Efficient multifaceted screening of job applicants

Abstract

Built on top of human resources management databases within the enterprise, we present a decision support system for managing and optimizing screening activities during the hiring process in a large organization. The basic idea is to prioritize the efforts of human resource practitioners to focus on candidates that are likely of high quality, that are likely to accept a job offer if made one, and that are likely to remain with the organization for the long term. To do so, the system first individually ranks candidates along several dimensions using a keyword matching algorithm and several bipartite ranking algorithms with univariate loss trained on historical actions. Next, individual rankings are aggregated to derive a single list that is presented to the recruitment team through an interactive portal. The portal supports multiple filters that facilitate effective identification of candidates. We demonstrate the usefulness of our system on data collected from a large organization over several years with business value metrics showing greater hiring yield with less interviews. Similarly, using historical pre-hire data we demonstrate accurate identification of candidates that will have quickly left the organization. The system has been deployed as described in a large globally integrated enterprise. © 2013 ACM.