Is Big Data Disrupting Personnel Search? Recruiting in the Digital Age
Recruiting in the Digital Age
Finding the right people on all position levels is THE challenge to become or stay successful in business. In the past, Executive Search companies depended solely on their consultants’ network with a bit of mystery and magic mixed in.
Today, the importance of a data-driven backend can no longer be ignored in the Executive Search and Recruiting industries. Without it, there is no way that service providers can offer their clients pragmatic, transparent, fast and accurate solutions for the perfect match.
Austrian Economic Chambers Hosts an Exciting Event
Big data has become such a hot topic in the world of Executive Search, that the Austrian Economic Chambers decided to host an event in Prague on the topic. An exciting event arose, also in discussions with Katerina Vollmann, Talentor International Managing Consultant. The resulting speaker list with its heavy hitters attracted a strong audience of C-level executives.
The Legal & Compliance Counsel, Novartis Oncology Czech Republic Novartis, Barbora Dubanska, spoke on the topic: “GDPR – What Is It About.” This served as a wakeup call to any business that has yet to prepare for the upcoming new European data privacy regulations. Many have yet to realize that seemingly harmless activities like printing out LinkedIn profiles can put them on the wrong side of the law. Barbora ’s talk was very well received.
Big Changes Ahead for Recruiting and Executive Search
From IBM came Alexander Habinski. As Cloud Service Provider Leader for CEE, he spoke on the topic of “Transforming Talent Acquisition for the Cognitive Era.” The audience met his talk with a sensational response. First, Alexander fascinated them with data on how the code is reinventing the world. He spoke about how new digital services will impact the automotive industry, then turned his sights on recruiting. A key observation: Active hunt will starkly increase in importance in the next 5 years due to scarce talent and altered expectations of the talented workforce.
epunkt CEO presented on “Big Data in Recruiting and Executive Search.” Daniel compared the disruption in the retail and taxi businesses caused by Amazon and Uber and contrasted them with recruiting. According to Daniel, the special challenges in recruiting include:
- The war for talents
- Tons of outdated data
- Recruiting spam on LinkedIn and other networks
- The ravine between employer branding and employer reality
- Quality and retention.
Radical New Services Just Around the Corner
Daniel wrapped up his talk by discussing ways that big data is already shaking up the search world. There are now apps that monitor job-seeking behavior and can predict when a candidate is ready to change jobs. Other apps can detect candidate personality based on written communication and social media, which helps you communicate effectively. With the help of new tools like these, Talentor plans on offering predictive recruiting & retention consulting and target candidate monitoring in the near future.
After the talks, the speakers were joined by Talentor’s Michael Sarsteiner and Katerina Vollmann for a podium discussion. After the event, the audience expressed great appreciation that the topic went far beyond “regular” HR topics, and was relevant for everyone with a digital footprint. The successful afternoon was rounded out by time for networking at the end.
