Unstructured Data Analytics

CHAPTER 6The Power of UDA in Human Capital Management

The time is always right to do the right thing.

—Martin Luther King, Jr.

WHY SHOULD YOU CARE ABOUT UDA IN HUMAN RESOURCES?

The advent of Internet, social media, and cloud offers a tremendous opportunity to capture, organize, and analyze new types of human capital data that previously were not available or accessible. While research firm IDC estimated that more than 80 percent of business data was unstructured, this proportion could reach 85 percent for human resources (HR) data. In today's globally competitive labor marketplace, the opportunity cost of ignoring HR unstructured data is overwhelming; companies simply cannot afford to disregard this differentiator in human capital management if they want to win the war on talent.

Analysis of the structured data available (only 15 to 20 percent of HR data) only provides partial insights on workforce behavior. Unstructured data analytics (UDA) improves the predictive accuracy and power of existing HR structured data models by integrating textual, audio, and video talent- and workforce-related data.

Consider talent acquisition, for instance. Recruiters are usually showered with applicants; as a result, quality is sacrificed due to quantity. UDA approaches such as video interviews are helping leading companies to simplify their recruiting process by removing steps such as phone screens, resume reviews, and traditional assessments. Video interviews enable companies to quickly ...