You have years of people data at your fingertips. Applicant flow, interview notes, tests, performance, exit interviews, schedules, attendance, etc. The debate is no longer if you have the data. It is now if you use the hiring decisions that the data helps you make to withstand the true test.
Talent analytics and HR analytics claim to have the answers. Most business leaders have heard both terms bandied about as if they mean the same thing. They don’t. If you have high-volume hiring, the difference between talent analytics and HR analytics is costing you money, time, and credibility with your operators.
In this guide, we’ll separate the noise for you. We’ll show you what talent analytics is, what HR analytics is, the difference between the two, and how to leverage both into one business strategy that improves quality of hire, speed to fill, and retention.
What is Talent Analytics?
Talent analytics is all about the people lifecycle from first touch as a candidate through performance and then retention. You can use it to answer direct questions about who you hire, where you find them, and how long they stay.
At its core, talent analytics is simply recruiting and talent management analytics made into actual hiring decisions. It uses history instead of gut feel. In high volume roles, it becomes a signal engine. It tells you which candidates come out on top for performance and how they retain for longer.
Core focus of talent analytics
Talent analytics focuses on the following areas:
- Sourcing: Which sources deliver the people who stick around and perform.
- Screening: Which factors predict job, performance, and tenure success.
- Quality of hire: How new hires compare to expectations over time.
- Retention: Which hire characteristics and conditions correlate with tenure.
- Internal mobility: Which people have the greatest success after an internal move.
How talent analytics works in high volume hiring
In a high volume environment, you have floods of applications. Recruiters cannot read every resume in depth. Managers have the pressure of filling shifts. That’s where talent analytics acts as a filter, keeping your real constraints in mind.
The best talent analytics solutions have predictive hiring models based on your outcomes. You input historical data into the system, including who you hired, how they performed, and for how long. It learns the patterns that indicate high-performing, long-tenured talent for your business.
Then, you apply that to every new application. Instead of reading through resumes in alphabetical order, you prioritize the applicants based on their predicted performance and predicted tenure. The recruiter works on the ones who have the highest fit for the job and the highest chance of staying.
Talent analytics drives our solutions at Cadient, including the entire SmartSuite platform:
- SmartSource™: Highlight external sources that deliver high-performing, long-tenured talent to your business.
- SmartMatch™: Rank applicants against your actual hiring outcomes, rather than generic profiles.
- SmartScore™: Score applicants so your recruiters understand the true fit for the position at-a-glance.
- SmartTenure™: Predict retention, so you don’t have to sift through profiles that have high turnover rates.
What is HR Analytics?
HR analytics is a look at your overall workforce as a whole. HR analytics is a look at how your human resources policies, programs, and processes work as a whole, and it begins with hiring, among other things.
HR analytics is a broad HR data analytics perspective of your organization, and it relates your workforce trends to your business results and reveals issues that extend beyond your hiring process.
Core focus of HR analytics
HR analytics may include:
- Employee headcount, movement, and workforce planning.
- Compensation and pay equity.
- Engagement and culture metrics.
- Learning and development participation and effectiveness.
- Performance rating for different jobs and teams.
- Compliance, labor risk, and policy adherence.
HR analytics vs talent analytics in day-to-day work
Many HR organizations use HR analytics to answer questions for their executives. They extract HR data analytics from the core system, clean the data, and provide the analytics in the form of a dashboard for turnover, absenteeism, or diversity mix. They develop programs to address the hot spots and monitor the progress over time.
It is useful, but it is done at a different altitude than talent analytics. HR analytics says the turnover of front-line employees is high in the region. Talent analytics says what types of candidate behaviors are causing the turnover and how to change the hiring decisions tomorrow.
Key Differences Between Talent Analytics and HR Analytics
Talent analytics vs HR analytics is not a naming convention debate; it is a difference in the way each system helps inform your decisions and your operators’ decisions.
Scope of questions
Talent analytics is concerned with questions related to talent acquisition and internal movement. You use talent analytics to inform the composition of the offer, the mix of investments to make in sourcing, and the set of hiring managers that need to be managed.
HR analytics is the whole HR discipline. You use HR analytics to evaluate the state of your policies, design your benefits, plan your workforce, and defend your budget.
Time horizon and action
Talent analytics is often the source of short cycle decisions. This week, you decide which candidates to focus on, which requisitions to modify, and which tests to include in the mix.
HR analytics is often the source of medium or long cycle decisions. You redesign the onboarding experience, reset your compensation bands, or launch a new set of scheduling practices.
Level of detail
Talent analytics is in the details of every job and location. Talent analytics needs line level outcome data to drive prediction. Your hiring process for a warehouse associate in one location may not look the same in another location. Good talent analytics gets that.
HR analytics is often used to look at aggregates. You present trends by function, location, or other groups. The purpose is to see the patterns or risk for the entire company, not individual hiring needs.
Direct users and stakeholders
Recruiters, hiring managers, and talent leaders use talent analytics every day. They need simple signals that fit into their hiring processes. They also need to see the connection to the cost of turnover or time to fill.
HR analytics is used by the HR leadership team, operations leaders, or finance. The audience expects simple metrics, trends, and the connection to labor costs or productivity.
