An innovative way that Big Data is changing hiring

If you thought that being tapped on LinkedIn for a new job opportunity was the extent of your professional footprint on the web, then you had better think again. There is a very innovative use of Big Data happening now in a field that you might not originally think of when Big Data comes to mind - Human Resources and Recruiting.

Here is a quick infographic summarizing some of the recent findings which Big Data is allowing HR professionals to remove biais from their decision-making process:

There are a number of new companies which are helping companies to fill their very hard to find niche Software Developer roles by combing the entire internet history of individuals and creating a list of candidates and a combined "score" of how well they might succeed int he role. One company I checked out was called Gild and their product is called Gild Source - here is the description from their website:

Built for hiring teams facing the challenge of identifying developers in today’s competitive landscape. Gild Source is tech recruiting software that leverages powerful data aggregation and analysis to provide you with comprehensive profiles of millions of candidates. Unlike job boards, professional networks, or standard social recruiting tools, Gild Source is powered by proprietary code evaluation technology and a team of data scientists that work to uncover the real indicators of developer talent.

In fact, this is part of a very fast-growing field called work-force science. Breaking down what were once "soft" and "gut-feeling" fields of HR and employee management and turning them into a hard science using the massive amounts of data available on the workforce and individual employees.

Here is a video from the Economist which will give you a great introduction to this innovative concept of applying Big Data to the HR field.



Makes you think twice about your existing web footprint (the collection of all the data that exists from all your previous actions (postings, photos, comments, accounts, etc) and how it might be seen by future employers!

So what are your thoughts about de-humanizing the HR field by using Big Data to try and better predict success? Certainly it raises a number of privacy concerns - but what about the fact of taking intuition or personal judgement out of the process? Is this necessarily a good thing or is there something to be said for such measures which machines and data will never be able to measure?



Sources:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/28/technology/how-big-data-is-playing-recruiter-for-specialized-workers.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443890304578006252019616768.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/phil-simon/big-data-a-big-opportunit_b_3032789.html

http://www.gild.com/products/gild-source-tech-recruiting/

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/21/technology/big-data-trying-to-build-better-workers.html?_r=0&adxnnl=1&ref=stevelohr&adxnnlx=1367519084-+9vOzaHP9i629H5S1KCYwQ