Big Data and Language: How the New HR Understands Its People

As organizations adapt to data, HR has kept pace. HR systems have transformed from stagnant storage centers to self-service cross roads, enabling HR to pull insights based on all the ways employees interact. These advancements have empowered administrators to use data collected from online communication. Understanding what makes a workforce successful is the primary goal. Companies are able to gather people-related data to better cultivate talents. The latest HR tools have a strong focus on collaboration for this very purpose. Tracking Applicant Traits Today’s applicant tracking system is a shining example of how far HR solutions have come. What once only served to collect resumes has transformed into a complete recruiting tool including personality metrics receptive to passive talent. As recruitment technology advances into the cloud related solutions are also gaining momentum in order to support the growth of talent sourcing. IBM Watson Personality Insights service shows that businesses can target people’s language online to identify dominant traits. The result is a solution for deriving personality insights that reflect actionable tendencies. Some key stats from IBM and related studies:

• Targeting the top 10 percent with high openness and low emotional range resulted in increases in click rate from 6.8 percent to 11.3 percent.
• People who score high in orderliness, self-discipline, and cautiousness and low in immoderation are 40 percent more likely to respond to coupons than the random population.
• A person's personality characteristics can predict their brand preference with 65 percent accuracy.