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Reflecting on data from the previous hiring season
Reflecting on data from the previous hiring season

How to leverage data to improve your hiring processes and attract great talent

Nicole Grandinetti avatar
Written by Nicole Grandinetti
Updated over a year ago

As students and teachers head back to classrooms for the start of the school year, hiring for next year’s vacancies can feel light years away. It’ll be here before you know it though, and now is a great time to prepare by reviewing recent data to inform your future decisions.

To help with this, you can access real-time data on your hiring pipeline and vacancies within the Nimble system. These dashboards help you gain insights into hiring trends to make data-driven decisions about recruitment and hiring.

Of course, you know your context best, so you should structure your data reflection in a way that works best for you. To get you started, we’ve compiled the following guiding questions to drive these reflections as you plan for the next school year.

Vacancy Dashboard

Before you start looking at vacancy data, check to see if you have any unplaced candidates (e.g. candidates who were hired but are not associated with a vacancy). Be sure to place those candidates in the appropriate vacancy on this page.

For the following charts, be sure to select the correct hiring season. You can also use filters to examine trends in different content areas or schools.

Vacancy fill rate chart

  1. Did you fill all vacancies?

  2. If not, where were the gaps? Were there certain schools or content areas more likely to have unfilled vacancies?

  3. What might you do to prioritize those schools and/or content areas for the next hiring season?

Vacancies over time chart

  1. Were there any points in the year when vacancies peaked?

  2. If yes, could this info help you allocate time and resources during specific points in the upcoming hiring season?

Pipeline Dashboard

Similar to the Vacancy Dashboard, be sure to select the correct hiring season as you reflect on pipeline data.

Diversity

  1. What are your reactions to the data? If you have specific goals around candidate diversity, how does the data compare to those goals?

  2. What will this inform about your recruitment strategy for the upcoming hiring season (e.g. organizations you might partner with, recruitment events you will prioritize, etc.)?

Sources

  1. Which sources have brought the most candidates to your organization?

  2. Which sources have brought the most hires to your organization?

  3. What will this inform about your recruitment strategy for the upcoming hiring season (e.g. where to spend time and resources when it comes to finding top talent)?

Nimble Tip: If you want to look at the diversity and source for hired applicants only, select your organization's hired status from the filters on each chart.

If you don’t already have recruitment and hiring metrics, you can use current data as baselines and set goals for where you want to be this time next year. Depending on the processes in your organization, you may want to align your goals with larger strategic plans or overarching district priorities. It can be helpful to loop in stakeholders like senior leaders and other HR/recruitment team members as you go through this process. Check out “Recruit SMARTER: Setting Adaptive Recruitment Goals” by Dr. Ryan Nobles on the Nimble blog for tips on how to engage with the goal-setting process.

In addition to reflecting on your hiring data annually, consider scheduling monthly or quarterly data review meetings to monitor your progress toward these goals and adjust your strategy in real time. By reflecting and acting on your hiring data throughout the year, you will be able to make the most informed decisions about how to bring the best talent into your schools.


Free resources:

  1. Check out this sample data review meeting agenda to help you facilitate meetings with your team.

  2. Hiring season preparation checklist to help you track your readiness for the upcoming hiring season.

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