Getting “Competitive Edge”
Pl. refer to my note dt. 21/02/03, and the design of “Search-Engine” interface attached.
In that UI, I had suggested that the recruiter may be asked to click-on one or more keywords in the bottom boxes. He could even type-in extra keywords not found in the list presented to him.
The idea was to “aggregate” such keywords (for every type of search i.e. for every Industry-type & every Function-type) to build-up a Knowledge-base of WHAT keywords are important to recruiters. This aggregation over a long period would tell us:
Building-up such a Knowledge-base (as captured from thousands of recruiters), would,
over a period of time improve our ability to “predict” the “success-rate” for each candidate, depending upon whether same keywords are also found in his resume.
But recruiters/HR managers are notorious when it comes to writing “job-description” for a given vacancy! This is because the precise Industry-related or Function-related keywords just do not come to their minds! Most HR managers would run out of the keywords after typing 4/5 at most!!
And simply because this (thinking-up and typing keywords) becomes an intellectually “exhausting” exercise, they would simply give-up without trying! That defeats the idea of “capturing” their knowledge.
So, I have thought of another, hopefully simpler/easier way.
Lookup UI attached.
Here, I propose to “reverse” the entire exercise.
The moment a recruiter ticks ✔ on any particular “Industry” or “Function,” all the keywords (i.e. 80% cut-off) will fill up the bottom box.
Simultaneously, the Competence-profile bar would also appear, going right up to 100% match.
In other words, we are saying,
“If all the following keywords were to be present in the resume of a given candidate, then, for the ‘Industry/Function’ selected by you, Mr. Recruiter, he would be THE IDEAL Candidate, scoring 100%.”
But since such an IDEAL candidate simply does not exist, you will need to compromise!
You can do so, by clicking ✔ deleting a few from the list below, which are not very important/relevant to the position that you are trying to fill.
Now, as the recruiter searches the list of keywords (up & down), figures out which are (relatively) less important and starts ticking the boxes ✔ to delete,
PRESTO!
With each tick (representing each deletion), the Competence-bar “shrinks” (& a new “% Match” value appears!!) → Let us not show these % values for reasons given later.
– everything in the hands of recruiter.
If deleting a particular keyword “shrinks” the bar too much, he can UN-TICK/RESTORE & pick some other word to delete.
So, we are permitting the recruiter to FINELY CALIBRATE the desired Competence-profile.
We could title this box “PROFILE CALIBRATOR.” Jargon impresses!
Now,
if the resume database was very large (e.g., Monster–USA),
then, it would be even possible to display a Counter
which changes with deletion of each keyword!
Then the recruiter even gets to know, at each tick, whether he is FINE–TUNING very fast or too slow.
He is essentially WIDENING / NARROWING his search thru adding/deleting keywords.
I believe such a display would have tremendous impact on Recruiters.
In fact, if his database is quite small, no number (of suitable candidates found) would appear inside the counter, until, maybe, he deletes more than half of the keywords!
(At this stage, we can flash a polite message, asking him to conduct the “exercise” on 3P’s database! – subliminal marketing!).
Such an (LIVE) exercise, would also tell him that, to find even a few “passable” candidates, he has to make unacceptable compromises!
The only “downside” of my proposal is that, at one-go, we are revealing even to our competitors & other jobsites, all the keywords that make-up our various profiles!
As far as recruiters are concerned, given/presented with a LIST of keywords,
25/02/03
by going forward/backward & increasing/decreasing the Competence Profile bar.
This is hardly "exhausting" — mentally or otherwise.
If anything, this looks like SO-MUCH fun!
Let us try.
23/02/2003
Kartavya
Competitive Edge
This is further to my note of 21/02.
Yesterday, I discussed this concept with Raju/SriRam — especially the UI of proposed search-screen & the "idea of recruiter clicking on one/more keywords" appearing in the bottom-boxes of the screen.
Whereas Raju has some doubt as to what extent we will benefit in the long run by building up a
PARALLEL KNOWLEDGE BASE
From keywords clicked by recruiters, both he & SriRam strongly feel that, if the "clicked-on" keywords are also used for finding relevant resumes (from the database), then this could be a very good feature. It is kind of combining the "text-based refine-search" with the main search.
If the recruiter finds that the resumes shortlisted by the search-engine actually do contain those keywords that he had "clicked", then his confidence in the —
Search-engine’s capability would dramatically go-up!
I tend to agree. Pl. give a serious thought.
Of course, we may also provide space at the bottom for recruiter to “Type-In” any keyword not found in the list presented to him when he selects “Ind/Function”.
And, of course, we can still go on aggregating all the keywords ever clicked by all the recruiters to build a frequency-distinctions knowledge-base. This process can go on parallel in the background.
This is as far as “capturing” the brain-power of the recruiters is concerned.
Now, I turn to
“Capturing the brain-power of Jobseekers.”
Whereas, at any point of time, there will be few hundred “recruiters”, as far as “jobseekers” are concerned, the figure will run into lakhs!
And it is important to remember that these lakhs of jobseekers are also “executives” – maybe even recruiters! – in their professional lives! It just so happens that, at a given point of time, they assume the role of jobseekers.
So, we must find a way to capture the brain-power of these lakhs of “executive-jobseekers”. And, if we succeed in doing so, then we can gain an unparallel
COMPETITIVE EDGE.
It is similar to harnessing the computing power of millions of distributed computers under a parallel-processing project such as SETI (Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence).
Except that, in our case, we wish to:
If we succeed in this, no competitor can even approach anywhere near us!
Question is, HOW?
Here is my proposal.
Look at enclosed screens A & B.
Screen A is our RESUMINE interface — with some changes from what we discussed on Friday.
Read the instruction to jobseeker in the right-hand bottom corner. Of course, the word “online” used, is in the context of those jobseekers who log into “submit resume” page of our website, or any jobsite (eg: JobsAhead / JobStreet / Naukri etc.) which subscribes to our webservice.
This word (Online) & the instructions will be suitably changed for the UI screens of our Corporate Subscribers, who are daily receiving email resumes, since this screen is only “seen” by them & no jobseeker is, at that moment, able to see this screen.
So, if the recruiter/subscriber decides to “email” this screen A to concerned jobseeker, then the INSTRUCTIONS will be different.
But this is a minor issue.
The issue is — “How to Capture Knowledge of Jobseekers?”
Screen B opens up.
Most of screen B is same as screen A, except:
-
Title of centre-column changes from “Keywords Found” to → “Keywords Delete” & check-boxes ☐ get added against each keyword.
The idea behind adding/displaying the check-boxes ☐ at this stage is that we do not want to confuse the jobseeker by showing the check-boxes in screen A.
-
The left-hand bottom corner which, in screen A, displayed RESUMINE DATABASE disappears (– the Indian Vanishing Rope Trick).
It gets replaced by, the keywords database (80% at max) of functions,
(or top 3 functions in case we decide to display 3 bars).
These keywords will get displayed in the descending order of their occurrence (frequency distribution) in the database (which database itself is continuously getting updated by daily addition of thousands of resumes & millions of words).
Now, what will the jobseeker find from such a display?
He will find that, the display contains,
-
Some keywords, which are also in his resume (the central-column).
-
Some keywords, which are NOT in his resume.
Now, if he thinks/believes that his competence-profile should look like:
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