Today’s talent tech allows TA leaders to leverage skills intelligence and outcome tracking to significantly improve results.

By Debbie Bolla 

Hiring managers often play a central role in building a workforce of high performers. From the first step of role creation to the final candidate selection, hiring managers have a significant impact on the talent acquisition process. Candidate feedback, communication, engagement, and decision-making are all critical steps in making the right hire—and today’s technology and data analytics are game-changers for improving the process.  

Research shows that AI recruitment technology and data analytics offer many benefits to hiring, with organizations reporting significant post-implementation improvements, including the following. 

• Time-to-hire reduced by up to 50%. 

• Hiring costs reduced between 30% and 40%. 

• 98% of hiring managers report improved hiring efficiency with AI tools. 

• 67% of recruiters say AI saves time during the recruitment process. 

Christine Bonk, chief operating officer for Orion Talent, emphasizes that the greatest value of technology is not automation alone, but the insights and acceleration it enables across the hiring lifecycle.  

• Skills intelligence: Offers visibility into the capabilities that are most leveraged and the capabilities that are missing.  
• Labor market analytics: Provides critical intelligence around talent scarcity, compensation pressure, and geographic constraints to hiring managers before searches are even launched.
• Outcome tracking: Allows TA leaders to measure time-to-productivity or identify early performance indicators when systems connect recruiting data to workforce data. 

When organizations leverage these insights effectively, hiring shifts from reactive to predictive. Research from LinkedIn finds that organizations with data-driven hiring processes have up to 70% improvement in hiring outcomes and a nearly 30% decrease in employee turnover. Bonk says that organizations receive a competitive advantage when they gain insights from their data. For example, tracking the ebb and flow of hiring demand can signal to TA leaders when to build candidate pipelines. Understanding compensation practices can help prevent turnover. Having intel on skills that are scarce can allow organizations to bring that skill-building in-house in order to fill sought-after reqs. 

“Data also helps us prioritize,” Bonk says. “It’s about connecting hiring decisions directly to workforce risk and performance, not just filling seats.”