich your recruitment strategy with data-intelligence

The value of data is paramount – but there are a lot of different ways in which you could implement it into your strategy and processes. If you want to get ahead in 2024, make sure you:

Make use of benchmarking: Being able to see where your agency is in comparison to your competitors at any given time will allow you to understand your agency and market better. For instance, if your number of applications has been down, you can have a look at your competitors’ average to determine whether it’s an internal problem or a market problem that everyone else is struggling with – and act accordingly. Implement a process for reviewing your data against the industry every month or quarter, so you have a clear overview of the situation. Look at:

• Engaged candidates (to understand database health)
• Supply of active candidates (to understand the impact of different sourcing channels)
• Number of successful placements (to understand how effectively you are converting)
• The flow of applications by new and existing candidates (to understand your reliance on external sourcing strategies)

Understanding how you measure up against your competitors will also allow you to determine your agency’s unique value and differentiators. If you see others falling short in some areas, but your agency is coming out on top, it might be the time to shout about it externally and double the impact.

Learn to determine your unique value proposition here!

Implement real-life reporting: The key to becoming agile and growing your agency is knowing how it’s performing at all times. Tracking metrics like:

• Sources of applications
• Time to fill
• Cost per placement
• Click through rates on your job ads
• Submit to interview ratio
• Cost per conversion

Will allow you to plan strategically based on raw numbers and make more accurate decisions. The best way to ensure success is to implement data reviews into your regular processes. Whether it’s during monthly planning meetings or whilst setting quarterly objectives, setting a plan of action in relation to your agency’s data is the key to success.

Engage your team with KPI setting: Did you know that 71% of businesses name poor data analytics skills as their main growth challenge? Making sure that your recruiters are included in the strategic planning and can set their own KPIs based on the agency’s bigger goals and objectives not only ensures that they learn to look at their data and utilise it in their work, but also keeps them more dedicated towards your agency’s growth.  

Make sure that you’re guiding your team as to what KPIs are truly important – for them and the agency as a whole. Ensure you present the priority KPIs for the agency, starting with conversion rates and time to fill – these measure tangible outcomes of all your recruitment efforts, and are the high-level things you need to track. Based on these, your recruiters can then work out for themselves how many specific actions, such as calls, they need to take in order to achieve set goals. These are also good to measure in order to determine whether they’re targeting the right people – if their arbitrary metrics are out of the ordinary, it might be good to look deeper into who they’re speaking to.

KPIs should be tied to tangible outcomes, rather than arbitrary (vanity) metrics. Measure conversion rates and time to fill, as the priority. Metrics like the number of calls made are only good metrics if you are using data intelligence to make sure you're targeting the right people.