CV analysis can be one of the most time-consuming parts of a recruiter's job, requiring considerable skill to perform accurately yet quickly. Thorough curriculum vitae analysis is necessary to ensure recruiters don't miss good candidates or put forward incorrect candidates; but it is also important to process all applications quickly to ensure a fast response for clients and move to the interview and placement stage.

As the number of applicants per position rises and recruiting resources stay the same, or even reduce, many recruiters are turning to resume analysis software to help. But can automated curriculum vitae analysis really offer the accuracy and intelligence required by today's recruitment environment?

The Challenge of Curriculum Vitae Analysis
When a human recruiter is performing resume/CV analysis, they are actually doing two things at the same time. First they are processing the data on the CV to understand what it says (this is known as parsing). Second, they will have a specific vacancy or set of vacancies in mind and they will be assessing whether the CV they are looking at could be a good match (whether this is a candidate that should be offered to a client for consideration).

Successful CV analysis software therefore has to perform both accurate CV parsing and CV matching, both of which are challenging tasks for a computer. A human learns through experience that 'July 31 2013' means the same as '31st July 2013', '31/7/13', '31.07.2013' or even '7/31/13' if the applicant is from the US; a computer similarly has to be trained to understand all these different formats. Even more tricky is the change in meaning that can occur due to the context and the surrounding language. For instance, if a particular job requires familiarity with Excel, you want to include CVs that say "Expert in Excel" or "Excel 2007", but exclude CVs that say "I excel at customer communication". Simple keyword spotting, for instance, therefore cannot achieve the level of intelligence required for reliable curriculum vitae analysis, struggling to get past 70% accuracy.

Most parsers use either a statistical approach, which requires training using a large number of example resumes in order to generate accurate, context sensitive models, or a grammar approach, which requires a large number of linguistic rules to be encoded and made available to the parser. These approaches by themselves can achieve around 85% or 90% respectively – both falling short of human accuracy levels of around 96%. DaXtra Parser, by contrast, can achieve close to 95% accuracy, by using a sophisticated algorithm combining both statistical and grammar-based parsing.

The Operational Importance of Accurate CV Analysis
When comparing accuracy rates of 85%, 90% and 95%, the differences between them may not appear very great, but on a day to day level these differences have a big impact on operational performance of a recruiting operation.

Looking at it a different way, a 95% accurate resume parser produces a 5% error rate, while a 90% accuracy means doubling the error rate to 10%, and an 85% accuracy means a trebling of the error rate to 15%. As error rates increase, recruiters are less inclined to trust the output of the parser, and the temptation rises to "check" by manually reading CVs – which of course undermines the time savings of using the parser.

An accurately parsed resume is of no operational benefit if it cannot then be easily and correctly matched to job vacancies. DaXtra Search is designed to allow quick and, if desired, automated searching and matching against current vacancies. It allows recruiters to use natural language expressions to search for matching CVs, and to set these searches to run automatically against new applications that come in, notifying consultants of any new matches. DaXtra Search also ranks the results of searches, showing which CVs are the closest match to a job vacancy – greatly aiding the process of compiling a shortlist of candidates. It also allows resume matching in the opposite direction – taking a new resume and checking its fit against current job vacancies. This is a great advantage in larger recruitment operations where no one consultant can be expected to keep all current vacancies in mind when reviewing a new CV.


DaXtra Parser & DaXtra Search – A Complete Resume Analysis Solution
Between them, DaXtra's Parser and Search modules offer all the curriculum vitae analysis functionality required to take a recruiter from raw CV's to a shortlist of candidates, quickly and accurately.

But DaXtra's software offers recruiters a great deal more than simply accurate CV analysis. It is designed to integrate with your existing systems and databases, and uses intuitive methods for interacting with the user interface, all minimising the time and effort required to start using and benefiting from DaXtra. It also supports your preferred workflow, rather than requiring consultants to adopt a new way of working.

