Technology is evolving, and it is changing a lot of personal and professional facets of life. Recruitment is one of them. Do you remember how you used to create a job ad and post it to collect résumés?

Although, that process is time-consuming as you have to screen through each résumé to finalize candidates for recruitment. Also, the number of vacancies and job hunters has significantly increased, so it’s impossible to screen every résumé. 

But with technology, the process is quicker and seamless as it can shortlist skilled candidates and help HRs or recruitment managers save time. Initially, most companies started using applicant tracking software technology for hiring. It is pretty helpful, but this software also has its limitations. 

To cater to these limitations, big data got into the picture. It not only helps the recruitment industry but is helpful in various industries like finance, health, and more. 

What Is Big Data?

Big data is the significant volume of structured or unstructured data readily available to any organization. These large data sets are analyzed to reveal patterns and provide insights into human behavior, businesses, and more. 

It’s analysis has a lot of potential; it can even be used to monitor the weather or gauge someone’s productivity. Many companies leverage big data to their benefit. For example, any company’s operations, sales, and marketing departments rely on big data to make big decisions, understand the market and consumer trends and uncover hidden patterns. 

How Is Big Data Used for Recruiting?

Big Data helps businesses find the ideal candidate amongst the enormous volume of data recruiters has. Although, it is essential to note that big data recruiting is not about only screening résumés for targeted keywords. Instead, it helps to create a 360º picture of the candidate before you have even met them for their first interview. 

People’s entire lives are available online, including their personal data. This information acts like a goldmine for recruiters as they can analyze it in detail to find the ideal candidate. 

Companies use it for talent acquisition as résumés are only one-dimensional in today’s world. A complete picture of the candidate, including their skills and personalities, helps businesses assess them thoroughly, and this is possible only because of big data. 

You can continue to use the applicant tracking software to identify ideal candidates through keywords but don’t make a decision based on that. Instead, dive deep into semantic analysis and extract all the possible information from a candidate to analyze the data. 

It is important to note that the whole point behind using big data is to analyze, understand and interpret a candidate’s data to your advantage. 

The 5 V’s of Big Data

Big data helps in many ways, but here are 5 points to help you understand it better. 

1. Volume
   If big data is king, volume is queen. Data skyrocketed in volumes for most companies in 2012, and as of 2022, 64.2 zettabytes of data have been created, captured, copied, and consumed globally. The spike in 2012 was because companies started gathering significant amounts of data every day.So, when you use big data for recruitment, many variables come into the picture. Thousands of bytes of data are crushed while looking for the right talent. For example, if you are looking for a software developer and apply big data recruitment to find a candidate, it will look at the candidate’s source code. Through that, it will find their LinkedIn profile and other social media channels, including the websites they visit frequently.
2. Velocity
   It is an essential component of hiring. Managing the data is important, but the data flow should be close to real-time. Companies always prefer to have limited data in real-time instead of having a lot of data with zero speed.
   
   This is because the traditional hiring process takes anywhere from 35-42 days which is a very long time. Also, operations might be on hold if a critical position is empty, or the long traditional process can even make you lose A-listed candidates.
   
   But, big data in recruitment can help you to cater to this issue and make the process more efficient as it identifies and analyzes information faster.
   
   The velocity helps recruiters to arrange personal interviews quickly and ensure that vacant positions are filled inefficiently.
   
3. Variety
   Big data enables companies to source data from various places like smartphones, GPS technology, in-house devices or processes, and social media platforms. Unlike traditional methods, this process can gather information from many places. Companies that are open to hiring remote developers or employees get a pool of access to talent globally through these different mediums.Besides, big data can combine information from text and video files and even look at a candidate’s open source while hiring for tech positions.
4. Veracity
   In this context, veracity means quality and accuracy. Companies can face issues maintaining data quality when hiring for multiple tech positions. For example, significant amounts of data can create confusion, while fewer data can have incomplete information. Big data tries to solve this issue by screening the best candidates and delivering optimum information about the selected candidates.
5. Value
   Lots of data is useless to anyone if it does not add value. Once the information is extracted from suitable sources, big data helps to segregate essential details. In this case, it can be a résumé of ideal tech candidates.

What Data Can Tech Recruiters Collect Through Big Data Hiring Process?

Finding the ideal candidate who will stay is a time-consuming and expensive process. But, with the right information from various sources, you can make an informed hiring decision.

Sources through which you can collect applicant’s data are:

• Résumé Databases
• Social media platforms like LinkedIn or Twitter
• Business Cards
• Performance Reviews
• Political Associations
• Online behaviors based on website preferences

In the online world, there are a lot of sources through which recruiters can collect a particular candidate’s data but some of the most common sources of data collection are:

Résumé Databases

Résumés are still an essential part of hiring processes as big data can easily verify the information in them.  

