If you're like most leaders, you're scrambling to adapt to the "new normal" with a variety of initiatives, such as permanent post-pandemic remote working, return-to-work training, business continuity planning, and so on. The common theme among these actions is to enable the organization to respond to future changes with agility; and their implementation will be guided by opinions from employees.

Nowhere is the importance of making evidence-based business decisions better illustrated than in the People Analytics use case during the COVID-19 crisis. The voice and feelings of employees are now critical data points for you to answer questions such as:

• What populations are most comfortable with working remotely after the pandemic? What % of the current workforce is ready to switch to teleworking permanently?
• Do you have sufficient recruiting resources (e.g. hires per recruiter, recruiter/applicant volumes) once the economy reopens and the hiring demand increases?
• Which employees are best to retrain and upskill for new areas of work?

To determine if your People Analytics candidates will add the most value to your organization, here are the behavioral criteria and questions to select the People Analyst that will add the most value to your organization.

The first competency that distinguishes excellent People Analytics professionals from mediocre ones is the ability to tailor story-telling strategies when communicating with different audiences.

HR colleagues expect to hear key talent metrics used in the analytics project. Fellow analysts expect to know more details behind modelings and statistical analysis. Senior leaders and project stakeholders are more curious about the business value and impact.

Remember, your People Analytics professionals are not the recipients of their project’s business impact. They are responsible for delivering actionable insights for leaders and stakeholders to make informed business decisions.

To manage multiple stakeholders, your ideal candidates should have strong customer orientation. This entails their capability to build trust, maintain rapports, and speak in their client’s language. In addition, they know how to engage and set the expectation for different stakeholders to keep them informed and satisfied.

Ideal candidates are highly mindful of the "Why" behind a given project or initiative. They are driven by purpose and business results, such as increasing equity in compensation, strengthening current hiring models, and reducing employee turnover.

Technology allows both private companies and public authorities to make use of personal data on an unprecedented scale in order to pursue activities of their interests. The breach of employee privacy and the abuse of people data will pose litigation risks to your company. Therefore, ideal candidates should demonstrate maturity to ensure data safety and integrity throughout the People Analytics project life cycle: data collecting, wrangling, analyzing, reporting, and presenting.

Last but not the least, your ideal candidate is a strong team player.

Your People Analytics professionals always work in collaboration with people from a variety of backgrounds: data scientist, data engineer, project manager, senior leaders, IT staff, external vendors… you name it!

It is also important for you to know whether the candidate is open to feedback and can appreciate different perspectives. It is even better if the candidate can consolidate different opinions so the work team is able to formulate relevant solutions that truly tackle the talent issues.