EMSI, CareerBuilder, and ‘Big Data’ for Recruiters

Big data has become a big topic (and a big buzzword) in the recruitment and HR world. John Zappe of ERE has an insightful article on how EMSI and CareerBuilder can help recruiters access and use big data in a meaningful way.

Zappe provides a useful discussion between strategic and tactical information, and how EMSI’s Analyst and CareerBuilder’s Supply and Demand Portal can help with both.

Before we go further, let me pause here to explain what it is EMSI and the Supply and Demand

Portal do. In elevator pitch terms, they provide business professionals — from recruiters who source tough to fill jobs, to CEOs plotting business strategy — the kind of labor force information to make better decisions and be more competitive.

On a tactical level, Supply and Demand and EMSI can tell a recruiter where the particular fish that is being sought is most plentiful. On a strategic level, the data can be used to help site new offices and plants, decide whether to hire or train, what the competition across town is paying, and how many workers there are with the specific skills a company needs.

Where Supply and Demand aggregates the millions of CareerBuilder resumes to provide a picture of supply, and the demand based on Wanted’s job posting data, EMSI supplements that with external labor information drawn from sources as varied as the U.S. Department of Labor and local employment services. EMSI was CareerBuilder’s external data vendor for the Supply and Demand Portal before it was bought.

[CareerBuilder's Brent] Rasmussen says the EMSI acquisition has two major results. It opens the door to the C-suite, allowing CareerBuilder sales teams to demonstrate the strategic, competitive edge that big labor data can give a company. It also gives CareerBuilder a strategic recruiting tool to present to HR leaders.

He then moves to the depth of EMSI’s labor market database after touring Analyst.

EMSI’s VP of Marketing Rob Sentz walked me through a demo of how a recruiting leader could use EMSI data to develop a hiring strategy. Not only will EMSI tell you how many workers with semiconductor manufacturing experience there are in Anytown, USA, but it will tell you how many of them are currently working, what the average pay is, providing you a sense of turnover and job availability. Not enough to meet your needs? EMSI will tell you how many workers there are in closely allied jobs that with a little training could fill your open reqs.

That’s just scratching the surface. There’s much more depth and detail available, even before it’s paired with the Supply and Demand Portal content. The challenge, then, is telling the story of what Big Data can do, and then getting HR professionals and recruiters to use it.

Read the full piece.

More on CareerBuilder’s purchase of EMSI is here. And for more on EMSI and big data, see this article.