Recruitment marketers are only as strong as the data they have at their fingertips. But so often that data is stale, incomplete, or inaccurate, leading to frustrating inefficiencies and high costs of talent acquisition. We commonly hear from our clients that their marketing teams don’t have the candidate data they need to be successful, but that updating their full database is a project that’s simply too big and too time-consuming. Hence, the importance of data hygiene.
Data hygiene refers to the process of maintaining cleanliness, accuracy, and consistency of data. This is done through constant maintenance, monitoring, and adjustments. Data hygiene can also refer to the standardization of data and removal of outdated, irrelevant, and duplicate data.
Data hygiene is important to recruiting because inaccurate or inconsistent data can lead to poor decision-making, wasted resources, and missed opportunities to hire the best candidates. Inaccurate or outdated data can result in the duplication of efforts, the misinterpretation of candidate information, and the inability to access critical information at the right time, leading to delays or mistakes in the hiring process.
Maintaining clean and accurate data in recruiting ensures that recruiting tools have access to relevant, up-to-date, and comprehensive information on candidates, which can help them make better-informed hiring decisions. These recruiting automation tools rely on accurate data to personalize and action campaigns based on triggers, experience, and other criteria.
We get it. The thousands (maybe millions?) of candidates in your database are constantly changing jobs, skills, phone numbers, and email addresses. No human could realistically keep up with an ever-evolving talent pool while maintaining a pristine ATS. Luckily, they don’t have to. Meet your new best pal: database automation.
With unemployment at a peak and spare time at a premium, automation is here to befriend your marketing team and tidy up that messy situation known as your ATS. It’s an important task because having a stale database has far-reaching effects beyond just frustration for you and your teams. Inaccurate data can create inefficiencies across your business, increase acquisition costs, delay time-to-hire, and eventually lead to lower candidate engagement rates. Bad data doesn’t just irk your recruiters — it hinders your entire marketing and hiring engine.
When your recruiting team doesn’t trust the data in your ATS to give them good results, they inevitably turn to more expensive and poorly targeted inbound resources like job boards, or spin their wheels on manual, time-consuming outbound efforts. Of course, neither of these solutions is scalable or cost effective. But if your database is up-to-date — and your recruiters have confidence that it’s a valuable source — you can tap into a network of talent you’ve already paid for, pre-screened, or even hired previously. Your marketing team will have the tools they need target them with the right opportunities, nurture warm leads, and communicate strategically, so the handoff to recruiting is both quick and seamless.
The best part is that you can use database automation however you want. Think of your ATS like your home. (Because, if we’re being honest, you do kinda live there at times... right?) To keep things at a baseline level of tidiness, you might set up a regular deep clean where you ensure your candidate contact info is up-to-date and accurate. Then you might layer in a consistent maintenance plan — your weekly housekeeper, perhaps? — that keeps things humming along smoothly. And, of course, there’s the ad-hoc cleanup that’s inevitable after a big event... like, say, a recruiter leaving the company. With any big change, you can seamlessly change contact owners and communicate with candidates to keep those strong relationships intact.
In a nutshell, here's how to clean data in your recruiting database:
Ok, we admit cleaning house isn’t super fun. But cleaning up your database – that’s a game-changer. Given the high volume of applicants in today’s employment landscape, busy staffing teams need the support of technology to keep up.
Database hygiene automation turns your ATS into a self-cleaning, self-generating sourcing machine. It helps you reach out directly to candidates to ask questions like “Are you currently available for full-time work?” or “Are you skilled in Microsoft Excel?” You can update or overwrite any field in your ATS — even previously unsynced fields. Without your team lifting a finger, fully-integrated technology will target designated audiences to collect and update addresses, phone numbers, placements, skills, and more.
This type of robust data enrichment empowers your marketing team to play a more strategic role in recruiting with more and better data. You’ll be able to move faster, reduce acquisition costs, and provide a more engaging experience throughout the talent lifecycle. Automation alleviates the need for human efforts to keep candidate information up-to-date, offering a more reliable and efficient way to keep your data fresh.
Want to learn how you can leverage your database for recruiting automation? Read our Recruiting Automation Playbook.
Ready to clean house? Let us introduce you to your marketers’ new best friend. To see how Sense can automate and organize your database, contact us to schedule a demo.
