Unveiling Stepstone’s Linguistic Services Superstars: The Heroes Behind the Scenes
Join me on an unforgettable journey to the captivating city of Munich, where a fusion of history, remarkable architecture, vibrant people, and, of course, exceptional beer awaits! But beyond its alluring surface, lies a world of linguistic wonders waiting to be explored. Let’s dive into the realm of language superheroes at The Stepstone Group and discover how they are revolutionizing the field of natural language processing and creating linguistic excellence!
The Stepstone Group’s esteemed Linguistic Services Team (LiSE) comprises a group of linguists, insight analysts and developers spread across Munich, Brussels, Hamburg, and London. During my visit to the Munich Office, I had the privilege of connecting with some of these incredible individuals and gaining valuable insights into their remarkable work. Allow me to share my impressions.
Superhero Synergy in Action: A Day in the Life of Linguists, Developers, and Insight Analysts — the Linguistic Services Team
So, what does a typical day in the life of our Linguistic Services Team entail? Picture a cohesive team of linguists, software developers, and insight analysts working seamlessly together. They kick-start their day with daily LiSE stand-up meetings, where they share updates, discuss vital topics, and identify opportunities for process optimization. These quick catch-up sessions have become the foundation for seamless communication and collaboration. They engage in discussions about ongoing projects, address challenges, and optimize processes to ensure the highest quality of service.
Our Linguistic Services team is also involved in various projects, such as developing infrastructure, ensuring data accuracy, and validating internal standards and external resources. Their attention to detail, language expertise, and adaptability to evolving requirements make them indispensable members of our Tech community. The linguists collaborate closely with developers to ensure the highest quality of our software.
And what do the insight analysts do? The job of the insight analysts in the team is to derive insights from The Stepstone Group’s data. They meticulously analyse all kinds of data and identify meaningful patterns and trends. These invaluable insights form the basis of numerous ad-hoc analyses that the backend teams utilize to evaluate and optimise their products.
However, the contributions of our esteemed Linguistic Services team extend even further. Proudly donning the moniker “human eye on AI”, they diligently test and scrutinize the work of other teams. With their discerning eyes, they ensure that our AI-powered systems maintain the highest standards of accuracy and precision. Their efforts have earned them well-deserved recognition as a crucial element of our operations.
Empowering Communication with Natural Language Processing
During my brief yet awe-inspiring stay, I dove deep into the realm of natural language processing (NLP), powered by ontologies and dictionaries. The Stepstone Group’s team of linguistic wizards operates on a global scale, ensuring linguistic precision and cultural respect across their platform.
Their ontologies play a pivotal role in facilitating seamless job searches, automated resume screenings, and even the creation of witty chat widgets. Through their expertise, they empower users to connect with their dream opportunities.
Cracking the Code of Job Postings
Imagine linguistic detectives, armed with a mastery of words akin to the renowned Sherlock Holmes. The Stepstone Group tools strategically analyse job postings to extract crucial details, including skills, qualifications, professions, and sectors. Through this meticulous work, job seekers can find the right job. Armed with their linguistic wizardry, the linguists decode the intricate language of job descriptions facilitating meaningful connections between job seekers and employers.
Elevating User Experience through Linguistic Excellence
The Stepstone Group’s language assets extend beyond the realm of language processing, playing a vital role in user experience research and testing. Acting as Lingua Franca mediators, they optimize the platform’s linguistic elements to enhance user satisfaction.
In addition, our superheroes also provide invaluable support in resolving customer issues encountered while using our system. Ensuring every concern is promptly addressed and resolved to the utmost satisfaction of our customers. They recognize the significance of delivering exceptional service.
The Power of Databases
To support their linguistic endeavours, our team relies on two powerful databases.
TexLex serves as a central hub, meticulously collecting and organizing words, concepts, and data to facilitate seamless operations. With its sophisticated semantic structure, the database enables numerous teams to search, retrieve, and analyse vast amounts of data effortlessly. It houses essential information, such as educational levels, benefits, job roles and titles, and work policies, among others. Serving as our primary languages — English, German, Dutch, French and Hebrew — TexLex ontology acts as a “common language” across The Stepstone Group, ensuring standardized communication and a vast network of interconnected multilingual data.
The Stepstone Group’s linguistic team is continuously expanding and updating their databases, creating new roles and pronouns, and providing support to other teams. Their collaborative efforts result in an impressive number of skills and job descriptors (JDs) added to their databases. In fact, in June alone, they added 16,000 skills, bringing the total to almost 237,000 skills in 11 languages. On the other hand, GeoLex, our geo database, prioritizes location matching, offering valuable geographic information to enhance search capabilities. It encompasses a comprehensive hierarchy of location names, translations, latitude and longitude coordinates, and post codes (area codes). Managed by LiSe, GeoLex comprises around 550,000 locations organized from the world level down to countries, cities, and micro-locations.
With the powerful combination of their TexLex and GeoLex databases, they unlock untapped potential in the realm of linguistic possibilities.
Collaboration and Continuous Improvement
At The Stepstone Group, we believe in the power of collaboration to achieve greatness, particularly when it comes to language. Our Linguistic Services team comprising of linguists, developers, and insight analysts, operates like a well-oiled machine. Working hand in hand with various departments, they establish comprehensive language usage guidelines, ensuring our software reaches new heights of quality and be able to say: we stand on our number.
To support our linguistic endeavours, we have dedicated front-end and back-end developers. They work seamlessly to craft clean and efficient code that powers the creation and maintenance of the ontology. While front-end development focuses on creating intuitive interfaces and delivering a seamless user experience, the back-end developers tackle complex tasks, such as data processing, feature integration, infrastructure improvements, APIs and exports. Their efforts ensure that other teams can access the wealth of linguistic information easily.
Together, our developers play a crucial role in shaping and enhancing the foundation of our linguistic services. From implementing tag groups that bring order to the chaos, to crafting sorting groups that simplify your life, and seamlessly integrating user interfaces that leave you in awe, they’ve got it all in the works.
Of course, none of this would be useful without our experienced and perceptive insight analysts who play a vital role by extracting valuable insights, evaluating business strategies, and providing recommendations for optimization. Armed with analytical skills and supported by linguistic know-how, they become instrumental in fine-tuning our user experience, improving search results, and make our language-driven features and functionalities sing. They ensure that our decisions are grounded in solid evidence, leading to happier users and perfectly aligned business goals. The collaborative efforts of our insight analysts significantly contribute to the continued success and growth of our linguistic services.
Furthermore, the data insights are presented through informative dashboards accessible to a wider audience. Whether it’s B2B or B2C topics, there is a dedicated dashboard for each use case, containing all the required information for detecting irregularities and monitoring key metrics. With their work the insight analysts play a pivotal role in helping the business make informed decisions and continually enhance overall performance.
Conclusion
My encounter with our linguistic superheroes at The Stepstone Group in Munich was nothing short of extraordinary. Witnessing their transformation of linguistic complexity into a harmonious symphony was truly awe-inspiring. As they revolutionize the business world, one word at a time, stay tuned for more adventures on their quest to create unparalleled linguistic excellence. The Stepstone Group’s language superheroes are changing the game, and you don’t want to miss it!
Read more about The Stepstone Group, the technologies we use or take an inside look at our organisation & processes. Interested in joining us? Check out our careers page.
