The worst enemy of good analysis is bad data. As the old adage goes, garbage in equals garbage out. No matter how diligent the members of your team (sales, recruiting, finance, etc.) are, given enough time, data entry errors always creep in, which means your reports will become increasingly inaccurate, and you will begin to make bad decisions about your business.

But this does not have to be the case. Outlined below are three concrete steps you can take as a manager or owner to improve the data that drives your ability to make good decisions.

Step 1. Pick Your Battles
You have a ton of data, but most of it doesn’t matter for tracking the key performance indicators (KPIs) that drive your business. Don’t ask your team to spend time meticulously maintaining information that doesn’t ultimately and tangibly drive performance.

To pick your battles with data entry (which is what you’re really fighting), start with this quick checklist:
• Identify the important values and activities
• Don’t ask your team to do any more than the minimum
• Start with KPIs that have a quick and visible payback for the team

Step 2. Make Data Quality a KPI
If you plan to compete on analytics, then data quality is a performance driver. In a weekly review with your sales rep you might say: “Hey John, great job placing those 2 candidates last week, but I noticed you have 3 data errors that are impacting your performance metrics this week already. I need you to clean those up today.”

Use errors in the indicators you selected from point 1 above as a negative when evaluating performance.

Among our clients, we tend to see that the majority of data errors are relatively quick fixes: a mis-typed salary range on a job, a missing end date on a job, a misplaced decimal on a fee arrangement, etc. The typical staffing firm has data errors on 60% of their job orders. (That is a lot of errors!)

Step 3. Fix It With Smart Guesses
If your average placement is $20k and you have a single Job Order in your pipeline worth $2M, you know that something is wrong. Or if a pay rate for a contract job is blank, you know that the job isn’t going to pay at 100% margin. So what can you do about it?

Fix this with a good guess. For example, take your average margin and the value of the Job Order, or if you’ve done enough business with that client, you can take their average margin or if not, the average margin for your collective client base.

Think you can do this in Excel? Probably, assuming that you are good with Excel and have the time. Could you write a few rules down that you could delegate to an admin to do every week? Probably, as long as there aren’t any anomalies. Think someone could write software to do this in an automated fashion, with better precision, available on demand? We do too.

Imperfect data should not prevent you from being analytical. Use this 3-step approach to get some quick wins and get on the analytics band wagon.

If you can’t find what you need on your own, let us know by submitting a ticket to Support. While we are giving you more ways to answer your questions, you can still count on our exceptional customer service. 

So, take a look around and tell us what you think. We’re here to help you.

One of you called it an “absolute must” – and with the many votes it received, you were right! Now, when composing a new message, you have the option to reference a single or multiple candidates, much like you’ve been doing all along with your jobs and placements. No more sorting through your sent messages to add them as notes to your candidate records manually – having this new ability to directly reference a candidate on any email makes it quicker and easier than ever to track your conversations with clients against the candidate record.
The second email feature was something that garnered even more buzz on Bullhorn Brainstorm – and with even more votes, adding this feature was also no-brainer. When responding to a job note via email, you can have your reply automatically log as a note on that job by selecting the new As Note to All Recipients option from the Reply drop-down. Previously, this was accomplished by having to remember to re-reference the job each time using the Record Action and Job Reference fields at the bottom of the Compose a Message screen.

In a staffing world all about connections, these days, having a LinkedIn profile is a virtual necessity. With this fact in mind, you’ll be glad to hear that Bullhorn and LinkedIn are now even more tightly integrated with one another than they were before. Previously, clicking on the LinkedIn icon at the top of your company record would simply launch a LinkedIn search for that company in a new window. Now, when you click on that familiar LinkedIn icon, Bullhorn not only shows you how many contacts at that company you’re connected with, but also gives you the option to either view LinkedIn’s full search results for that company, or to navigate directly to one of the contact’s LinkedIn profiles. And for those of you who still don’t have a LinkedIn account – what are you waiting for? Clicking on the icon in this case gives you the option to register.
This last feature is accessible only to administrators, but is sure to benefit your entire office. Introducing the Bullhorn System Status page: a round-the-clock, easily accessible web page that communicates all Bullhorn system activity – internal issues, ISP issues, planned maintenance windows, etc. directly to you. With access to this page, instead of always reaching out to Support with a question, you’ll be able to quickly determine the cause of your performance issues and relay the information to your users within seconds.

We hope you benefit from these features and use them to your fullest advantage.  Remember, many of these ideas came directly from you – so keep the feedback coming! Who knows – maybe your bright idea will be the next new feature listed here.

The Bullhorn Administration Forum can help you maximize your experience by providing helpful tips, best practices, peer-to-peer support and direct answers to administration questions (including the questions above).  Best of all, the forum is free for all Bullhorn users.  Simply select the Bullhorn Support Forums option on your Support menu.
And the Administration forum is just the begriming.  Forums exist for a wide range of tops, from API Integration, to Wireless Sync.  Forums are updated daily, so you always have access to the latest and greatest information.  Additionally, you can subscribe to a topic and be automatically emailed when that topic is updated – a great way to keep up with changes in Bullhorn. 
 

Hundreds of topics, thousands of posts, and the entire Bullhorn Community at your fingertips… Support Forums are just one more way we help you Live In Bullhorn.