We offer all our clients the chance to test DaXtra against their own data, so you can see for yourself how DaXtra software can benefit your operation. Curriculum Vitae Analysis - Contact us today to request a demonstration.

CV management is about a lot more than just extracting and storing data from CV's. The data has to be made available to the business in a form which is ready for use, to give immediate productivity benefits. He we look at what a complete CV management software solution needs to include and why.

CV Management – The Heart of the Recruitment Process
Managing CV's is at the heart of all recruitment processes and the more efficiently and quickly CV's are organised and processed the more efficient the process of recruitment will also be – with direct impact on costs, performance, responsiveness and therefore competitiveness.

Ultimately, CV management software has to fit into a recruitment business and support the work methods and processes it uses, taking into account the particular needs of the recruitment niche and any existing systems and databases already in use. While our standard products Capture, Parser and Search are already designed with the requirements of recruiters in mind, at DaXtra we go the extra mile to ensure they are fully configured to meet your needs.

CV Management Software Requirements
A complete resume management system requires a number of elements linked together and tailored specifically for the recruitment industry. Here we look in more detail at the range of functionality provided by DaXtra's CV management software.

Acquisition – Modern recruiters need to be able to collect CV's from multiple sources, not just via direct applications from candidates. This means acquiring CV's which may be in any language or format, from job boards and social media sites, and being able to process them quickly and easily. DaXtra is designed to do just this, actively finding CV's from multiple sources online and turning them into searchable data ready for use.

Parsing – The biggest job for any CV management software is turning CV text into searchable data. Historically, this meant reading through every CV and entering data manually into a system. This creates a major bottleneck in the recruitment process, requiring a great deal of manpower and human intelligence to make sense of a variety of CV styles and formats. DaXtra Parser performs this task effortlessly, achieving up to 95% accuracy.

Skills Coding – Extracting skills data from a CV is possibly the most important step in establishing whether a particular CV is a good match for a particular vacancy. But skills and the way they are described are usually highly specific to a particular niche or job type and require significant domain expertise to do well. DaXtra Capture is designed to accurately extract skills data from both structured and freeform text within a CV, ready for matching against specified skill sets in job vacancies.

Translating – Recruitment is a global industry and more and more companies are requiring multilingual personnel to service their global operations. A CV parser therefore needs to be able to deal with multilingual CV's, enabling recruiters to find candidates with rare skills or to expand into new global markets within a specific niche. DaXtra Parser's multilingual CV software processes CV's in every major language including English, German, French, Mandarin and Russian.

Data Structuring – The key to efficient CV management is storing them in a consistent format, enabling them to be easily and quickly searched and matched against vacancies. DaXtra Parser turns raw CV's and vacancies into rich, structured data, with the option to specify bespoke data fields as required by a specific niche or recruiter.

De-duplication and Validation – Resume management software needs to be able to spot duplicate CV's, which can quite easily occur when gathering CV's from online sources. It also needs to alert consultants to other data errors such as missing data or the rare occasions that a data item cannot be parsed. DaXtra Capture automatically detects multiple CV's and puts aside any problematic CV's for consultants to validate or correct, keeping the database clean.

Searching – Once CV's are loaded into your database, the resume manager software needs to provide easy access to the data. DaXtra Search allows consultants to search using natural language expressions, rather than having to learn a new query language, and then presents results already ranked, ready to be actioned. It also allows searches to be saved and run again, either manually or automatically at set times, to check for new matches.

Matching – The goal of all recruiting is to match candidates against vacancies, so an essential feature of a curriculum vitae management system is the ability to present the system with a job vacancy and bring back a list of matching CV's. DaXtra Search ranks CV's according to how well they match a particular vacancy enabling recruiters to quickly find the most likely candidates for shortlisting.

Shortlisting – Recruiters need to be able to add CV's to longlists or shortlists, and for those lists to then be available to view and edit by other consultants, helping to progress the overall recruitment process. DaXtra Capture provides full shortlisting capability and allows the creation of lists for any other reason that a recruiter may have.

