This post was written with Alexander Plumb, Product Manager at Mitratech.
TalentReef, now part of Mitratech, is a talent management platform built for location-based, high-volume hiring. TalentReef was acquired by Mitratech in August 2022 with the aim of combining TalentReef’s best-in-class systems with Mitratech’s experience, technology and global platform to ensure that their clients’ employment needs are served better and faster than any other in another field.
The TalentReef team are experts in hourly recruiting, onboarding and hiring, with a mission to help its clients engage with great candidates using one smart, easy-to-use platform. TalentReef differentiates itself from its competitors by not just building features, but building an entire talent management ecosystem to eliminate friction and make the hiring and hiring process as smooth and easy as possible for their clients and applicants.
TalentReef used Amazon QuickSight to replace their legacy business intelligence (BI) reports. The team found QuickSight easy to use and developed two new dashboards that replaced dozens of legacy reports. The response has been overwhelmingly positive, leading to the development of two additional analytics dashboards, Job Postings and Onboarding, both due for release in the first half of 2023.
The following screenshot shows the Applicant dashboard used internally by TalentReef client solution managers, as well as externally by clients embedded directly into the talent management application. This dashboard provides quick access to important metrics of their customers. For example, it shows the total number of applicants for all jobs. It also shows how many applicants per position are in the system.
Providing clients with clarity for hiring hourly labor
The war for talent is most important for those hiring within the hourly workforce. Hiring managers are constantly looking for top talent and trying to understand where they’re coming from, why they’re applying, and more. They want to see how their job postings are doing, if there is a drop in postings, and opportunities to optimize their process. TalentReef’s previous solution was not designed to convey this information and required manual intervention to extract these hidden insights from multiple reports.
With new dashboards built directly into the TalentReef customer view, the development team can streamline their data ingestion process to ensure up-to-date data is available to their customers on the TalentReef platform. QuickSight features such as forecasts, cross-sheet filtering, and the ability to drill down into underlying data allow customers to quickly see value through different lenses.
Whenever a new feature was implemented in the previous solution, it was not possible to evaluate the impact it had on applicants and new hires because it required a lot of manual work. Development teams had to request a raw data file from internal users to demonstrate the value of a new feature, and even then were limited in how they could demonstrate value. With QuickSight, they are not only able to quickly demonstrate the value of new features, but they can do so without development intervention.
Data visualization helps business analysts increase customer support
The sheer volume of our databases made collecting insights a slow process. Not only that, but the datasets were not accessible to a wide audience outside of our team, such as partners, project managers, product managers, etc. As a result, Business Intelligence Engineers (BIEs) spent a lot of time writing ad-hoc queries that then took a long time to run. Once the insights were ready, the BIEs were tasked with answering the questions through manual processes that did not scale.
On September 6, 2022, TalentReef launched two new analytics dashboards, Applicant and Hire, embedded in their client application. Since launch, TalentReef has seen utilization increase by over 20% and saved hours of manual internal resources by gathering insights into their customer base during QBR calls, now available directly from dashboards. With TalentReef’s previous tool, reports were unstable and out of time, requiring development teams to troubleshoot and repair. Since implementing QuickSight, TalentReef has found efficiencies for both internal resource and client hiring managers and is confident in its ability to meet the demand of these users.
The following image shows the UTM parameters (Urchin Tracking Modules – a tracking device that helps you get really specific with the traffic source). This dashboard allows TalentReef’s client base to understand where their applicants are coming from so they know where to invest their recruiting dollars (whether the applicants came from indeed.com or google.com, etc.). This built-in dashboard even allows users to drill down into their data by understanding the name, date, location, and more that a UTM source is associated with.
QuickSight has allowed TalentReef to unlock insights that were not previously available or manually generated from their previous reporting tool. An example of this is the average time to review an application in the following figure. In the war for talent, minutes can make the difference between finding the right individuals to fill a position or letting them slip through the cracks. This type of information gives management an edge in knowing where to focus their attention and help win the talent war for the hourly workforce.
Unlock the power of applicant and hire data, gaining insights like never before.
Our customers are extremely impressed with our QuickSight dashboards because they provide information that was previously unavailable without manual effort from development teams. The interactive nature of QuickSight dashboards allows TalentReef’s customer base to dive deeper into applicants and hire candidates, such as understanding where an applicant came from or how an applicant applied to a job posting.
With QuickSight, not only can we visualize applicant and hire data in multiple meaningful ways for our customer base, but we can also help them see ROI from additional products they’ve added to the platform. In the following example, we have a series of filters that allow clients to see if their sponsorship dollars are returning successful job applications, if their chat addition is driving higher application volume, if the applicant came from text, and so on. .
Innovate faster with an intuitive UI, increasing customer satisfaction
QuickSight enables TalentReef to innovate faster in response to customer feedback. Thanks to QuickSight’s intuitive interface and data lake connections, TalentReef’s product team can quickly design visualizations based on the needs and wants of all their customers.
TalentReef’s previous reporting tool required manual effort from development teams. Improvements and bug fixes required priority over other initiatives and had a higher chance of error. With QuickSight, TalentReef was able to create a data lake that allows the product team to curate and create innovation dashboards, freeing up development resources to pursue the highest priority. Developers get the data into the data lake, then the product team pulls the data into QuickSight and deploys it as needed. This has resulted in higher customer satisfaction, both internally and externally, with fast turnaround times.
The right people with the right information
In any type of HR space, the right level of data access is essential to ensure you don’t leave yourself open to compliance issues. Our development team has developed a solution that can be deployed across all QuickSight dashboards using database row-level security.
TalentReef’s partnership with QuickSight has enabled us to unlock insights that were previously difficult or impossible to obtain. We’ve enabled our customer base to know what’s happening and why, and visualize the data that’s most impactful and relevant to them.
To learn more about how you can embed personalized data visualizations, interactive dashboards, and natural language queries into any application, visit Amazon QuickSight Embedded.
About the authors
Alexander Plumb is a product manager at Mitratech. Alexander has been a product leader with over 5 years of experience leading to highly successful product launches that meet customer needs.
Bani Sharma Sr. is a Solutions Architect with Amazon Web Services (AWS) based out of Denver, Colorado. As a solution architect, he works with a large number of small and medium businesses and provides technical guidance and solutions on AWS. He has an area of depth in containers and upgrades. Prior to AWS, Bani worked in various technical roles at major telecommunications provider Dish Networks and worked as a senior developer for HSBC Bank Software Development.
Brian Klein Sr Technical Account Manager with Amazon Web Services (AWS), helping digital native enterprises leverage AWS services to bring value to their organizations. Brian has worked with AWS Technologies for 9 years, designing and operating production Internet-facing workloads with a focus on security, availability, and resiliency while demonstrating operational efficiency.