Mercury talks to Idibu about mastering the art of candidate data management

In a recent webinar, Daniel Fox, Marketing Manager of Mercury, spoke with Mark Hackett from Idibu and Nicola Gomme from theLeap, how to uncover untapped value for recruitment businesses through effective data management.Data Management 10 years onThe trio discussed the changing process of data management across the past 10 years starting with the bigger databases appearing more valuable, to going niche and shrinking the size of the databases, to the introduction of GDPR causing further shrinkage resulting in a gradual change in the amount of data being held by recruitment businesses. But, with the new AI wave needing data to learn from, it sees a shift towards bigger databases and looking at candidate information in a different way – in knowing their motivations, history, training and skills, not just their name and address. Ultimately, a shift from quantity to quality.The impact of networksContinuing to discuss not just managing data but using it, started the conversation on networks within databases. Daniel introduced the process of seeing past ‘previous job’ data and starting to think about the networks that are generated because of such candidate movements. So, starting to think about uncovering some of the nuances in the data, in how the data is connected.Culture and managing candidate dataThe trio spoke about culture being one of the biggest challenges or blockers when managing candidate data, particularly when there is no incentive to share candidate data amongst their colleagues. But, within some companies, a split commission structure encourages recruiters to change their mindset around working as a team and building a data pool of candidates together to place candidates not just fill jobs.Daniel spoke about the Microsoft Power Platform to facilitate the sharing of information and knowledge amongst recruitment colleagues via Teams inside Mercury. Enabling that collaboration to see more people put into jobs than just hitting a target and filling a vacancy.Candidate experienceCandidates are looking for personalization, and timely responses so the way we manage our data and the technology systems in place need to enable recruiters to facilitate those actions. Daniel highlighted the ability with Microsoft to automate either acceptance and progression of a candidate or rejection options to ensure the candidate is met every time with a response. Automation will allow you to deliver customer service and personalization that candidates continue to look for.Data adviceFor AI and machine learning to learn from somewhere you need to think about consolidating your data and really understand what your tech stack looks like and where and how that can be simplified.The conversation took place on idibu’s webinar. To watch the recording of the session, please click here.For more information on how Mercury manages data within the recruitment industry, please contact us.Written by Emily Jerman.