Flexible Workflow – Established recruitment companies or departments will typically have well developed processes for ensuring the right people are involved at particular stages of recruitment. Often, different teams or individuals will take care of one step before passing the results to another team for the next step – so it is important that your resume management software supports this process rather than dictating a new process to be followed. DaXtra Capture allows for completely customised workflows to reflect your internal procedures.

Tracking – An essential part of resume management is to be able to see the history of a particular CV, what vacancies it may have been shortlisted for, whether an interview or placement resulted, or any other relevant information. DaXtra Capture records which consultants have viewed or action the CV and allows recruiters to add any comments that may need to be noted by future consultants.

Storing/Archiving – Recruiters often need to keep CV's on file for some time after a vacancy has been filled, for a number of reasons. This allows them to fulfil certain client requirements such ensuring that no previous applicants are considered when a position is readvertised; or simply to allow applicants to potentially be matched against future vacancies. Conversely, companies may need to ensure that CV's are deleted after a certain period of time for data protection or other reasons. DaXtra Capture ensures CV's are stored for as long as required.

Reporting – Apart from matching CV's to vacancies, a resume management system should allow managers to see and understand the size and quality of the database at any given point in time. DaXtra Capture allows managers to run reports against a large number of business critical criteria, for instance to find out the proportion of CV's held with specific skill sets, or to compare the productivity of different individuals or teams. This type of data is invaluable for business level planning and performance assessment, helping managers to make strategic decisions.

CV Management Software - To find out more about how DaXtra software can support and improve your recruitment processes, please request a demonstration.

Choosing the right resume/CV parsing software is a business critical decision for all recruitment companies. Getting it wrong means potentially missing out on qualified candidates, incorrectly shortlisting unsuitable candidates, or becoming uncompetitive. But what is resume parsing software and what features really make a difference to your day to day recruitment operations?

What is CV/Resume Parsing?
CV or resume parsing is the process of reading a CV and understanding the information it contains. It is also known as CV extraction or resume extraction, as it involves extracting out specific items of information of relevance to the recruitment process.

Traditionally a task carried out by humans, parsing a resume is time consuming and requires a sophisticated level of linguistic understanding, as well as understanding of the relevant "domain knowledge" (i.e. the subject matter it relates to) to ensure proper understanding. This is something that humans can do fairly easily and accurately, although not perfectly. However a number of changes to the recruitment and employment market in recent years have resulted in a growth of CV parsing software to help speed up this essential element in the recruitment process.


The Need for CV Parsing Software
Parsing CV's by hand has become an untenable proposition in an environment where there may be hundreds of applications per vacancy and where job board software and social recruiting can mean the automated acquisition of large numbers of additional CV's to be assessed.

Even if a recruiter is willing to bear the costs of human parsing, the time required would result in undue delays for clients. In a marketplace where speed of response is a key element of competitiveness, time pressures would inevitably mean a drop in the accuracy of human parsing.

A difficult job market not only means more CV's per vacancy, but also means that recruiters themselves need to operate more efficiently, cutting overheads wherever possible and looking for new ways to provide a responsive and competitive service. For these reasons resume parsing software is now an essential part of many recruitment businesses and departments. But while there is a general need for automation, CV parsing software must also achieve a level of accuracy that is close to that of humans in order to provide a high quality service to clients.


Choosing Resume Parsing Software
There are many resume parsing software products on the market and choosing between them can be tricky as descriptions will usually contain a fair bit of technical jargon. Unless you are an expert in the field it can be hard to know which facts or figures will really make a difference to your recruitment operation on a day to day basis.

From an operational standpoint, the five main things to look for are:

Out of the Box Accuracy – Different software providers will typically quote percentage accuracy levels, but some require a period of additional training on your type of data to achieve those levels. At best this means a period of transition before the system is up to speed – or you may discover after a period of time that those levels aren't quite achievable – by which point you have made your purchase and have been using the system for a while. DaXtra Parser has an accuracy of up to 95% out of the box (human accuracy is generally reckoned to be around 96%), with no additional training required. So you can assess accuracy against your own actual data before you buy, and know exactly what you are getting.

