Published on the 19/08/2014 | Written by Newsdesk
Analysis which will identify in near real-time the underlying technology skills being sought by enterprises across A/NZ could also be used to shape the nations’ immigration and education policies…
The IT Contract and Recruitment Association (ITCRA) has inked a three year deal with Burning Glass, a Boston based company that has developed technology to better match job candidates with roles, which should deliver much more fine grained insights about skills demand across both Australia and New Zealand. ITCRA chief executive Julie Mills said that Burning Glass, which uses web technology to scrape, aggregate and then deduplicate job advertisement information from over 1000 sources in New Zealand and 3000 in Australia, would deliver much clearer daily insights about the skills being sought across the countries and also the salaries on offer.
By overlaying that against the SkillsMatch Data compiled by ITCRA from its members’ data (recruitment agencies across the region), a much clearer picture would emerge about skills needs and skills shortages. Mills said it would also identify which skills were in particular short supply and should perhaps be included on temporary immigration lists. By the same token it would identify which roles were in oversupply in order to remove those skills from the immigration lists.
She said Burning Glass data and analytics tools were used widely in the US for government labour market analysis.
The combination of Burning Glass’s data and Skills Match insights was announced in Wellington last week and has been dubbed LabourInsight ANZ. ITCRA will have access to the Burning Glass database for use at an Association level while ITRCA members can sign up for a two week trial to decide whether to take a feed or not.
Mills said that she had been very frustrated by having access to only retrospective data about skills demands – where the Burning Glass insights which were refreshed daily would allow a more immediate understanding of market needs, although it does not provide insight into any roles which are filled under preferred supplier agreements.
“Government data can be months or even years old, and is at a level of aggregation too broad to be meaningful. I believe LabourInsight ANZ fills a labour intelligence gap as it pieces together a comprehensive picture of national and local hiring activity that is driving the economies of Australia and New Zealand,” she said.
It also gives insights as to the technical skills on demand – and according to Burning Glass, right now Python, Java, C++ and Ruby skills are top of the list.
