email address, the postcode, then a mailing address. The recruiter could also, if he wanted to, go on to
Ancestry.com to get a little more information about the potential candidate’s family background.
Following the data bread-crumb trail and staying compliant The public data-trail does not end there. In the US, for example, some employers use this data to eventually run soft credit checks, which could offer insight into an individual’s financial commitments and wellbeing. Ms Hutchinson-O’Neill is no advocate
of this approach, recognising the issues around how ethical and proportionate it is to access and use personal data in such a way, even within GDPR, and the importance of building trust in talent pools. Nevertheless, while it is one challenge
to find out basic personal information and contact details in an age where public phone directories are forgotten, an individual’s willingness to consider a new role with another employer or their propensity to move is another matter entirely.
Prospecting for talent by mining data To explore this aspect further, Ms Hutchinson-O’Neill described a case study from a previous role of difficult roles to fill. Looking to appoint 29 people into agile solution architect roles, the company was well aware of the challenges this presents. “These people are rare as hen’s teeth,” explained Ms Hutchinson-O’Neill. “The unemployment rate for solutions architects in the UK is 0.05%. In other words, they are all pretty much in jobs. “The tiny percentage not employed have probably decided to take a career break or
self-employed and not reporting it. We tried through all channels to recruit for these people, but with no success. The other option was through other recruiters. If that was the right answer, we would have done it.” Recognising any recruiter the company
would engage for this task would likely be using tools it already had – and paying a fee of £21,000 for each of the potential 29 hires – “we had to think different,” said Ms Hutchinson-O’Neill. Combining its recruitment management
system to create and maintain talent pools with tailored communications to activate potential candidates, the company overlaid these with a marketing tool to mine the data available to it. “We wanted to find people in the UK, who
had a job title that was aligned to a list of 12- 15 variations of the job title we were looking to fill,” she explained. As well as casting the net by job title, the company also searched for people actively engaging in content on small niche job boards and sharing knowledge on forums. This way, it knew potential candidates were engaged positively in this arena. Ideally, the company also
wanted people who were actively seeking new openings on LinkedIn and weighted that on the selection and attraction criteria. The combination of this funneling and data-led approach found 35,000 generic prospects on CV sites, narrowed down after data sifting through 1,230 prospects who met the criteria for the 29 roles it was looking to fill and each then ascribed a candidate ID.
Narrowing the field – the personal touch Crucially, this approach is within the confines of GDPR because the company already had permission from the people in its talent pool, and those who weren’t already in it had been given a chance to opt out. The next stage was to ascertain if the
cultural fit was just as strong as the skills fit. Highlighting the importance of employer brand, vision and purpose, this approach provided an authentic insight into the wider team, its work and challenges. “We started to send out some really
gentle brand-awareness messages,” said Katrina Hutchinson-O’Neill. “The first one we designed wasn’t a ‘please come and work for us’ call to action because these guys get that 15-20 times a week. “Instead we sent them a message from the
12 | Relocate | January 2019
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