Data Hygiene is Crucial

Data hygiene refers to the process of regularly cleaning and organizing data to ensure its accuracy and reliability. In the context of an ATS, this means removing duplicate or outdated information, correcting errors, and ensuring that all data is properly categorized and tagged.

Data hygiene is a crucial aspect of any candidate search process. Recruiters rely heavily on their databases to find high-quality candidates that meet their specific requirements. However, maintaining an accurate and up-to-date database can be daunting, especially when dealing with millions of candidates constantly changing their personal and professional information.

The Challenge of Keeping Track

One of the most significant challenges facing recruiters is keeping track of candidate job changes and career progressions. According to Pew Research, there’s an annual turnover of 30% of job seekers—nearly 50 million—if it is assumed that no workers change jobs more than once per year. This means that recruiters need to be constantly updating their databases with new information to ensure that they are not targeting candidates who are no longer available or no longer meet their requirements. This includes their contact information, job titles, skills, and employer information. Inaccurate or outdated information can lead to wasted time and effort, as recruiters may end up targeting candidates who are no longer available or who do not possess the required skills or experience.

Effective data hygiene practices can help recruiters streamline their candidate search process and save valuable time. By keeping their databases clean and up-to-date, they can ensure that they only target their ideal candidates.

Monster Streamlines the Candidate Search

Fortunately, many tools and services are available to help recruiters maintain clean and up-to-date databases. Monster offers a range of services designed to help recruiters automate and streamline their candidate search process in three steps:

  1. Identify your high-value data. Monster compares staffing firms’ existing data against Monster’s updated database to identify outdated addresses, zip codes, phone numbers, job titles, skills, and employer information. This ensures that recruiters are targeting the right candidates and that they are not wasting their time.
  2. Accelerate the search process. Once the database is cleaned up, recruiters can focus on getting new candidates. Recruiters can save time by receiving an automated daily feed of résumés into their ATS that match their job title and skillset criteria. Monster’s daily feed of new résumés can help recruiters stay on top of the latest job changes and career progressions. Because they receive a daily feed of candidates who meet their specific criteria, recruiters can focus on more critical tasks, such as candidate interviews and assessments.
  3. Keep your recruiters in your ATS. Recruiters find themselves searching for candidates in multiple databases, pulling them further outside of their ATS. Monster’s search integration offers an efficient solution to avoid toggling among multiple search systems.

With the help of tools and services such as Monster, recruiters can work with clean, reliable candidate data. Then they can automate and streamline their candidate search process, saving time, money, and effort.

Danny Ashraf is director of staffing for Monster.—an ASA corporate partner. This article was previously published in the American Staffing Association’s “Staffing Success” magazine in August 2023.