This article explores how the more recent global migration trends are affecting new developments in CV Matching and Job Matching Technology.

According to the World of Work Report 2014, developing countries are quickly gaining on nations with more advanced economies. During the last 30 years, per capita income in developing countries grew, on average, by 3.3 per cent per year – much quicker than the 1.8 per cent growth reported in developed nations.

However, despite this progress, levels of working poverty remain high and 839 million workers in emerging economies are unable to earn enough to lift themselves and their families above the US$2 a day poverty threshold.

Moreover, around 200 million new jobs are needed over the next five years to fulfil the growing working-age population in these countries, which may push many younger members to emigrate. In 2013, over 230 million people were reported to be living in a country other than the one in which they were born, a rise of some 57 million since 2000, with South Asia making up for half of this increase.

What is the impact of this trend on developed countries and more specifically on the companies employing these individuals? At first glance, this means one thing: a bigger talent pool and therefore a larger amount of qualified candidates looking for a job.

However when this is examined more closely, the flow of incoming foreign CVs may present some drawbacks: thousands of CVs in different languages, formats and using different keywords and skills to those hiring departments and agencies are familiar with; what is the point of having a larger pool if we can’t understand the information that it contains? 

The solution for employers, if they are to take advantage of this trend, comes through the use of technology, specifically, CV Matching and Job Matching technology. However, Recruitment Automation has already been in the market for years so further explanation so of its basic functions is not necessary. 

However, in this context the concept of CV Matching and Job Matching Technology, have never proved harder. Technology has to be able to do more than just scan CVs, search for keywords to extract and match to other keywords in the same language. Job matching software has to become multilingual in order to be able to “swim” in this new massively enlarged “pool”. To “survive” employers of choice must make sure they have the intelligent and robust technology in place. 

The CV Matching Software they use has to be able to go further than just matching a skill to its translation, but to understand the whole context in the same language that the cv is written. This means that the technology has to be “knowledgeable” and aware of the new skills that the foreign talent is bringing in. This may be due to the emergence of new institutions or universities in that region, as well as the different ways to allude to a skill in a given language.

It goes without saying that this trend affects everyone in the recruitment market, not just agencies, which means that even job board software will have to adapt to it.

This technology is more than a simple software tool. It is a project in continuous development. In the same way as languages and cultures don’t stay static and are constantly evolving, any technology based in natural language and semantic search has to be carrying out constant research and development. In such a dynamic and ever-changing arena as the job market, CV Search and CV Matching tools and the technology that supports them have to be evolving at the same rate or faster.

Investing on a resume parsing and resume matching software that is able to perform this, might involve a cost initially, but when we consider the 200 million CVs that are expected to be received in the next 5 years and we translate it to potential placements, the possible revenue from the exercise could be massive.

As an approved Bullhorn Marketplace supplier, DaXtra Technologies will be exhibiting its parsing and categorisation software designed to directly integrate with Bullhorn database at this year’s Bullhorn Live Event taking place on the 18-20 May 2014, in Boston.

The DaXtra team will be demonstrating the full capabilities of its resume parsing and resume search solutions and how by integrating them with existing Bullhorn database, recruiters can benefit from accurately matched candidates who are then parsed, de-duplicated and loaded into Bullhorn database seamlessly. 

Our DaXtra Search solution removes the administrative burden often associated with recruitment and instead automates, filters and assigns candidates into a system which can then be analysed using the latest contextual resume search technology to provide recruiters with a list of highly relevant candidates.

For most professional recruiters, a CV management system will be synonymous with a CV database – a place to electronically store and retrieve candidate CVs, making the job of filing and searching hundreds or thousands of CVs easier. But a true CV management system should be more than a CV processor, and should support the recruitment process much more fully, ideally providing end-to-end support from initial CV acquisition, through to provision of a shortlist to clients.