Multilingual Parsing as Standard – Some parsers require you to specific exactly which languages you need at the point of purchase, often at additional cost. DaXtra Parser includes multilingual CV translation for 25 languages, covering all modern business languages including Chinese, Japanese and Russian, as standard. This instantly offers your business the potential to expand your niche or attract global clients.

Compatibility with Existing Systems – If you already have a CV database you will save time and money if the parser you choose can easily link in to your existing system, rather than having to switch to a new database or reformat all your CV's. DaXtra Parser produces a variety of output formats enabling compatibility with most databases.

Skills Taxonomy for Your Sector – Extracting skills from a CV is a key part of any resume parsing software, but parsers need to know the terminology used for a specific industry sector to ensure accurate parsing. While some parsers depend on training, DaXtra Parser comes equipped with a set of ready-made taxonomies (skills lists) for a number of industry sectors including, amongst others, IT, Communications, Finance & Banking, Oil & Gas, Legal & Insurance, Building & Construction and General Business. This saves you the time needed to train up your parser, or to draw up your own taxonomy.

Social Media Ready – Social recruiting is the current trend transforming the recruitment industry, but scouring social media sources for CV's and then inputting them to your database can be laborious. DaXtra Parser can process CV's and profile data from any social media source and include them in your database. This potentially allows you scope to widen your pool of candidates and give you competitive advantage over recruiters without this capability.

Try Out DaXtra's World Leading CV Parser
Click on the "Request a Demo" button at the top of this page or click here to arrange a demonstration of DaXtra's CV Parsing Software, as well as our other modules.

As well as seeing a demonstration of our world leading software we invite all prospective clients to try out our software using their own data, to check the accuracy levels they can expect.

Using employment application software in the real world involves a number of very practical challenges. Having a great CV parser and easy to use CV search software isn't enough to ensure a truly efficient recruitment process. This article looks at some of the typical bottlenecks and obstacles that recruiters have to overcome on a day to day basis – and which have been addressed in DaXtra's suite of employment application software products.

The Real Challenges of Employment Application Software
Processing CV's from multiple sources in a variety of formats, or having to work with legacy databases in multiple locations can be just as much of a challenge for automated employment application software as it is for human recruiters – unless that software has been specially designed to handle these issues. Here we look at some of the typical real world issues faced by many of DaXtra's clients, and how our range of software helps to deal with them.

Duplicate and updated CV's – When resumes are being entered into the system from multiple sources and when applicants can update their online CV's and profiles almost instantly via the internet, this creates significant issues for employment application software. If undetected, duplicates and near-duplicates can cause significant confusion when conducting database searches. DaXtra Capture is able to detect when a new incoming CV is for the same person – either an exact duplicate or an update – and merge records, adding any new data to the existing record.

CV's in different formats and layouts – Having CV's arrive in different formats with similar data in different places from CV to CV can be a challenge even for human readers, slowing down the process of scanning CV's for likely candidates. For many years individual companies would dictate preferred format and required data in an effort to make the task of processing – whether by humans or by computers – easier and quicker. But in the age of social recruiting and CV acquisition from online job boards, this is no longer possible. DaXtra Parser addresses this problem by extracting data from a CV regardless of its position on the CV or how it has been formatted. All resumes are converted into a common format ready for searching.

Data entry errors – Before the advent of reliable CV parsing software, humans were the most accurate way of determining the meaning of data on a CV and data would be entered manually into the recruitment database. But however reliable humans may be at reading and understanding a CV, their ability to input that data accurately into a computer is somewhat less so – often resulting in data entry errors which can then cause problems in terms of the searching and matching process. Using DaXtra Parser eliminates this source of error from the CV processing stage.

