Tag Archives: Human Capital Information Retrieval

The Future of Sourcing and Talent Identification

If you listen to certain people in the recruiting industry, you’d think that being able to leverage information systems for talent discovery and identification will be an obsolete skill for recruiters and that sourcers will have to find another profession in the near future.

According to these folks, people with sourcing skills won’t be necessary because the future of sourcing will lie in total automation – they believe that applications that employ semantic search, AI and NLP (Natural Language Processing) will be able to perform the entire candidate matching process for you.

However, neither Watson, Artificial Intelligence, Natural Language Processing nor semantic search will be putting any sourcer or recruiter out of a job anytime soon unless all they’re doing is basic keyword and title searching. Continue reading

Beyond Boolean: Human Capital Information Retrieval

When I recently spoke at SourceCon in New York, I showed an example Boolean search string that could be used as a challenge or an evaluation of a person’s knowledge and ability.

The search string looked something like this:

(Director or “Project Manage*” or “Program Manage*” or PM*) w/250 xfirstword and (truck* or ship* or rail* or transport* or logistic* or “supply chain*”) w/10 (manag* or project)* and (Deloitte or Ernst or “E&Y” or KPMG or PwC or PricewaterhouseCoopers or “Price Waterhouse*”)

During the presentation, an audience member asked me why there wasn’t any use of site:, inurl:, intitle:, etc. I responded by acknowledging that for many, sourcing and Boolean search seems to be synonymous with Internet search – however, this is definitely not the case. Continue reading

Are You Fluent in the Language of Information Systems?

If you traveled to a foreign country where you don’t speak the local language, you would find yourself in a situation where there are questions you would want to ask people and things you’ll need to know, and nearly everyone you run into would be able to help you – but because you can’t articulate in a manner that the locals understand, they can’t assist you and provide you with what you need.

Most people would be rightfully frustrated in this kind of scenario – knowing that nearly everyone you run into can help you with the answers or the information you need, but you just can’t express yourself in a way anyone can understand.

Some people respond to this by speaking more slowly or more loudly (or both!) – but of course this does not help one bit.  In fact, it may simply annoy the locals and make them less likely to want to try and help you.

Others might try and get a phrase or translation book to try and communicate.  Have you ever had to try and communicate with someone who does this?  It’s painful, but it’s a step better than gesticulating wildly and speaking in a different language slowly and loudly.

If you were fluent in the local language – none of this would be an issue. You’d be able to communicate quickly and effectively with nearly anyone you come into contact with and get the answers you seek or the information you need.

Working with computerized systems is no different.

Every day, most people interface with information systems of some kind – computers (tablets, laptops, smart phones, etc.), the Internet (search engines, web sites/apps, social media), and databases.

Yet most people don’t speak the “native language” of computerized systems. If you don’t speak the local language, why would you assume that the locals automatically “know” what you’re looking for and that you should be able to get you precisely the information you need?

So – what’s the “local language” of computerized systems?

Boolean.

Continue reading