Human Resource (HR) Analytics has emerged as a data-driven approach that helps organisations translate workforce information into strategic decisions. While its adoption in the corporate sector is well documented, empirical evidence on its role in two of the most operationally critical HR functions in academia — faculty recruitment and employee retention — remains limited, particularly in the higher education sector of developing economies such as India. This study examines the adoption of HR Analytics relative to traditional recruitment practice, and its perceived impact on employee retention, among HR professionals, faculty and administrators in higher education institutions (HEIs) in Madhya Pradesh, India. Using a mixed-method design, data were collected from 321 respondents across public, private and autonomous HEIs through a self-constructed, five-point Likert scale instrument. Exploratory Factor Analysis (Principal Component Analysis with Varimax rotation) confirmed Recruitment (HR Analytics Adoption) and Retention as distinct, reliable factors (Cronbach's alpha of 0.889 and 0.875 respectively), with an overall Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) value of 0.776. Independent-samples t-tests and one-way ANOVA were used to test six hypotheses across gender, age and qualification for these two dimensions. The results show that age significantly influences perceptions of both HR Analytics-driven recruitment (F = 4.491, p = .004) and retention (F = 5.004, p = .002), while gender and qualification show no significant influence on either. The findings suggest that HR Analytics is reshaping recruitment efficiency and retention outcomes in Indian HEIs primarily along generational rather than gender or qualification lines, with direct implications for how institutions sequence their analytics-adoption strategy