Tag Archives: Talent Identification

Talent Sourcing: Man vs. AI/Black Box Semantic Search

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Back in March 2010, I had the distinct honor of delivering the keynote presentation at SourceCon on the topic of resume search and match solutions claiming to use artificial intelligence in comparison with people using their natural intelligence for talent discovery and identification.

Now that nearly 2 years has passed, and given that in that time I’ve had even more hands-on experience with a number of the top AI/semantic search applications available (I won’t be naming names, sorry), I decided it was time to revisit the topic which I am very passionate about.

If you’ve ever been curious about semantic search applications that “do the work for you” when it comes to finding potential candidates, you’re in the right place, because I’ve updated the slide deck and published it to Slideshare. Here’s what you’ll find in the 86 slide presentation:

  • A deep dive into the deceptively simple challenge of sourcing talent via human capital data (resumes, social network profiles, etc.)
  • How resume and LinkedIn profile sourcing and matching solutions claiming to use artificial intelligence, semantic search, and NLP actually work and achieve their claims
  • The pros, cons, and limitations of automated/black box matching solutions
  • An insightful (and funny!) video of Dr. Michio Kaku and his thoughts on the limitations of artificial intelligence
  • Examples of what sourcers and recruiters can do that even the most advanced automated search and match algorithms can’t do
  • The concept of Human Capital Data Information Retrieval and Analysis (HCDIR & A)
  • Boolean and extended Boolean
  • Semantic search
  • Dynamic inference
  • Dark Matter resumes and social network profiles
  • What I believe to be the ideal resume search and matching solution
Enjoy, and let me know your thoughts.

Talent Sourcing and Matching – Artificial Intelligence and Black Box Semantic Search vs. Human Cognition and Sourcing

View more presentations from Glen Cathey

Is Finding and Recruiting Top Talent Really Your #1 Priority?

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Do these quotes sound familiar?

  • “People are our greatest asset.”
  • “The only real sustainable competitive advantage of any company is the recruitment and retention of great people.”
  • “Talent is our #1 priority as a company.”
  • “Your technologies, products and structures can be copied by competitors, but your people can’t be.”
  • “No matter what kind of business you are in, having the right people determines your company’s success or failure.”
  • “The ability to find and hire the right people can make or break your business. It is as plain as that. No matter where you are in the life cycle of your business, bringing in great talent should always be a top priority.” – Michael Dell

How many times have you read or heard something similar?

The ubiquitous “people are our greatest asset” sentiment sounds good, and no doubt feels good to say, but whenever I hear or read it, the first question that comes to my mind is “What are you doing to ensure that you are identifying and acquiring the right people?”

If you believe that finding and acquiring top talent is your #1 priority, then I have a few questions for you.

Continue reading →

Having Trouble Attracting the Right Candidates?

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Venus Flytrap While attending the Social Recruiting Summit in Minneapolis back in May, I made specific note of a common sentiment expressed by recruiting representatives of two social recruiting powerhouses – Best Buy and Facebook: They don’t have any trouble attracting people, but they do have a tough time attracting the right people.

Recruiters in attendance scoffed at the thought that these two great companies with fantastic brands would have problems attracting talent.

However, I wasn’t surprised – not in the least. And I’ll tell you why. Continue reading →

Why Do So Many ATS Vendors Offer Poor Search Capability?

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JIT Talent IdentificationThis question has been burning in my mind for quite some time – why is it that so many ATS/recruiting CRM vendors offer poor or limited candidate search functionality? I’m not talking about ATS vendors you’ve never heard of – I’m talking about some of the biggest names in Applicant Tracking/Candidate Relationship Management applications.

I’m well aware that ATS’s serve many critical functions beyond searching for the candidates contained within them, but let’s pull no punches here – you can’t hire someone, or begin to automate candidate relationship management with someone you haven’t FOUND in the first place. And just because a candidate is buried somewhere in your database, it doesn’t mean you’ve actually found them (or can find them when you want or need to).

The bottom line is that data is of little to no value if you can’t retrieve the information you want, when you need it. What is the point of storing human capital data if you can’t precisely retrieve exactly what you want, when you want it? Continue reading →

Real Recruiting: Talent Identification AND Acquisition

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As you might be able to tell from the name of my blog, I’m passionate about leveraging information systems for finding candidates. Unless you’re running 1 word or title-only queries, you can’t search the Internet, LinkedIn, Twitter, your ATS/CRM, or a job board resume database without using at least the most basic Boolean logic.

When I post links to my search-focused articles in various LinkedIn groups, I often get comments and responses expressing the sentiment that using various sites and technologies to search for candidates isn’t “real recruiting.” I’m always a little saddened and frustrated to see responses like this, because it reflects the fact that there are plenty of people in the recruiting and staffing industry that just don’t “get it.” Continue reading →

Human Capital Data Analysts – Sourcing Samurai

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What’s The Sexiest Job in Recruiting?

I recently read this excellent post on the Google blog written by Jonathan Rosenberg, SVP, Product Management at Google, and I was especially excited to read this:

“Hal Varian likes to say that the sexy job in the next ten years will be statisticians. After all, who would have guessed that computer engineers would be the cool job of the 90s? When every business has free and ubiquitous data, the ability to understand it and extract value from it becomes the complimentary scarce factor. It leads to intelligence, and the intelligent business is the successful business, regardless of its size. Data is the sword of the 21st century, those who wield it well, the Samurai.”

Hal Varian gets it.

Google gets it.

So Why Don’t People in Recruiting and HR?

What am I talking about? That the ability to understand and extract value from data (human capital data in recruiting) is the scarce factor and it leads to intelligence and success in business.

***Note***

This post was originally published in March 2009 – when pretty much no one read my blog. now that I have a few more readers, I’ve decided to modify and update the original post, which you can read here.