Chris Pham, LinkedIn Jennifer Shappley, LinkedIn By forecasting hiring demand and building a process and organizational muscle to dynamically manage recruiting capacity, LinkedIn’s Talent Acquisition department has been able move from constantly playing catch-up with hiring demand, to getting ahead and dynamically moving resources around to where the need is the highest. In this session, we will provide insight into one of the many ways data-driven recruiting is done at LinkedIn. We will also show how the process and modeling that the Talent Analytics and Operations team has been able to implement has allowed LinkedIn’s recruiting teams to project business demand, right-size themselves accordingly and ultimately save LinkedIn money. Session highlights: How we set up a framework to hold recruiting teams accountable to capacity plan. How LinkedIn got Talent Acquisition, Human Resources, and FP&A to align. How using data to estimate hires within 5% of actual volume, and staffing recruiting teams accordingly, allowed us to give back to the business. Check out the best of Talent Connect: http://bit.ly/2e5ojNe

2. ​ Jennifer Shappley
​ Director, Talent Acquisition, LinkedIn
How LinkedIn Used Data to Drive Recruiting Efficiency

3. ​ Chris Pham
​ Data Scientist, LinkedIn
How LinkedIn Used Data to Drive Recruiting Efficiency

4. • The analytics performed to estimate hires
• How we achieved alignment between
Recruiting, HR, and Finance
• How we held Recruiting accountable
• Impact and lessons learned
• Q&A
Agenda

5. LinkedIn operates the largest professional network on the internet
450M+
members around
the globe
+2
new members
per second
10K
employees
worldwide
30
cities around
the globe
45%
headcount growth
rate per year

6. Headcount Plan is finalized
Visualization shown is for illustrative purposes only
With timing of budget planning cycles,
Recruiting is never in line with business demand

7. How does Recruiting become more strategic when
it comes to meeting hiring demand?

8. Forecasting hires and staffing Recruiting teams accordingly
Workforce Plan
-forecasting hiring demand-
Incremental Hiring Backfill Hiring “Ripple” Effect
FP&A Incremental
Headcount Plan
Org Shape
Incremental Hiring
by Level!
Attrition Rates
Transfer
Probabilities
Promotion
Rates
Probability of
Internal Transfer
(r)
1
Adjusted Backfill!
Hiring by Level!
Backfill Hiring!
By Level!
( 1 - r )
________

9. Forecasting hires and staffing Recruiting teams accordingly
Capacity Plan
-determining people needed to meet targets-
Seasonality
Incremental Headcount
by Month
Historical seasonality
of terminations
18 sub-BUs and
5 regions
Total hiring by BU,
Region, Level and !
Month!
Recruiting Resources
Recruiter Productivity
(hires per month)
Support Ratios
Manager Span
of Control
Talent Acquisition!
Headcount!

10. Forecasting hires and staffing Recruiting teams accordingly
Incremental Hiring Backfill Hiring “Ripple” Effect
FP&A Incremental
Headcount Plan
Org Shape
Incremental Hiring !
by Level!
Attrition Rates
Transfer
Probabilities
Promotion
Rates
Probability of
Internal Transfer
(r)
1
Adjusted Backfill!
Hiring by Level!
Backfill Hiring!
By Level!
( 1 - r )
_________
Backfill Hiring “Ripple” Effect Seasonality Recruiting Resources
Incremental Headcount
by Month
Historical seasonality
of terminations
18 sub-BUs and
5 regions
Total hiring by BU,
Region, Level and
Month!
Recruiter Productivity
(hires per month)
Support Ratios
Manager Span
of Control
Talent Acquisition!
Headcount!
Workforce Plan
Forecasting hiring demand
Capacity Plan
Determining people needed to meet targets

11. NAPKIN

12. How do we enforce operational
excellence and accountability?

13. Meet
Regularly
Drive
Alignment
Adjust as
Needed
A new operational framework between Analytics & TA Leadership
Check your
Assumptions
• TA lead & Analytics partner
meet monthly to review
resourcing and attainment
to plan
• Review demand
• Is attrition what we
expected?
• Did we accurately plan for
demand?
• This will be a dynamic
process – review regularly
and make necessary
adjustments
• Partner with Analytics to
recalibrate model based on
actual outcomes
• Ensure you’re aligned with
your business leaders
• Regularly sync with Finance
and Human Resources

14. Involving the right Stakeholders
Talent Acquisition HR Business Partner
Finance Business Leader
Capacity of TA team, insight into
employment trends
Insight into workforce trends,
attrition and organizational
changes
Timing of hires to align with
budget
Where will the team be growing?
What skillsets will be needed in
the future?
Talent
Analytics

15. 95%
of actual hires were accurately predicted by our model

16. 13%
of our annual budget was given back to the business

17. • The modeling done would’ve been useless if we
hadn’t turned it into an actionable plan
• Recalibrating the model when necessary
• Transparency of data across all recruiting teams to
break down silos in how teams managed productivity
and performance
• Buy-in is hard
• Don’t wait for the stars to align
• You don’t need perfect data quality, or complex tools,
or even an analytics team
Lessons Learned