By now, I’m sure you've heard all the old saws about resume formatting, cover letter contents, typos and grammatical errors as being the prime culprits for not being selected for the job that you applied for.
But now, the staffing industry is taking their game to a new level with Big Data. So, let’s discuss data augmentation in the talent industry.
Last evening, I was with some hiring managers at a Midtown restaurant, and one opened their laptop to show me a list of about 10 candidates that were finalists for an SVP position. The hiring manager showed me that the candidate management software had a very interesting dashboard. It showed how far away each of the 10 candidates lived from the actual job site, and it took into account commuting delays. A separate algorithm created a score that predicted if they would be frequently late based on traffic data.
Another screen aggregated each candidate’s profiles and recent posts in social media. Any negative postings or tweets were highlighted, and any photos in which the candidate had been tagged (or selfies) were also displayed. A separate section aggregated household profile information from providers like Experian, showing what magazine subscriptions the candidate had, if they had a personal website or blog, and what type of online shopping profile they had built up.
The hiring manager pointed out that their company was very conservative. A candidate with a magazine subscription to Fortune would be different than another candidate’s subscription to Star magazine, for example.
The takeaway?
In today’s fast-paced information society, you have to start very early to curate your lifestyle and pay close attention to your purchases, subscriptions, blog posts and tweets. Once the information is out there, the data aggregator’s spiders will find it and catalog it and none of it is ever erased.
Naturally, the hiring manager said that this data augmentation package is simply a way to get a more complete picture of the applicant, and that the final hiring decision was still based on actual interviewing, but that statement came across as more of a legal disclaimer than anything else. After all, how much can a company really learn about a candidate from a series of five or six 45-minute interviews with a candidate?
Clearly, the talent industry has gotten very savvy about leveraging Big Data and social media – two more arrows in their arsenal of candidate screening tools.
So, be careful and think twice before you post, tweet, email or blog. Better safe than screened out of a great job later on.
But now, the staffing industry is taking their game to a new level with Big Data. So, let’s discuss data augmentation in the talent industry.
Last evening, I was with some hiring managers at a Midtown restaurant, and one opened their laptop to show me a list of about 10 candidates that were finalists for an SVP position. The hiring manager showed me that the candidate management software had a very interesting dashboard. It showed how far away each of the 10 candidates lived from the actual job site, and it took into account commuting delays. A separate algorithm created a score that predicted if they would be frequently late based on traffic data.
Another screen aggregated each candidate’s profiles and recent posts in social media. Any negative postings or tweets were highlighted, and any photos in which the candidate had been tagged (or selfies) were also displayed. A separate section aggregated household profile information from providers like Experian, showing what magazine subscriptions the candidate had, if they had a personal website or blog, and what type of online shopping profile they had built up.
The hiring manager pointed out that their company was very conservative. A candidate with a magazine subscription to Fortune would be different than another candidate’s subscription to Star magazine, for example.
The takeaway?
In today’s fast-paced information society, you have to start very early to curate your lifestyle and pay close attention to your purchases, subscriptions, blog posts and tweets. Once the information is out there, the data aggregator’s spiders will find it and catalog it and none of it is ever erased.
Naturally, the hiring manager said that this data augmentation package is simply a way to get a more complete picture of the applicant, and that the final hiring decision was still based on actual interviewing, but that statement came across as more of a legal disclaimer than anything else. After all, how much can a company really learn about a candidate from a series of five or six 45-minute interviews with a candidate?
Clearly, the talent industry has gotten very savvy about leveraging Big Data and social media – two more arrows in their arsenal of candidate screening tools.
So, be careful and think twice before you post, tweet, email or blog. Better safe than screened out of a great job later on.