What Does It Really Mean to Match a Person to a Job?
The term “Job matching” has been used widely to describe various approaches for matching candidates to open positions. The operational definition for a job match actually varies widely and is confusing to recruiting professionals trying to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of matching people to jobs. Let’s look at the most common operational definitions of a job match.
Job Matching based on resume content
The most common job matching approaches use some form of semantic matching methodology to analyze the resume content of candidates and identify resumes that contain key words, concepts or elements that are seen an important job requirements. This type of job matching provides a crude screen that is often inaccurate in terms of truly finding people that match the full requirements of the job. Follow up conversations with prospective candidates are required to better understand qualifications.
Job Matching based on background variables
Job boards and other online venues for candidates typically will capture basic background information. These variables include job title, functional background, industry background, position level, compensation level, location, etc. These sites allow users to search the database of prospective candidates using a combinations of these variables. Again, this type of operational matching provides a very crude screen based on a narrow range of key background variables that are desired in a successful candidate.
Job Matching based on comprehensive talent profiles
LinkedIn has emerged as a top recruiting source both because of the size of their membership and the amount of qualitative talent profile information available to recruiters. They have invested in technology to help search this information for identifying prospective candidates. However, there are still significant limitations due to the nature of qualitative self-report data.
This matching methodology offers the greatest value proposition when coupled with some significant enhancements. OMNIview wanted to broaden the range of measures and elements considered in a talent profile. We wanted to utilize a comprehensive talent profile that contained predictive variables that had a meaningful impact on a candidate’s willingness or ability to perform in a given job. The OMNIview talent profiling approach consists of a combination of self-report measures and norm based assessments which are systematically compared to a comprehensive job requirement profile that utilize the same measures. This matching analytic takes into account the relative importance of each measure for job success. More important elements have more demanding business rules to be considered a match. The result is the most accurate and scientific matching process in existence today.
Problem and Solution for Job Matching Based on Comprehensive Talent Profiles
The primary problem in using this powerful matching approach is getting the data from prospective job candidates. Job prospects may well abandon a selection process that requires extensive information to be provided for consideration for employment, particularly if other opportunities exist that do not have the same requirements. The motivation to provide additional information or complete assessments increases when candidates feel they are one of the final candidates. Therefore, the solution to the data gathering problem is to progressively gather more data as the candidate proceeds through the selection process. At each step of the selection process, a matching index can be calculated using the data available at that step to make progression decisions more efficient. With each subsequent step, more data is used in the matching algorithm and greater predictive accuracy is obtained. The result is significantly better efficiency and accuracy in matching people to jobs.
Contact OMNIview to find out more about how to improve your recruitment, selection processes, and how to implement a longer term strategy for improving selection efficiency and accuracy.