Relationship to workforce analytics
Another area of confusion is workforce analytics versus talent analytics. Workforce analytics is adjacent to HR analytics. Workforce analytics thinks of your people as a labor system. It measures scheduling, staffing rates, overtime, and productivity.
Talent analytics fits into this picture. It provides assurance that the people you bring into the workforce, and move around within the workforce, are the right people to support the workforce plan you hold in your hands.
When Enterprises Should Use Talent Analytics
You need talent analytics when your hiring speed and retention begin to impact your operations. If store managers are fighting over the same pool of applicants, or warehouse managers are complaining about turnover, your hiring process is probably in need of signal, rather than noise.
High volume hiring with high turnover cost
You need talent analytics most when you hire for the same position at high scale. That’s retail, hospitality, e-commerce, logistics, healthcare support, or large call centers. Small mistakes in quality of hire compound quickly.
Talent analytics helps you connect each hire’s profile to their tenure and performance outcomes. You no longer repeat patterns that cause early termination or poor hire. Over time, your average tenure increases, and your cost of turnover improves.
Recruiting teams stretched thin
When your recruiters have too many requisitions to fill, they take shortcuts. First in, first read. School preferences. Manager preferences. Talent analytics replaces these approaches with clear rankings and signals.
Our SmartMatch™ and SmartScore™ solutions power screening at scale. Recruiters see the best applicants first, even if they apply last or have an unexpected background. Speed, fairness, and accuracy – without slowing down the hiring process.
Need for consistent hiring quality across locations
For organizations, it is a problem when every location has a different set of rules in the hiring process. Talent analytics provides a common language based on outcomes, not opinions. Organizations can now compare the quality of the hiring process across markets and brands.
With the help of SmartTenure™, organizations will know which jobs or locations are bringing in people who tend to leave the organization early. With the help of SmartSource, organizations will know which marketing channels to allocate funds to, in order to ensure the retention of employees in the long term.
Direct link to business outcomes
Talent analytics links the hiring process with cost, time, and quality. Organizations will now know how the quality of the candidate pipeline is reducing the time to fill and increasing the quality of the employees.
This is where recruitment analytics and HR analytics come in. HR analytics would tell the organization that the turnover has reduced across the entire organization. Talent analytics will tell the organization which hiring decisions led to this, and how to sustain these results.
Compliance, risk, and equity
HR analytics is your ally when it comes to risk management, including pay equity studies, reporting, and tracking absences and incidents. This helps you make necessary adjustments and minimize risk.
Talent analytics is also useful in risk management, providing you with a paper trail of your hiring processes and allowing you to score candidates objectively. Your teams will be confident that your hiring criteria are related to job-related outcomes such as performance and tenure.
Program design and ROI
HR analytics is your ally when you’re designing or evaluating HR programs, such as establishing baselines, implementing new programs, and measuring changes in key metrics.
Talent analytics also intersects with HR analytics when you’re dealing with programs related to recruiting and internal mobility, such as new programs for referrals or new programs for promotions.
How Both Work Together in Enterprise Strategy
This is not a choice between talent analytics and HR analytics. We need both if we want to achieve intelligent high volume hiring within a healthy and sustainable workforce.
From strategy to daily hiring decisions
HR analytics guides the way. HR analytics identifies where turnover is a problem, where labor costs are increasing, and where engagement is a challenge.
Talent analytics turns those goals into decisions in every hire. HR analytics may have identified a turnover problem in a given region, and talent analytics will identify the hiring profile associated with the turnover, and the one that holds. Then, SmartMatch™, SmartScore™, and SmartTenure™ will bias the pipeline towards the winning profile.
Closed loop between hiring and workforce outcomes
Talent management analytics helps close the gap between the people you bring into the organization and the way the workforce behaves over time. We connect the people you bring into the organization to the metrics that the HR analytics system is tracking, such as internal movement, or the way people are performing.
Over time, you move from having one-off reports to a closed-loop system, where:
- HR analytics points to issues and trends in the workforce.
- Talent analytics points to the talent inputs that drive those issues.
- Managers make decisions based on the support of the tools.
- HR analytics measures the way the workforce is behaving over time.
Aligning recruiting, HR, and operations
Operations leaders have only one concern: filled shifts, high service levels, and safety. They want simple and reliable coverage. By integrating talent analytics and HR analytics, you provide the operators with a stable pipeline that aligns with their plans and standards.
HR analytics helps ensure that the numbers, shifts, and labor costs remain on target. Talent analytics helps ensure that each new hire is helping to reinforce this picture rather than undermining it.
Why Cadient focuses on intelligent high volume hiring
There are many platforms available for HR data analytics solutions. Few specialize in high volume hiring, where the name of the game is speed, accuracy, and retention. That’s why we built SmartSuite™, for HR analytics leaders who live with the pressure every day.
SmartSource™, SmartMatch™, SmartScore™, SmartTenure™, SmartScreen™, and SmartTexting™ apply talent analytics to every stage of your hiring process. They complement your HR analytics practice. Your organization maintains full visibility of your workforce, and your teams enjoy improved hiring results, reduced turnover costs, and faster time-to-fill.
If you are ready to replace guesswork with predictive hiring, with speed and fit, you can see how we at Cadient help you align your talent analytics with your HR analytics practice.
