Jobs Listings to Talent Insights: How Global Labor Market Data Transforming Job Boards

Labor Market Data, Almost all job boards do two things primarily– list jobs and have candidates apply to those jobs. It also charges companies based on the level of visibility that they want to add to the job listings. However, that’s what every single job board that is not using data as well as technical advancements in its favor– is doing. So what separates the cream from the rest? Job boards that use global market data to transform their offerings and provide intelligent decision engines instead of just hosting jobs are the future. It is always a good idea to plug in more labor data sources to your job board rather than leaving data on the table. It will provide companies with more solutions, give better results for your applicants, and in turn evolve your job board to a lot more!

Labor data can be collected by individual Human Resources Departments of companies for background research before creating a hiring pipeline. However such teams are likely to look at a very small subset of the massive global job market data which would in turn lead to a bias in the system. It would also be difficult for smaller or mid-size companies to be able to perform job market analysis. This is the gap that can be filled in by intelligent job boards.

Labor Market Data and its Sources

Labor market data consists of data related to different job sectors, the economic conditions of countries, new technological breakthroughs, updates in manufacturing processes, changes in immigration policies, and a lot more. Some of the common data sources that are summed up to generate Labor Market Data are

1. Data from Government Agencies like the Bureau of Labor Statistics or the US Census Bureau makes up a large portion of Labor Market Data. In certain cases, government agencies may not be able to capture the scenario on the ground or fail to paint the full picture. This can be due to political compulsions or hurdles in data collection. However, certain labor organizations do post their findings and data on a yearly or quarterly basis. Certain graphs show new trends or changes in the labor force. Those need to be accounted for by Job Boards that are catering to the needs of job applicants as well as companies. 
2. Job Postings from thousands of job boards and job websites make up the rest of the data set. These are organic data containing posts by companies from across the globe in different sectors. Such data may not automatically give you insights into the labor market. Rather you will need to sort, sift, aggregate, and wrangle the data to come up with usable information. You would usually want to sort job posts by titles, skills, keywords, company, geographical locations, and more.
3. Online Profiles are resumes that help in painting a picture of the other side. It gives us insights into what the current workforce looks like, its strengths and weaknesses, and what a company that wants to hire candidates should look for or offer. Such data often involves data scraped from websites like Linkedin which provide information such as the work history of individuals, their education, and certifications.
4. The rest of the pie is made up of surveys, news reports, and more. While these may form a very small part of the dataset, they can often come in handy especially when the information is used in real time.

The Advantages of using Global Labor Market Data

Job Boards or Job Sites can use global Labor Market Data to make themselves more attractive to companies as well as job applicants. Access to quality data and being able to consume the data to produce some valuable insights can help in more ways than one:

Providing better recommendations–

Job boards, websites, or software that feed on Global Labor Market Data can provide better recommendations to companies. This is doable by matching their requirements from job listings with the profiles of applicants. This initial filtering helps both candidates and companies since job boards will be performing the matching of new job posts to candidates on a two-way street. The skills, years of work experience, job preference, and previous roles and responsibilities will all be evaluated and matched with historical data to find the best matches for each job– 

1. Thus reducing the time and effort required by a company looking for candidates or 
2. For a candidate to shortlist the most relevant jobs that he or she should apply to.

A better success rate will lead to organic growth in clients for job boards along with more paid listings on the website.

Identifying Emerging Job Trends–

Identifying trends in a market that is influenced by factors like the stock market, economic activities, war-like situations, epidemics, and political actions may prove to be a daunting task. That is unless you have your hands on labor data for every region that you are targeting. Emerging job trends like industries that are facing high attrition rates or job roles having few applicants but a very high number of job listings, need to be tracked and used to one’s advantage when advising companies.

Improving Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion–

Many companies who are hiring candidates globally want to ensure that their DEI goals are also met and certain principles are adhered to. Having market data can help job boards in creating DEI-compliant job roles or in advising which roles can be specifically earmarked for those coming from less privileged backgrounds. Outreach programs or promoting roles to a more diverse group can also be performed once you have analyzed the data and figured out how other companies are doing it.

Enhanced Employer Insights–

The first question that most companies are going to ask a job board owner is the “what” and “how” of the other companies hiring candidates. This may be in terms of

1. Wordings in job postings
2. Requirements and skill sets asked for
3. Remuneration for a particular skill set and years of work experience
4. Other benefits that usually attract applicants
5. Identifying talent shortages and skill gaps

Such information and other insights derived from a global job market feed would allow job boards to give better suggestions, create more attractive job posts and in turn fill up vacancies faster. It will also benefit companies to create data-backed hiring strategies that can be updated on the fly.

Automation of Manual Tasks–

Certain tasks like the first stage of screening, or sending notifications to candidates informing them of decisions on certain stages can be automated. The higher the level of automation that you can achieve– the more your talent team can focus on quality. This is usually done using historical as well as current information on jobs and candidates. So when a company comes to you wanting to hire for a specific job role, you can create a custom screening mechanism based on the data that you already have on thousands of jobs and millions of candidates.

Capturing better quality candidates–

An intelligent data-backed job board will be able to use labor data to filter and sift through candidates that are already in its system. This will enable it to create a list of “best suited” candidates for common job posts like Software Engineer or Product Manager. Such curated lists will shorten the time required to match candidates to companies. This in turn will result in better quality applicants as well as lesser human resources on the company’s side to hire and fill up vacancies.

The Data Source

An intelligent tool is only as good as the data that it is built on. This is why you need JobsPikr– a Talent Intelligence Platform for Labor Market Analysis. Our live job stream has all its data pre-verified so that the highest standards of accuracy and quality are maintained. We scan more than a million job posts every single day which are provided to our clients based on certain pre-configured filters.

As a job board, you may need access to different types of data at different frequencies. These requirements may also change from time to time based on business decisions. We provide our customers with a custom data feed so that they can find answers to important questions in the job market such as–

1. Which area would suit a working crowd?
2. What are the in-demand skills for a particular job?
3. Analyzing the hiring trends and numbers of competitors.
4. Salary benchmarking using multiple factors and filters.

You will be able to use our data to solve problems of today as well as forecast the future of the labor market and advise your clients accordingly. This may involve predicting a labor crunch or changes in the supply and demand in the job market, or a correction in salaries due to external events. 

Our all-inclusive talent insights are backed by AI and help Job Boards create a strategy to win over companies who are trying to navigate the hiring waters. As companies bank on you for providing them with data and intelligence, they can instead focus on the human aspect of hiring and work on their hiring strategy and budgets. The future of the job market will run on data and data intelligence– and early adopters will leave the rest behind.