Big Data

Human Resource departments have a long history of investment in software and systems devoted entirely to capturing, reporting, and securely storing its people data. Solutions to manage capital more effectively has been another focus for HR departments. The primary reason for the big push to Big Data has been due directly to the fact that data gathering tools have become more accessible and available.

If you look at all of these investments in context, you can understand the significance and importance of HR’s gradual movement toward Big Data-style analytics. Human Resource departments have improved the quality of their decisions by examining the company’s own operational data. This represents the beginning of HR’s shift toward true talent management. HR has also moved toward actual data analysis – looking at past events for useful insights on how to make future sourcing and hiring decisions. Finally, HR uses data to determine probable future outcomes of human capital decisions, which represents a huge leap in terms of extracting value from data. Before HR information management systems and similar tools were widely available, HR departments were forced to make human capital and hiring decisions based on past experiences, opinions and hunches. The push towards Big Data has improved the process and identified talent and solutions considerably faster.

One of the biggest edges created by the use of data is allowing HR departments to capitalize on more powerful technologies that provide larger amounts of data that make more accurate and evidence based decisions. They are able to take faster action of decisions. Employers hire because they have an immediate need for talent. The faster they have access to information, the better it will be for execution of their business objectives. Uniformed sourcing and hiring practices lead inevitably to hiring delays and poor candidate selection. This delays the implementation of successful business objectives.

Big Data analysis surely seems a daunting task when it comes to hiring professionals who may feel like they are now being asked to take on the additional role of data scientist. However, business and nature both have a disdain for delays and road blocks, so several providers have arisen to fill the void and do the heavy Big Data lifting for HR.

Big Data analysis has the ability to give organizations highly accurate predictions on which job boards will provide the best candidate audience — by function, department, skill set, and location.

Leveraging a vendor’s database with the company’s own database can be an eye opening experience, to say the least. It also provides a sooner-than later approach as they develop stronger in-house capabilities. It does not look like the use of Big Data is going anywhere. In fact, perspective employees need to be aware of its presence and create their business resumes accordingly.

Source: HR and Big Data: It’s a Union with Limitless Possibilities.” TLNT. Web. 22 Jan. 2013.