| According
to the online dictionary, Wikipedia, CV as we all know,
is Latin. It means the course or race of life, CV’s
are a recruiters ‘stock-in-trade’ and the
widely used means by which job seekers and recruiters
communicate. Parse however is less well known and derived
from, of all things, Middle English! It means (in this
case) to have a computer program split a file or other
input into bits of data that can be easily stored or
manipulated.
In the ‘olden dayes’ canny
recruiters would get job applicants to fill in lengthy,
generic, inflexible and very bureaucratic Application
Forms. Undoubtedly an early form of parsing as it forced
the applicant to split up their meticulously prepared
course of life and insert the constituent bits into
the recruiters application form. Bingo! We know applicants
hate them and that recruiters ‘file’ them
when they get them. Not surprisingly a lot of applicants
simply could not be bothered and moved onto an employer
that made it easy to apply for a job.
The digital revolution has seen many organisations
that have ‘embraced’ technology and put,
wait for it, a computerised application form on their
website! Remarkable. You guessed it, applicants still
can’t be bothered, all they want to do is apply
for a job using the previously mentioned and widely
used document their CV. On the other-hand recruiters
want to gather and collect all the information contained
in the CV, store it in their databases to allow them
to read, store, archive and re-read at will.
Parsing technology put simply will dissemble
the bits of a CV, recognise what they are (First Name,
Surname, e-mail address etc) and place them into the
appropriate boxes of the application form. Parsing technology
is built in to advanced Applicant Tracking Systems.
A job seeker can ‘parse’ their CV into the
application form. It takes nanoseconds, so is everybody
happy?
Early technology was very hit and miss
yet as with all technology, parsing gets better and
better, the ‘accuracy’ of the parse (ie
not putting your phone number in the email address box)
continuously improves as does the speed. (Less than
a nanosecond to apply for a job? Never.) and the candidate
experience is enhanced, which is very important for
the recruiter and ultimately gives them competitive
advantage; they get their guys and gals whilst their
competitors are still reading partially completed application
forms.
Leading providers have introduced ‘intelligent
parsing’ where the technology can look at the
CV of a person and conduct a database search to find
similar people. (Find me one like this?) The same technology
can be used to compare job attributes with CV’s
by linking it to a ‘knowledge database’
(Find me people for this Job) Latest developments include
the ability to infer skills from a persons CV, even
ones they did not know they had!
Applicant Tracking Systems will use intelligent
parsing to constantly monitor corporate as well as public
CV databases to ensure they are the first to contact
job seekers who will stand a high chance of meeting
the job and company requirements. (people with any questions
on parsing please ‘think’ your questions
and we will telepathically parse the answers direct
to your brains) – Or fill out the enclosed application
form.
Chris Buckley
HRsmart United Kingdom |
