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Staffing and Development: Hiring at Datavant

MGT473 - Fall 2025

Alyda Dickens, Aiden Toy, Kaeli Griffin, Kaitlyn Blundell, Kim Varma

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Agenda

Organization Overview
Introduction to Interviewee

Background and Context

Hiring Practices

Recruitment
Applicant Screening
Interviews
Other Assessments

Recommendations for Improvement

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What is Datavant?

Founded in 2017
Headquartered in Phoenix, AZ
5,001-10,000 employees (LinkedIn).

Mission: To make the world’s health data secure, accessible, and actionable, Datavant works with payers, providers, life sciences, legal and insurance clients globally to accelerate insights (About Datavant).

The internal goal of the organization is to meet or exceed client retrieval expectations (i.e., how many charts the organization retrieves).

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Bryana is a Client Portfolio Manager at Datavant, where she has been a key team member since December 2017.

Specializes in inventory and project management.

Chart retrieval projects
Ensuring efficient operations
Successful project delivery

Background in client operations

Portfolio of 4-6 clients
Project deadlines
Interdependent teams

Meet Bryana Dickens

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More About Bryana

B.A. in Anthropology and Political Science from UNR ~ 2015
Taught English in Spain for 2 years ~ 2015-2017
Started at Datavant in 2017 as a temp worker

8 years with the company
Previously managed others.

Interviewed in person and recorded audio with Zoom.

Bryana is my (Alyda’s) sister.
She got her bachelor’s degree in anthropology and political science from UNR in 2015.
She did not know what she wanted to do when she graduated, so she joined a program offered by UNR and taught English to underserved communities in Spain for about two years before returning to the states.
She worked a handful of temp jobs before landing at Ciox. She worked her way up from a temp position answering phone calls and doing data entry, and has landed in management.
She does not actively oversee a team, but when she did, she worked with a team of about 8 people. This team was focused on completing inventory health tasks and communicating with other teams to prevent chart risks and helping the retrieval process run smoothly.
We interviewed her in person and recorded the audio over Zoom so we could refer back to it later.

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Recruitment Practices at Datavant

Online application
Internal Recruitment Is Preferred:

Familiar with industry
Promote growth and mobility
Less training

External Recruitment When Needed:

Internal candidates lack KSAOs
Unique and Key Expertise

Hiring Timing:

Hires as needed based on project demands.

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Initial screening is done by HR to assess whether candidates meet the required skills before passing them to the hiring manager.

The hiring manager verifies the following:

1. Foundational Qualifications

2. Communication Competence

3. Role Fit & Interest Level

Applicant Screening

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Interviews

The Process:

Interviews are mostly unstructured
Candidates receive problem-solving questions/SJTs to gauge analytical thinking.
Assessment focuses heavily on:

Ability to communicate under pressure
Real-world decision-making

Interview Rounds:

3–5 interviews

Application submission
Initial screening
First interview with hiring manager
Interview with current team members
Formal presentation

Process can take 1-2 weeks from start to finish

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Other Assessments

Hirees are asked to make PowerPoints presenting important data points to illustrate their understanding of data’s role within insurance companies

No serious considerations about AI in the hiring process yet.

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Create a Formal New-Hire Tracking

No formal monitoring of new hire development.
We Suggest:

Adding check-ins at the 30, 60, and 90 day marks.
Set clear, fair goals and performance expectations.

This will help reduce turnover and support internal growth because it provides supervisors with a better record of employee growth.

Implement a Talent Management System

Datavant does not currently use a talent management system, making internal hiring less efficient.
We suggest:

Create a Talent Management System.
Allow for management feedback.

This will help streamline internal transfers and promotions.

Recommendations for Improvement

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Involve HR in the Hiring Process from the Start

HR is not consistently involved in the recruitment or interview processes.
We Suggest:

Involve HR from the start.
Train all managers on proper interview conduct.

This will help reduce inappropriate conduct in the interview process, and ensure that these processes are consistent and replicable.

Adopt a Structured Interview Style

Datavant uses unstructured interviews for most hiring situations, which creates inconsistencies.
We suggest:

Create an interview protocol
Create a job matrix for each position.
More rigorously train interviewers.

This will help create a fairer and more consistent hiring process, improves decision-making across interviewers, speed up evaluations, and clarify performance expectations for both internal and external candidates.

Introduce AI to the Hiring Process

Datavant’s success is largely attributed to their employees’ efficiency and understanding of data
We suggest:

Incorporating AI in analyzing both a hiree’s gathering and presentation of data

This will automate the tedium of assessing efficiency so hirer’s can focus on a candidate’s eligibility with other factors (interpersonal skills, etc.)

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Thank you!

Questions, Comments, Concerns? Random thought you want to share with the class?

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References

About Datavant (n.d.). datavant. Retrieved November 18, 2025, from https://www.datavant.com/about

Datavant and Ciox Health Announce Merger, Creating the Largest Neutral and Secure Health Data Ecosystem (2021, June 9). datavant. https://www.datavant.com/press-release/datavant-and-ciox-health-announce-merger-creating-the-largest-neutral-and-secure-health-data-ecosystem

Datavant (n.d.). LinkedIn. Retrieved November 18, 2025, from https://www.linkedin.com/company/datavant

Dickens, B. Personal interview (2025, November 11).