How Fast-Growing Companies Can Benefit from Talent Analytics

One of the critical aspects to organisational success in today’s job market is attracting and retaining talent. From developing a nuanced comprehension of the demographic characteristics to accurately predicting cultural fit, new hire success has never been more complex. 

And although a host of factors contribute to the evaluation process, the ability to gauge a candidate’s motivations, aspirations, and capabilities through analytics is increasingly proving to be the critical ingredient for a thriving workplace.

For fast-growing companies hoping to attract and retain top talent, an important aspect of talent management strategy is the swift adoption of data-driven performance evaluation techniques. 

Considering how quickly industry and technology are changing, talent analytics allows organisations to update their decision-making process in real-time and predict future growth as well as human capital needs.

But there’s more to talent analytics than just assigning applicants a grade.

By fine-tuning its approach to performance reviews, management can better tailor its hiring and compensation policies. Strategic use of talent analytics can help companies optimise employee potential, enhance teamwork, and boost productivity. 

More than that, it can ward off the hiring challenges during growth periods. But what are these challenges, and how can they be addressed? 

The Hiring Challenge: MENA’s Case

The MENA region is swiftly becoming a hub of opportunities, standardised education, and diversity. More and more Fortune 500 firms are relocating to the region, attracted by its growing economy, valuable market opportunities, and increasing spending power of its population. In fact, states are going head-to-head in a bid to attract foreign companies.

As reported by Bloomberg, Saudi Arabia established contact with 7,000 global firms in 2021 while providing operational licenses to the likes of PepsiCo, Baker Hughes, Deloitte, Unilever, amongst others. 

On the talent front, too, MENA is considerably soaring through the ranks. Recently, a record nine universities from MENA featured in the global university rankings of 2021 (up from two to three, five years ago). Indeed, natural talent abounds in the region. 

However, the challenge of developing a robust talent pipeline that can feed into this growing industry remains. This challenge is more upstream and pertains to the administration of the overall talent acquisition process.

The current approach to talent acquisition involves a lot of post-hoc analysis and research based on historical data. What modern companies need is a more scientific hiring method, where a balanced mixture of technology, analytics, and positive behaviour-driven training can be applied to triage the best applicants.

The Business Case for Talent Analytics

Clearly, better management of human capital is the need of the hour. But how would it help companies from the MENA region leapfrog the hiring challenges they encounter?

Better, Faster Candidate Sourcing and Targeting

When combined with AI, talent analytics can speed up sourcing, screening, and targeting of candidates. For companies that need more skilled candidates, the use of AI will help them zero in on potential hires. 

For example, when it comes to job descriptions, X0PA’s AI Recruiter works by automatically aggregating the relevant candidate profiles, courtesy of integration with third parties. This helps narrow the scope of job matches and shortens the time to hire.

In fact, candidates can be retargeted through the platform, which maintains the existing talent pool data. This saves time as well as ensures that the talent pool stays current with the business’s hiring requirements.

Objective & Inclusive Hiring

To begin with, objective talent analytics, if implemented correctly, allows organisations to attract the right people at a more efficient pace. It ensures that the hiring process is free of bias and gender discrimination and furthers the notion of boosting employee diversity.

For instance, AI Recruiter adds to the objectivity by measuring CV’s relevance, predicting performance and loyalty, and masking personal information to advance the idea of inclusivity. 

When the objective of hiring is aligned with the organisation’s strategic goals, it can additionally reduce recruitment costs and assist in making informed decisions about potential employees.

Automated Process Scheduling

When combined with natural language processing (NLP) and Robotic Process Automation (RPA), talent analytics platforms become adept at keeping everyone in the loop. RPA is integrated into systems to complete mundane tasks at a faster pace. 

Our approach to automation, therefore, has been to make the process as simple and efficient as possible. The AI Recruiter powered by RPA helps schedule the interviews, manage back and forth emails with candidates and managers, and provide offers via DocuSign. 

Making Sense of Talent Analytics

Predicting talent requirements is not just about predicting the kind of talent that will be needed in a few months’ time. It’s about anticipating the potential changes that are likely to occur — especially at a startup.

To that end, talent analytics can help you to:

• Disrupt Trends, Plan Ahead: The workforce in MENA is currently in a state of transition. The need to adapt and extend trends is a constant concern. For example, the current workforce must maintain agility in the face of industry disruption. In this context, talent analytics tools help companies by identifying upcoming trends, better understanding projected employee growth, and enabling faster hiring decisions.
• Scale Up: Unstable growth, limited resources, and a need to scale up are all factors that can limit the scaling capacity of an organisation. Talent analytics can help companies by identifying key growth drivers and optimising spending on talent. This translates to better operational efficiency and superior productivity.
• Capitalise on New Opportunities: Talent analytics can help businesses capitalise on new job openings by identifying potential replacements in advance. This requires taking a multi-dimensional view of the employee landscape, which can be done by tracking factors like performance, skill maintenance, and attrition.
• Tap into the Best Talent: The competition for talent in the MENA region is fierce. Instead of sifting through a large pool of unqualified candidates, employers can utilise talent analytics tools to identify the best talent and engage them proactively.

The Bottom Line

The MENA region continues to be an attractive destination for many companies. While the job market is growing, there’s still a need for large-scale recruitment. With talent analytics, organisations can improve their hiring process and ensure that they are best placed to attract and retain talent.

Interested in learning more about our talent analytics tools for candidate screening and hiring? Schedule a demo to see how our AI Recruiter can help your organisation solve your toughest hiring challenges.