FTSE 100 recruitment technology now available to everyone!

Posted by Frank, February-20-2012

A recent article in the Times by acclaimed journalist Mark Frary caught my eye. He wrote that some organisations are turning to artificial intelligence to manage the flood of applications, and that sophisticated systems now match jobseekers with employers.

Now that didn’t surprise or shock me, we all know that companies are now having to process far more applications than ever before and typically have to do that on decreased financial resources because of the recession. What pleasantly surprised me was that he went on to report that FTSE 100 G4S, handles all its job applications through an online career centre at careers.g4s.com. And that although this itself is not new, but what G4S does with applications is rather innovative.

All our users are continually matched using artificial intelligence and semantic logic to every new job posted on to the career centre globally,” says head of resourcing Colin Minto

“This in turn alerts a jobseeker to a potential opportunity they are suitable for, and also alerts G4S’s local hiring manager when a candidate profile in the global database matches a job they have posted”. The text in CVs and job descriptions is analysed, or parsed, using technology developed by Burning Glass, a company based in Boston. Its Lens/Xray parsing engine has been taught to recognise key phrases using a database of tens of millions of CVs.

The system breaks down an applicant’s CV into definable chunks, tagging pieces of information according to what they present, such as an exam grade or hobby.

While this investment in cutting-edge technology sounds expensive, it has delivered return on investment for the company. G4S’s Cash Solutions business in the UK invested £30,000 to automate its recruitment process, including ensuring that all jobs were advertised on the career centre. Minto says that this helped G4S Cash Solutions to save £100,000 for operational hiring and £500,000 for management hiring in 2011.

You may be wondering what this has to do with us and why we are so excited? Well it’s the same technology that powers MyPeopleBiz recruitment portals!

Of course the good news is that you can now compete with the FTSE 100 without spending a fortune as we are bringing this technology to you and helping small to mid size employers (that’s 50 to 3000 employees in the UK) to compete for the best talent.

So, Web 3.0 recruitment technology is here to help employers to seamlessly automate their recruitment processes, so vacancies can be filled more efficiently, faster and at lower cost.

MyPeopleBiz makes recruiting easier; it is a new vision of employers, recruiters and job seekers and social media working together through one integrated platform.