How Big Data is helping people find jobs.

One of the major areas of concern in our country today is the national economy and the current unemployment rate.  Well, Big Data may be able to help out. A company called Evolv, which monitors recruitment data, made some interesting discoveries after mining through 3 million data points from 30,000 employers.  One thing they found is that potential candidates who fill out online job applications with the browsers Firefox or Chrome are more likely to perform better at their job and change jobs less often.  Analyst believe the reason for this is that people who use Firefox or Chrome, which have to be deliberately downloaded and installed, are the kinds of people who take time to reach informed decisions.  60% of Americans work hourly jobs, and of these workers about 50% change jobs every year.  So, large companies have to process an enormous amount of applications every year, so there is a great opportunity for firms to save money and improve their hiring process through big data.  Some of the research done by Evolv has found that some established practices are not very effective.  For example, many firms will not hire people with past criminal records, but the data has shown that for certain position that there is no correlation with job performance.  Xerox has found that one of the best predictors that a customer-service employee will stick with their job is whether they live nearby and can get to work easily.  This finding has helped Xerox cut attrition in their program by 20%.  Big Data can help people find the right job for them, but these algorithms are created by people and therefore can be prone to errors.  An example is a company turned down many good candidates for a position because they did not hold a certain type of previous position, one that did not exist at any other company....  Big Data is an extremely powerful and helpful tool, but it is only as useful as the people who interpret and use it.

Source:

http://www.economist.com/news/business/21575820-how-software-helps-firms-hire-workers-more-efficiently-robot-recruiters