Why an End-to-End Solution Matters

Just holding a CV in a database does not, by itself, offer significant advantages to a recruiter. To process CVs involves the effort saved in getting it into an appropriate computer format, how accurately the data has been entered and the ease with which it can then be matched to open vacancies. Ideally, every aspect of CV technology should support the wider task of recruitment, helping to make every stage of the recruiting process faster and easier.

The first part of the recruitment process is candidate acquisition. Traditionally this means advertising a post and inviting candidates to submit CVs. While this approach is unlikely to go completely out of fashion, proactive CV management software can do more than simply wait to have data entered into it. Ideally it can actively assist the recruiter by searching job boards and social networking sites for CVs and have them processed and ready to use before the first manually submitted CV has even arrived.

When manually submitted CVs do start arriving, most of them will arrive as email attachments. These then need to be opened and submitted to the database, creating work for the recruiter – unless the CV management software can automatically detect their arrival, process them and then notify the recruiter.

Once candidates have been acquired, the quality and accuracy of data coming in is critical. The CVs within a database are only an asset if they have been accurately coded to a level which is as good as that which can be achieved by an expert human recruiter, noting key data and skills necessary for vacancy matching and intelligently recognising the meaning of data from its context and from their own domain knowledge. If each résumé has to be read, coded and entered by hand, there is little benefit in terms of speeding up the process of CV acquisition.

The real value of a CV depends on how easily it can be matched against relevant vacancies, and that means there is a requirement to also represent vacancies within the system in a format which is consistent and compatible with the way that CVs are represented.

Recruiters need to be able to easily search CVs looking for specific skill combinations or other personal attributes (e.g. nationality) to produce a shortlist – perhaps to pass to another colleague for further investigation, or for client perusal. But a fully featured CV management system needs to do more than simply wait for recruiters to initiate searches. If it has the automatic acquisition and parsing abilities mentioned above, it can then take the next step and perform CV searching and matching for all new CVs, notifying the recruiter whenever a new match is found. This saves the recruiter the task of having to perform a manual CV search to check for any new candidates.

The next stage of the recruitment workflow is to draw up a shortlist of candidates based on how closely each CV matches a particular vacancy. The CV search software can of course provide a list of the most closely matching CVs, which could be the basis for a shortlist – but this is a stage which typically requires some judgement by a human recruiter. For instance, there may have been 10 skills required by a vacancy, but the recruiter may know, through discussion with their client, that 4 of those skills are especially important – and so the recruiter will want to check that those 4 skills are being prioritised in the final shortlist. Alternatively, the recruiter may want to speak to candidates before putting them on a shortlist, as a way of checking communication skills, availability for work or to clarify some other aspect of their CV. Rather than imposing a shortlist upon a recruiter, the ideal resume management system will allow a recruiter to compile a shortlist within the system, tagging the CVs that are of interest, and saving the resulting shortlist for future reference.

Daxtra's End-to-End CV Management System

The Daxtra suite of resume software modules provides exactly this level of recruitment workflow support, freeing up recruiters from the time consuming tasks of CV sifting and data entry, and giving them more time for value added activities such as building relationships with clients and candidates.

Daxtra Capture can acquire resumes from multiple sources including email, job boards and social media, and can be set to run searches against specific vacancy criteria at set intervals, thereby widening the pool of quality candidates.

Daxtra Parser then quickly turns a variety of CV formats into XML format, to a high level of accuracy, ready for use. Very little manual user input is required, except to deal with duplicates or missing data. The speed and accuracy of the CV parser means that being flooded with hundreds of applications per vacancy no longer has to be a huge drain on resources or result in delays for the client.

Next, Daxtra Search allows intuitive searching of the database using natural language – which means minimal training required. New CV's can be automatically compared to existing vacancies and matches notified to recruiters. Recruiters can create longlists and shortlists within Daxtra Search ready for passing on to other recruiters or to clients.

Together these modules comprise a complete CV management system which has been designed with the needs of the recruitment industry specifically in mind and providing far more holistic level of support than a simple, static database.