Between managing fundraising campaigns, donor relationships, volunteers, and employee recruitment, life as a nonprofit professional can feel like an overwhelming juggling act. You need every asset at your disposal to pull off your act without dropping anything—which is why data, as a straightforward and actionable resource, is so important.Â
Leveraging data-driven insights is especially crucial when recruiting—after all, new team members can make or break your nonprofit’s long-term success. In this guide, we’ll explore how to collect recruitment data effectively and use it to take your organization to new heights.Â
1. Identify and Track Important Data Points
It can be easy to get bogged down by excessive data from many sources. However, you can cut through the confusion by establishing focus metrics at the beginning of the data collection and review process. Lever’s guide to talent acquisition metrics suggests looking at the following data points:
| Metric | What it measures |
| Time to fill | The time it takes from a job position opening to when a candidate is hired and onboarded |
| Time to hire | The time between when a candidate applies for a job and when they accept an offer |
| Source of hire | How popular each source is for attracting candidates |
| Candidate diversity | How diverse your candidate hiring pool is |
| Attrition rate | How many employees leave your organization over a certain period of time |
| Quality of hire | The overall performance of a candidate over the course of their first year |
| Applicants per role | How many candidates applied for certain roles |
| Cost per hire | How much it costs to hire for a role (including team time and recruitment resources) |
| Offer acceptance rate | The percentage of candidates who accept an offer out of how many received one |
| Number of open positions | How many roles need to be filled at a certain point in time |
| Sourcing channel effectiveness | Which channels (such as job boards, social media sites, and career communities) deliver the highest ROI for your recruiting efforts |
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When choosing your focus recruitment metrics, ensure you understand how best to collect the data. For instance, you can calculate a position’s offer acceptance rate immediately by using quantitative data. However, quality of hire requires qualitative feedback from managers and takes longer to collect.Â
2. Use Recruitment-Focused Technology
Using purpose-built recruitment solutions is ideal for making your operations more efficient. Still, it isn’t often feasible for nonprofits with strict budgets, especially as many solutions in the space are built for larger organizations. However, JazzHR suggests that nonprofits of all sizes leverage solutions tailor-made for small organizations.Â
At the highest level, you can use an applicant tracking system (ATS) made for small businesses and nonprofits. An ATS allows you to manage every aspect of your recruitment process, from sourcing candidates to scheduling interviews to securing offers. It’s a great investment for nonprofits that want to gain an edge over businesses and other organizations using similar talent pools.
If you aren’t ready for an end-to-end recruiting solution, take it a step lower and use a standalone recruiting tool. These solutions are more general than an ATS and manage smaller parts of the hiring process, such as interview scheduling, marketing, or candidate communications.Â
3. Ensure Recruitment Data Accuracy
For your recruitment data to be useful, it must be completely accurate. However, effectively maintaining your database is easier said than done. Follow these easy data hygiene tips to keep the information you need clean and useful:
- Standardize data entry forms. Start from the source to improve the quality of your recruitment data. Make all information fields identical on applications and other relevant forms, and communicate exactly what the formatting should look like (for example, formatting an address as 123 Main Street versus 123 Main St.).
- Ensure the software can flag discrepancies. Human error can significantly impact the quality of your database’s records. Optimal recruitment databases save you time by immediately identifying and rectifying issues, such as duplicate records or formatting errors.Â
- Schedule regular audits. Ideally, your software should flag and fix errors immediately. But depending on your database’s capabilities, you might need to set aside time to audit data, especially if you have a large incoming batch of records. Schedule comprehensive audits at consistent intervals (such as every month or quarter).Â
4. Maintain Privacy Compliance
Just like the data in your CRM, recruitment data inherently contains personal information that your nonprofit must protect. A whopping 92% of Americans are concerned about their online privacy, and protecting private data helps you maintain a stellar employer brand and candidate trust. Plus, some regulations hold more serious penalties, so you’ll avoid any negative outcomes by adhering to them. Keep these tips in mind to help manage data correctly:
- Adhere to data management best practices. For instance, the EU’s GDPR regulations state that you should only collect data that is absolutely necessary and that you cannot store personal information longer than necessary for specific purposes.Â
- Create a Privacy Policy. This statement explains how you’ll use and collect data, how it’ll be stored, and who has access to it. You should also highlight your commitment to respecting candidate privacy to fortify trust and transparency.Â
- Obtain consent. Before collecting, storing, and using candidate data, you must get the user’s permission by informing them exactly what it’ll be used for and why. You can do so by referencing your Privacy Policy and including a consent checkbox candidates must click to submit any forms.
Even if you aren’t actively hiring, you should always collect recruitment data and maintain its quality. After all, roles can open up unexpectedly, so you must be prepared for any situation. During slow hiring periods, brush up on current nonprofit recruitment trends and revisit your strategy. Then, when the time comes, you’ll be able to attract the best talent to help you effectively manage your juggling act.Â