Big data also helps you to identify information that can be filtered out. For example, it will not eliminate candidates who might not have the paper qualifications required for the position but have the skills and expertise to deliver what you are looking for. 

Pre-employment Assessments

Pre-employment tests have been around for quite some time. Candidates give personality tests or skills tests in these assessments. 

They help to verify skills listed in the résumé and also help to gauge situational judgment or soft skills. These tests further help HR managers understand whether an applicant is fit for their company culture. The scores can also help decide if the candidate can justify the position. 

Social Media Accounts

Tech recruiters usually like candidates who share insights, give advice, and position themselves with the attitude of thought leadership on platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Quora. 

Data collected from social media profiles can help you understand their overall personality and help you initiate a conversation with them. In fact, 71% of hiring managers screen applicants’ social media profiles before calling them for a job interview. 

Apart from that, all this information can be used via big data to analyze and keep up with the tech industry’s job market and employment trends. 

Advantages of Using Big Data in Tech Hiring

Technology enables businesses to collect vast amounts of data from diverse sources. But, big data helps to accumulate and interpret that data with an analytical approach. It helps predict a candidate’s success in a given role, and it is quite possible that it can become a standard of the recruitment industry in the future. 

Some of the advantages are:

• Improves Quality of New Hires

Recruiting a new employee frequently is an expensive process for any organization. It includes various costs for job ads, hiring, training, and more. Imagine spending all of this money only to realize that your HR team made a bad hire. And it is customary sometimes to lose judgment and hire the wrong candidate.

However, big data can help you to avoid that. It screens not only résumés or cover letters but various touchpoints of a candidate, because of which it can identify the ideal applicants efficiently. 

You can sort big data with the help of specific key performance metrics to ensure you find a candidate that matches your requirements. For example, if you are looking for a software developer who can join a remote team, big data with the right metrics can help you find that. 

It not only further minimizes the screening time for HRs but also ensures that you minimize the risk of hiring the wrong person. 

• Helps you Create a Better Hiring Strategy

With big data, HR managers can use analytics to implement talent acquisition strategies. For example, you can start by looking at the candidate management system data like:

1. How did candidates hear about your job? Was it through your own portal, a job board or your social media profile? Knowing about this will help you to understand your most substantial source of collecting information of top talent.
2. Check the geographical location of your top candidates to understand which areas have the skills you are looking for.
3. Understand your ideal candidate to see which job categories they identify themselves with. The more you understand about your perfect candidate, the more quickly you will find them. 

• Predictive Analytics Enables Informed Decisions

Big data also helps to give predictive analysis on various things. Based on the data collected, it tells decision-makers whether a candidate is suitable for their company. In short, it makes your data valuable and actionable.

It can predict how long an employee will work with your organization if a suitable data set is presented. Technological advancements enable companies to collect the correct data and gain insights into the job at hand. 

For example, if you want to give a job ad, big data will use market information and data from your previous experiences to provide you with a fair idea of how your advertisement will perform. This can help you make the most of your ad budget.

• Streamline Your Hiring Process

Big data not only enables companies to make better decisions but also helps to streamline their recruitment process. HRs can save time and fill in vacancies quickly. They can also save the data and use it in the future when another vacancy arises. 

Companies can further track and monitor the efficiency of their HR department accurately. It additionally helps them identify new and unique recruitment strategies to attract top-tier candidates. 

• Forecast Your Hiring Needs from the Future

You can prepare your business for growth with big data, as it can give you insights into the future of the workforce. For instance, it will help you with information like:

1. What demographic trends will affect the growth of your business?
2. How will the economic demands change in the future, and what impact will it have on the success of your business?

Big data can help you predict future market trends and patterns to foresee what skills your company will require from future talent. You can even use it to dig into insights like estimated average tenure by role, understand hiring needs, and work on retention strategies. 

Conclusion

Using big data in the tech hiring process is relatively straightforward and efficient. It helps you in many ways, including recognizing patterns and identifying good candidates faster in a cost-efficient manner. 

Although, it is essential to remember that you cannot only rely on the answers it gives you. It can merely guide you, but a recruitment expert should make the final decision after double-checking and interpreting all the results. 

If you want to hire the best tech talent, check out Workfall. We have an easy hiring process, and the candidates on our platform are registered through a 5-step screening process. You can spend little time looking for the right developer, as you can hire one from our platform in 24 hours.