People Analytics Discussion & Dinner
Visit us at https://www.ansaro.ai to learn more about how we’re using data science to improve hiring
On February 13, Matt and Sam from Ansaro and Nikki Singh, VP of People Ops at Visa, hosted the first People Analytics Discussion & Dinner at the University Club in San Francisco. Our goal was to spark discussion and collaboration among the HR practitioner and technology community. The core of the event featured lightning talks from three speakers (recapped below), who discussed people analytics from research, practitioner, and investing perspectives.
We gathered more than a dozen great minds in HR from 10 companies and organizations with a diverse set of interests and talents in people analytics. The group included HR and Talent Acquisition executives, Heads of People Analytics, HR business partners, business managers, and a number of data scientists and researchers.
Judging from everyone’s eagerness to keep conversations about HR going until well after the talks, we’re deeming it a success!
Lightning Talk Recap
Ming Leung, Assistant Professor at the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business
Ming described the work he and his graduate students have performed to understand biases in hiring behavior in two areas: text analytics and computer vision analysis of profile photos. We heard about how writing styles of applicants seeking jobs affect an employer’s hiring decision. They’ve also trained a deep neural network to classify how “professional” a person’s profile photo looks, and analyzed how this affects hiring in a gig economy platform.
Gig economy pro tip: don’t set your profile photo to a casual selfie taken in your car
Sarah O’Brien, Global Insights Director for LinkedIn’s Talent Solutions business
At LinkedIn, Sarah leads the charge in using their incredibly comprehensive data about the world’s workforce to help their customers gain strategic insights. She told us about how this allows companies to strategically orient their talent acquisition efforts, as well as enabling forecasts for how demand for specific skills will wax and wane. LinkedIn is also doing fascinating analytics around diversity, specifically where companies are running into diversity bottlenecks in their hiring pipelines and what corrective actions they can take.
Mike Mangini, Managing Director and Head of Talent at SignalFire VC
Mike explained how SignalFire uses a diverse array of datasets and advanced analyses to measure technological talent for driving decisions in two important areas: (1) seed and series A investments, and (2) hiring support for portfolio companies. The work performed by their team of data scientists and engineers allows them to act quickly and respond intelligently in Silicon Valley and beyond. The talent patterns that their algorithms pick up on have the potential to reshape venture capital investing, especially in companies that rely heavily on technical talent.
The larger takeaway and what unifies this group is that while we recognize that people may be a company’s greatest asset, it’s the understanding of human capital through analytics that can be a force multiplier in terms of business impact.
We can’t wait for the next gathering, and are especially looking forward to expanding the circle of attendees. If you’re in the Bay Area and are interested in attending, please sign up for this email list.
