Big data is having an impact on every aspect of business today, and recruitment is no exception. Many HR managers are increasingly turning to big data to find the right people for the right position. This idea of using big data for recruitment is called people analytics, and has been adopted extensively by many companies, especially those in the call center industry. In fact, call centers have been one of the biggest beneficiaries of people analytics because of its high attrition rates and the difficulty of HR managers to find people who are willing to work in stressful environments.
An example of such a call center is Xerox. This company has used the power of big data to reduce its attrition rate by 20 percent. When Xerox embraced big data, its aim was to recover $5,000 worth of work from every worker as this was the amount the company spent on hiring and training every employee. After a trial period of six months, the company has been able to reduce its attrition rate, so it is going full-fledged with big data.
The reason for the success of big data in recruiting is that it is able to identify people with the right skills for each job. Earlier, recruiters relied on work history and interviews, but they proved to be ineffective for the call center industry. To counter this ineffectiveness, personality tests and data analysis were used to predict specific outcomes such as whether a prospective hire will quit the company or whether an employee would steal information. Variables such as attitude towards alcohol and drugs as well as the distance for the applicant to commute are taken into account to make such intelligent predictions.
The analysis of these variables has given call center companies the answer to one of their biggest challenges – attrition. Going forward, more companies are expected to get on the bandwagon of people analytics.