Data is generated in abundance in today’s digital world. Around 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are generated every day. And 90% of the currently available data was generated just over the last two years. But this raw data is of no use. And thanks to technologies such as big data analytics that organizations can make sense of data.

Big data analytics provides various benefits like predictive analysis, enhanced decision making, and improved operational efficiency. Hence, it doesn’t come as a surprise that big data is taking even recruitment to an entirely new level. Big data for modern recruiters can simplify their daily operations by assisting them throughout the hiring process. Embedding big data analytics in recruitment solutions will help job boards and recruiters to make data-driven hiring decisions. But not all the sources of data are reliable. To get precise and accurate results, job boards and recruiters need accurate data as well from reliable sources.

Reliable sources to collect data

To get the best out of big data analytics, job boards and recruiters need to gather data from the most reliable sources. Data from reliable sources is accurate, which enhances the accuracy of insights and results.

Personal information can be as important as professional information. Some organizations primarily focus on hiring candidates who can easily merge with their work culture. And having some sort of personal data can help job boards and recruiters to find such employees. And social media platforms like LinkedIn can serve as a source of both professional and casual life of candidates. For instance, the frequency of social media activities can help recruiters detect how well a job seeker would merge in different work cultures.

No matter whether a job seeker is hired or not, every application itself can serve as a reliable data source. Job boards and recruiters receive hundreds of applications daily. They can collect these resumes to create a resume database, which can be used for proactive hiring. Also, the pre-employment assessments taken by recruiters and employers can provide information about the skills and expertise of candidates.

Big data analytics in recruitment solutions

Integrating big data analytics in recruitment solutions can address various hiring challenges faced by job boards and recruiters right from sourcing the right candidates to hiring them.

Source the right candidates

Transparency is a critical factor in the hiring process. And big data can bring this transparency to hiring. Big data can provide detailed information such as location, position, company name, and desired skills, among others, about job openings. Such data can assist job boards and recruiters to source the right candidates.

Big data analytics can assist recruiters in proactive hiring decisions. Job boards and recruiters can access the resume database to find a massive pool of talented candidates. Big data can quickly analyze the entire database to categorize these resumes based on skills, location, and demographics. Then job boards and recruiters can list most preferred candidates who fit the requirements of jobs. They can proactively reach such candidates. With proactive hiring, job boards and recruiters can get a competitive advantage over others who wait for candidates to send their applications. Proactive recruitment also saves time and money for job boards. Since there aren’t many applications required in proactive hiring, it reduces the screening time. And it also saves time and cost for creating a job post advertisement and publishing it on various sites.

Develop attractive ads

Not every potential candidate is actively searching for a job. Various passive job seekers might change their jobs for a better offer. Job boards and recruiters can attract these passive candidates while they are using social media. But to attract such job seekers, job boards need to develop attractive job ads. And that’s where big data can come into handy. Big data analytics can analyze a massive amount of data points from previous ad campaigns. This helps to detect which ad campaigns were successful and the reason behind their success. Inversely it can also help to determine the factors that led to the failure of specific campaigns. Based on such data, job boards and recruiters can create job ads and campaigns by including strategies that can ensure success. Thus it can help to attract a higher number of talent for recruitment.

Big data analytics can also assist in creating job advertisements for specific advertising platforms. For instance, big data about the age of people using a particular social media platform can help assist in developing job ads that can attract them on that platform.

Predict hiring needs

Predictive analytics is one of the most significant benefits of big data analytics. Big data can predict the changing hiring needs in the market, which can help job boards and recruiters to stay ahead of their competitors. For instance, big data can detect how changes in technology and technical solutions are impacting hiring. And then, it can predict hiring for which job function would be in demand in the near future. Recruiters can prepare for the increasing demand well before their competitors and get a competitive advantage.

Big data analytics can also determine patterns in tenure of specific job roles. Hence it can help job boards and recruiters to develop marketing strategies for job roles with shorter tenure proactively.

Eliminate biased hiring

Big data eliminates unknown bias towards candidates by interviewers. Whether they are aware of it or not, there are chances of unknown bias towards candidates based on recruiters’ preferences. For instance, if an interviewer likes to interact with people, he might be biased towards interviewees who are more interactive during their interview. But since decisions made with the help of big data analytics are entirely data-driven, they eliminate any chances of bias. This can help job boards and recruiters to hire job seekers completely based on the requirements and desired skills of a job.

Need for job scraping tools for collecting job-related big data

To optimally leverage big data, job boards and recruiters first require an abundance of job data. Suppose a recruiter has all the information about how to create an attractive job ad for a specific role, but there are no job posts available for that role, then it won’t be of any use. Hence, they should first ensure that they collect all the available job vacancies. Fetching all the latest job openings from millions of websites’ over the internet can be hectic for job boards and recruiters. And that’s where premium job scraping tools can be useful for them. 

Job scraping tools can crawl all the employers’ websites every day to fetch the latest openings. They can also gather data such as detailed job descriptions that can be used as input in big data analytics. By analyzing such big data, job boards and recruiters can source the right candidates. And that’s not just it, a premium job scraping tool auto-deletes all the job posts from job boards’ and recruiters’ websites whose vacancies are filled. This ensures that there are no outdated job posts displayed on their websites.