Friday, April 5, 2013

Going Beyond the Resume

                While searching for big data information I found a new way companies are looking at data to hire new people. As I always do before writing one of these blogs, I searched through our group of posted blogs and found two recent ones that contained information about using big data analytics in the hiring process. The first was a tutorial about a key word search done by Anto Jeson Raj titled, “Text mining techniques used for hiring process.” The other blog titled, “How Big Data Has Changed HR and Recruiting,” by David Walker discussed how to establish great recruiting methods so that you get the people you want to apply for the jobs that you post. I thought both of these blogs were very informative but wanted to look into using Big Data analytics for hiring from a different standpoint.

                The article I found discussed using computers to evaluate people. The use of computers to narrow down a stack of resumes has been being used for years by eliminating certain ones that do not contain keywords. Now a new way of using big data for the hiring process is being used. Almost everything people do online is recorded somewhere and knowing how to look at the habits of people can help predict what kind of employee they will be.

                For example, from the, “Robot recruiters,” article I read it was found that people who apply for a job using internet browsers not originally installed on the computer, another words not internet explorer, tend to perform better and change jobs less often. According to analysts this shows that you are willing to go the extra step to make your job better and take the time to make more informed decisions. Now this isn’t the case 100 percent of the time but could add an extra step that could help make the final decision between two highly qualified prospects.

                Another interesting example talks about companies using surveys to check the honesty of potential employees. They found that honest people tend to say at their job longer and perform better. The downside to these people is that they tend to be less effective as salespeople. So depending on the job you have to offer you may actually want to hire the person that wasn’t completely honest with you but you can’t count on them to be with the company long.

                Another one that kind of surprised me was a study done by Xerox. It found that the more social a person on the internet is the less likely they are to stay on a particular job.  They came to this by comparing people that used two or less social media sites against those that use four or more social media sites. This would kind of make since to me because most people that belong to four or more social media sites are always wanting to stay current with what is big at the time so they may perform that way in their career as well. These people usually have great careers because they know at least a little about everything and are always on the cutting edge for the newest processes. If a company is looking for someone to do a quick turn around this could be the type of person they should hire but if they want someone that will work hard and always be there for you then you might want to look elsewhere.

                This provides a great new way to make big data analytics useful for hiring people.  This also helps eliminate the problems of using just keyword searches to pick out resumes. One personal instance where the keyword search failed for the group I work for occurred the on the last job posting we had. We posted a job listing for a certain type of engineer and had over 800 applicants but not a single one made it past the computer system because industry doesn’t use the same job title for the type people as we do so the computer elimination process thought that no one met the qualifications. While many people may have been qualified for the job we never got to see them because the computers rejected them.  This shows that as long as the humans are setting up the process there will be mistakes no matter how much information big data analytics can tell you.

If you would like to read the article I did please check out the following link as well as the blogs I discussed in the first paragraph.
"Robot recruiters"
http://www.economist.com/news/business/21575820-how-software-helps-firms-hire-workers-more-efficiently-robot-recruiters
               

               









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