Big Candidate Data Helps Your Staffing Company Win

What exactly does big data mean to staffing companies? Simply put, the ability to manipulate big data — big candidate data, that is — helps you find, manage and reach out to more candidates and companies. Once solely the purview of companies like Google and Wolfram|Alpha, big data and cloud computing have made true semantic search possible for nearly any type of business seeking any type of information.

PREMIUM RESEARCH: How does brand recognition by contingents vary across staffing firms?

Semantic search retrieves information based on intent or context rather than strictly returning results based on keywords. The sheer volume of human capital data available today makes the job of sifting through social networks, digital job boards, industry sources and resources daunting. So for a staffing professional,semantic search provides a way to parse any number of variables contained in an online resume or one stored in your proprietary database.  And if that proprietary database happens to exist within a cloud staffing software platform, this information is available to you from anywhere.

The power and promise these combined technologies mean to you as a staffing professional searching for that foothold in a new vertical simply cannot be overstated.

Gleaning Intelligence from Big Candidate Data
“You can’t manage what you don’t measure,” said W. Edwards Deming and Peter Drucker, fathers (or perhaps, grandfathers) of modern management. (Full disclosure: W. Edwards Deming and I worked together in the mid-1980s to streamline manufacturing operations at Control Data Computers.) While that statement holds as true today as it did in the mid-20^th century, talent management is more challenging than ever. The evolution of and access to online information may be either a curse or a gift, depending on your comfort level with the Internet and, now, big data. We’re asking companies (and hiring managers) to make decisions business executives could only dream of a generation ago.

“… Big data … is far more powerful than the analytics that were used in the past. We can measure and therefore manage more precisely than ever before. We can make better predictions and smarter decisions. We can target more effective interventions, and can do so in areas that so far have been dominated by gut and intuition rather than by data and rigor,” write Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson in Harvard Business Review.

Put simply, there are just a whole lot more types of industries demanding top talent – and a whole lot more people whose skills can easily transfer from one vertical to another.  And the connections you need to see as a recruiter are in the data.

Finding Insight In Volume
Big data analytics combined with semantic search gives companies the opportunity to examine colossal data sets to find patterns, relationships and correlations that aid organizations in making better hiring decisions.

The sheer volume of data available works to your business advantage, but turning unstructured data into real-time analytics to find both passive and active candidates could be a game changer for the staffing industry.  In addition, by drilling down into the data, you can help your existing clients fight attrition and position your staffing company as a strategic partner.

“There’s a lot of value to be created and added through data analytics,” says Beth Axelrod, senior vice president of human resources, eBay Inc., “whether it’s doing a better job spotting talent outside to attract to the company, or doing predictive analysis of who is likely to leave and what are the factors, so you can intervene before that point is reached to try to change the trajectory.”

Access to qualified talent is only limited to your creativity and ability to think semantically. Big candidate data and cloud staffing software will take you the rest of the way.

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