9 Reasons Why Recruiters Need to Code Their Data (and Why Boolean

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Data, a recruiter's best friend (and worst nightmare), is one of their most precious assets. But are you missing a trick in making it super-valuable and easy to make money from?

Clean data, coupled with time, and a robust process, boosted by systems, makes for a slick and repeatable pipeline of work.

But, uncoded recruitment data may be holding you back.

To Code or Not to Code... That Is the Question

A client who enquired about our Bullhorn1st journeys asked me:

Why should I code my Bullhorn data?
So-and-so says I should just use Boolean for sourcing.

This prompted me to respond to him with a list outlining that he should indeed code his data... I'm fixated on working with recruiters who want a Bullhorn 1st culture so I hope you find my reasons to code your data useful.

Automation needs to work with structured data. i.e. coded fields. It doesn’t currently work with Boolean.
True: Coded data is more reliable as it's the Recruiter's qualification of a candidate, not just the candidate's own, often aspirational, opinion of themselves.
False: A significant issue with “Boolean Only” is that you can search for something specific (Service Engineer) and get back hundreds of results of mentioning this phrase, but they are not the candidates you're looking for. These false positives drive “let’s not use Bullhorn” behaviours. LinkedIn and job boards do very well from that mentality.
Wasted cash: When you don't code your data, your recruiters trust it less, and you then may have to waste money (and time) on job boards, advertising and LinkedIn.
Easier to keep clean: With structured coded data and automation, you can ask candidates to update their codes and use this search criteria to quickly match to jobs.
Match to jobs: Bullhorn's Semantic Match needs coded data to work effectively. (Semantic match finds candidates to match your jobs... nice!)
Call lists - "speccing out": An often underutilised feature of Bullhorn is to match the code of what the client is looking for to your candidate database. You can create call lists from this feature.
Sell your business: If you're looking to sell your recruitment business, your data set will be valued. Coded, quantifiable data is more valuable than a larger unquantifiable data dump.

USP! Warm Makes You Hot!

And finally, my 9th reason recruiters need to code their data.

When a client hires you to recruit, they aren't hiring you to do what they can (theoretically) do for themselves (i.e. post on job boards, advertise, etc.). They are hiring you for your USP, which is your talent pool. You need to speedily access it. You need to keep it warm. You need to:

Own it
Work it
Make it desirable
Charge for it

The accuracy of your data, and the speed at which you can find it, nurture it, and work it is the real value you add, and what will differentiate you from your competitors. It will make it easier for your recruiters to recruit, and salespeople to sell.

Boolean only just won't cut it.

Get coding!

(Oh, and if you have Automation, call us! We can help you code up your data with our Automation Turbo offering. Don't turn your recruiters into administrators and get them manually coding. Let them recruit.)

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Bullhorn1st

We're fixated on helping recruiters be Bullhorn1st. First for sourcing and selling. We help recruitment leaders save money on expensive external systems, get Bullhorn ROI, and speed up their time to hire.

Do you need to save money, improve your recruitment process, and sell more? (Of course you do!)