ASSIGNMENT

TELL A STORY
ASSIGNMENT

Use what you’ve learned in this course to make one or, if you feel up to
it, a couple of data visualizations for a report or dashboard.

There is no one right way to do this assignment. Here I will show you
what steps to take to get from the data to communication. As you will
see, you have to make different choices along the way, so the chances
are great that you’ve made something totally different! No worries,
that’s exactly the point. If you want, you can show your work to a
colleague or friend and ask them to give feedback.

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FROM DATA TO
COMMUNICATION

Step 1 Step 2 Step 3 Step 4 Step 5

Be clear on the Know your Identify messages of Choose the Use color, size, scale,
question data and start the visualization, right chart shapes and labels to
with basic and generate the type direct attention to
visualizations most informative the key messages
indicator

https://www.elsevier.com/connect/a-5-step-guide-to-data-visualization Copyright © AIHR Academy

 Step 1
Be clear on the
question

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Goal / question: Are there any gender differences in the data?

Target audience: HR management team

Mostly highly educated, data literate

Estimated time spent on the subject/visuals: 30 minutes

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 Step 2 Step 3
Know your data and start & Identify messages of
with basic visualizations the visualization,
and generate the
most informative
indicator

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FINDING 1
For management positions there are more male applicants then female:

However, when we look at hires, more women are hired

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FINDING 2 : PERFORMANCE
On average, women have a higher performance rating

In management positions, however, men have a higher performance rating

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FINDING 2 : PERFORMANCE
On average, men are faster in reaching full productivity in their positions

For senior positions, this gap is even bigger

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For this exercise, I will focus on showing the
gender differences in the selection process

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 Step 4
Choose the
right chart
type

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SKETCHING

I like the area charts best, since it’s

similar to a recruitment funnel, but
also encodes the data. At this stage
I’m not sure if I want to show the
ranking or not (the version in the
lower left corner), so I will leave
that in the middle.

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INSPIRATION

Very close to what I have in mind

Nice colors for male/female Interesting idea to visualize

the accepted versus rejected
candidates

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NEW SKETCH

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Although sketching allows you to
think outside the box, now we
have a challenge how to make
this chart. This is not something
that can be made by clicking a
button in Excel. If we
deconstruct the chart, the data is
mostly visualized in bars. So let’s
start with making bar charts with
the available information

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Let’s first get the data we need from the database file. I use a
pivot table to get the following:
Count of Count of Count of Count of Count of Count of Count of
Row Labels f0_application f1_review f3_interview f4_interview f2_assessment f5_offer f6_response
F 9876 8544 951 334 1598 125 125
M 12575 10851 1057 360 1977 139 139
Grand Total 22451 19395 2008 694 3575 264 264

For the purpose of this exercise, I will only focus on

management positions, so I use job type as a filter:

Count of Count of Count of Count of Count of Count of Count of

Row Labels f0_application f1_review f3_interview f4_interview f2_assessment f5_offer f6_response
F 91 85 15 7 6 6
M 157 147 25 8 4 4
Grand Total 248 232 40 15 10 10

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 We want the bars centered, so let’s
300 make the male applicants negative

225

150
M
F

75

0
Applications review interview 1 interview 2 Offer

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I now use the different setting to get the
bars as close as possible to my sketch

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I add the labels and lines manually. Although this graph clearly shows the funnel, the
gender ratio is less clear, so I add pie charts to show the gender ratio at each stage.

# Applicants Review Interview 1 Interview 2 Offer

91 85
Female
15 7 6
-8 -4
-25

Male -157
-147

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Now I add some design. For instance, the colors are not very intuitive and there is no
real hierarchy, title, comments, etc.

# Applicants Review Interview 1 Interview 2 Offer

91 85
Female
15 7 6
-8 -4
-25

Male -157
-147 Remember the inspiration? I like
the colors of this example, so I
will use similar colors for my
design

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The male-female ratio changes during the selection process for management positions
Number of applicants in each selection step

# Applicants Review Interview 1

47% of women gets

rejected after the
Female first interview
Interview 2
37% Offer

68% of men gets

Male rejected after the
63% first interview

91 85 15
7 4
157 147 25 8 6
The male-female ratio changes during the selection process for management positions
Number of applicants in each selection step

# Applicants Review Interview 1

Interview 2 Offer
Female

Male

Be careful about jumping to conclusions

though. For the last three steps the number of
applicants are small, so the ratio changes easily

91 85 15
7 4
157 147 25 8 6
The male-female ratio changes during the selection process
Number of applicants in each selection step

# Applicants Review Interview 1 Interview 2 Offer

9876 8544 951 334 125

12575 10851 1057 360 139

However, when we look at all applicants

within our company we also see a shift
towards a more equal gender ratio
ASSIGNMENT
TELL A STORY