Finding the right candidates and matching them with the right role is a basic function of recruitment. However, it is impossible to do this without an error with just the candidate's resume. The resume may not have any concrete information about their skill, which makes them seem less attractive to you the recruiter. Having the right skills can take you places, not just your academic background. Talent with the most appropriate skills for the job are more likely to produce the best outcomes.
Zia, Zoho Recruit's AI Assistant uses a candidate's skills to match them with their ideal jobs but also generates a match score to show how good of a fit they might be for the job. Zia uses the skillset associated with the job to assess its requirements, fetches a list of candidates with matching skills and generates a match score for each one of them.
How does Zia do all of this you ask?
By adding nuances to the way a candidate's skills and a job's requirements are looked at. Each skill has a proficiency, duration of experience with said skill, and a time of most recent use. Zia fetches all this information when the candidate's resume is parsed and generates a Match Score using which candidates/jobs can be ranked with respect to each other. Given below is a detailed account of the various metrics Zia uses to generate Match Scores and how they are obtained.
Proficiency
Proficiency with a certain skill is indicated by its color. Zia uses Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques to analyze and assign a proficiency to each skill. While parsing the resume, Zia observes and understands how the candidate has described their skills. For example, Zia assigns a proficiency to the Java skill based on phrases like "very strong in java" or "basic java knowledge".
Last used & Skill Experience
In addition to tracking how proficient a candidate is at a certain skill, Zia also learns when they used said skill last and how experienced they are with it. Adding these two layers makes Zia's matching capabilities much more powerful.
How Zia calculates Match Score
Zia generates Match Scores to evaluate and rank candidates based on a job opening and vice versa. Primarily, the match score is generated based on the skillset associated with the job opening and the information in the candidate record's skills field. There are three steps to generating match scores, namely;
Firstly, Zia separates and organizes the job's skill requirements based on Rarity into common and rare skills. The rarity of a skill is based on how often it is found in resumes. For example, if 50 candidates apply for a job and only 5 candidates have a particular skill, it will be considered as a rare skill. Candidates who have rare skills are preferred more and are given better match scores.
Secondly, Zia looks for Co-occurring Skills, i.e, skills that are related to and exist together often. For example, candidates at most times have the MS Excel skill if they have the MS Office skill. Thus, MS Excel becomes a co-occurring skill for MS Office. The more co-occurring skills a candidate has, the better their
match score.
Lastly, Zia grades the candidate's skills based on Proficiency, Experience and date of Last Use. Using these three metrics adds more depth to Zia's matching capabilities as they dictate how good the candidate is with a skill, how long they have been using it, and how recently they've used it. All three metrics are obtained while parsing the candidate's resume using Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques.
By executing the above-mentioned steps Zia calculates the match score based on the selected job and candidate. Candidates can then be ranked based on the generated match score and associated accordingly.