Red Dead Redemption 2 Photo Credit
Google (Alphabet), Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft are the five most valuable companies in the world. A recent article written by The Economist highlights the plight that we are facing. The most valuable resource is no longer oil– it’s data. The data that companies acquire from us as consumers has become more valuable than anything else.
Recently HiQ won a case against LinkedIn and web scraping. The implications of the litigation between LinkedIn and HiQ are profound, but the case itself is simple enough to understand – these tools are allowed to scrape public profiles of a website legally.
Recruiters and Talent Sourcers are, in a way, searching for users personal data online. Our industry is the wild west when it comes to scraping for personal data. There are virtually no rules in an endless landscape of data.
We are at the beginning of something big: something that will change recruiting forever. We’re just beginning to grasp how important finding personal data is for hiring. Talent Communities opened our eyes to the possibility of having continuously updated profiles in a database. In 2019 and onward, scraping the web for data will become the most valuable of intelligence for recruiting teams.
Like I said, there are no rules when it comes to scraping data on many sites – Facebook, GitHub, Twitter, and other social networks do not block you from over viewing pages. LinkedIn however does have roadblocks which have become a pain in recent years. I have written a post about the plight of users getting locked into LinkedIn Jail (here).
You can use web scrapers to find personal information and export that into other tools like Hiretual to help auto-populate and find additional information like cell numbers and email addresses.
We are in a new era wherein we as Sourcers have endless amounts of personal data on candidates. One can easily scrape hundreds of pages for data within a matter of a few hours. It’s blows my mind to think of the future possibilities. Through automation tools like Airtable, Zapier, Phantombuster, Zensourcer, Hiretual I’ve automated my first and second outreaches to passive leads.
What are the implications of living in the Wild West of scraping for data?
Will a sheriff eventually come in and set some ground rules within the sourcing community? What are your thoughts on this new world when it comes to personal data?
Recommended Reading:
New Features Added to SignalHire Extension
7 New Extensions to Help Simplify Your Recruiting Tabs
Why Recruiters Need a Vacation or Face Burnout
- Unleashing the Power of AI in Talent Sourcing: Meet Noon - May 17, 2024
- Demystifying Natural Language Search: Crafting Effective Boolean Strings - April 26, 2024
- The Art of Context: Why Rushing to Conclusions Can Lead Us Astray - April 25, 2024
If there will ever be ground rules, they’ll be applied first in the sales/marketing community because sourcers/recruiters‘ level of scraping pales in comparison. It’s the telemarketers who have your data that people should be more worried about: they want to scam you with false offers leading to credit card and identity theft. The worst that recruiters do is spam you with irrelevant offers leading you to stay in your current role despite its deficits.
Well said, Glenn! Thanks for reading my blog. -Jonathan Kidder
I have a fundamental problem with scraping information without consent. For ex: Your phone number and / or email address is public in Linkedin only to your connections but there are tools i understand which can scrape any Linkedin profile for that information.
Thankfully i have not used such tools as privacy is compromised and there should be consequences to use it for personal benefit.