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Sep 13, 2016
This article is part of a series called Editor's Pick.

Next generation sourcing is reliant purely on digital representation. With the era of big data, social profiles are analyzed in a detailed format that makes it easier to locate and categorize candidates on things such as those actively seeking employment, grouping candidates together by personal and professional interests. In this day and age, a social presence is a must. That being said, go digital or go home!

 

People Analytics

What is People Analytics? People Analytics is a data-driven approach to analyzing the digital footprint of an individual by pulling various data together that exists across platforms. We have grown to rely on automation to understand the various behaviors of people. We can analyze data to understand candidate cultural fit, when a candidate may be looking for a new job based on current tenure and job history, what their potential next job step may be, what geographic location they may potentially be interested in.  Resources such as Entelo, Dice Open Source, and LinkedIn do a great job at analyzing behavior.

 

Cut To The Chase, How Can This Data Help In Sourcing

Guess what, your data is analyzed! That’s right, there are ways you can find candidates by influencing your online behavior.

1) Leverage Facebook. You know all those random recipes that pop up on your news feed because you researched how to make Zoodle Lo Mein? Well if you search for “Data Scientists,” it is very well possible that Facebook will lead you to either articles with relevance or actually aggregate data and add relevant candidates to “people you may know.”

2) Embrace The Change To Semantic. LinkedIn, you know what you are doing! According to Wikipedia, “semantic search seeks to improve search accuracy by understanding the searcher’s intent and the contextual meaning of terms as they appear in the searchable dataspace, whether on the web or within a closed system, to generate more relevant results.” Semantic search systems consider various points including the context of search, location, intent, a variation of words, synonyms generalized and specialized queries, concept matching and natural language queries to provide relevant search results.

This is definitely a change in mentality for a Boolean whiz. In analyzing word relationships, we will be able to uncover more efficiently uncover accurate resume results. Semantic search will also put you to the test because, in order to receive accurate results, you need to fully understand your job description. The who, what, where, why, and how, not just keywords as in Boolean. An example of a semantic search would be searching for a “Data Scientist,” conceptually the search will also bring up relevant terms such as “Data Engineer” or “Data Analyst.”

3) Examine Insights and Notice Trends. HootSuite, Social Mention, Google Trends can help you analyze all of the data available via social media platforms so that you can chart patterns and understand behavioral patterns. You can receive competitor information, which top posters are from a company, what companies are posting about, top geographic areas for a particular profession. All of the data sets that will up to chart the best possible talent for your open sourcing roles.

Why evolve with the times? Because it is necessary. As companies continue to view sourcers as the data scientists that we have become, it is necessary to be an expert at analyzing online behavioral data that will aid in a quicker “on target” candidate find resulting in faster hire ultimately leading to company cost savings.

This article is part of a series called Editor's Pick.