High volume of CV's – This is one of the biggest challenges facing recruiters today and arises from a combination of high application rates supplemented by online CV acquisition which can generate hundreds of CV's. The challenge is to accurately but quickly turn all CV's into a common format, ready for automatic job matching or manual searching. DaXtra Parser can parse resumes in just a few seconds with up to 95% accuracy. This capability turns the arrival of hundreds of CV's from an expensive bottleneck into a recruiting advantage, widening the pool of potential candidates at essentially no additional cost.

Searching multiple job boards – While the rise of online job boards has undoubtedly helped both recruiters and applicants to fill or find suitable vacancies, there are now so many that the task of regularly checking them for CV's has become unfeasible for recruitment consultants to carry out manually. DaXtra Search can be set to automatically search a range of job boards or business networking sites (subject to permission) and notify consultants when new matches are found.

Legacy databases – Few established companies or recruitment businesses don't already have some kind of recruitment database, and even fewer relish the idea of having to go through the pain of switching to a completely new database in order to get the benefits of new processing features. DaXtra Parser can turn new CV's into a variety of different formats, or a bespoke format as required, to be compatible with most existing databases.

Multiple office locations – Large companies often have multiple office locations either within a country or even globally, and each office may be responsible for recruiting its own staff. But it is becoming increasingly desirable for these offices to become more interconnected, to improve visibility across the company, to apply consistent recruitment policies and for general efficiency. For instance, if job roles are duplicated in different offices, then it makes sense for all offices to be able to see CV's of all applicants applying for a similar type of role. Using DaXtra Components Suite enables multiple databases to be searched with a single query, allowing CV's acquired by one office to be made available to all.

Skills in freeform language – Extracting skills from a curriculum vitae is perhaps the most important part of assessing candidate suitability, but it is also the data least likely to be presented in a simple or consistent form. While some CV's may list skills in a simple way, they are usually embedded within freeform sentences or paragraphs. This makes picking out skills quickly and reliably a significant challenge, especially when the surrounding language can greatly affect the meaning that should be attached to a skill (e.g. consider "Basic level C programming" versus "10 years experience of C programming"). The industry sector can also greatly change the meaning of some words: for instance, what may have a general meaning in everyday language can have a very specific meaning in a particular industry. DaXtra Parser is able to extract skills taking into account the context of the surrounding language – and we provide skills taxonomies for a wide range of industry sectors to further enhance accuracy.

Employment Application Software - To find out more about how DaXtra's software can help your recruitment operation please contact us.

To find the best candidates – wherever they may be in the world – and to compete internationally, multilingual CV software is essential. DaXtra's multilingual CV technology now encompasses the majority of languages used in business around the world, enabling recruiters to source candidates globally, with all the potential that this entails for growing a recruitment business. Here we take a look at DaXtra's multilingual capability and consider the potential it offers both specialist recruiters and global companies with multiple offices.

What is Multilingual CV Software?
Multilingual CV software is able to parse and extract information from CV's written in a variety of different languages.

Ideally it should be able to detect what language a CV is written in by itself, without having to be told. And it should be able to deal with a wide range of languages as standard.

This is essential in a recruitment industry which can acquire CV's through multiple sources worldwide (such as social media sites or job boards) and where it is impossible to enforce what language a CV may be written in. It is also a vital part of maximising the chances of sourcing rare or specialist skills.

Multilingual CV software is also a great benefit to global companies managing their own recruitment operation who want a CV processing solution that can be used by all its departments around the world, without each country or region needing to find its own language-dependent solution.

DaXtra's Multilingual CV Technology
DaXtra Parser fulfils these requirements by including all modern business languages into its standard CV parsing software. At last count this numbered 25 languages including Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Polish, Russian, Slovak, Spanish and Swedish.

Our parser uses language independent statistical models, meaning that the core parser processes all languages, determining from the context which language is being used. Once the parser has identified the language being used, it can then draw on language/region specific information to help with issues such as address formatting.

DaXtra's multilingual CV software offers exceptionally high accuracy and in benchmark tests consistently performs the best across a wide range of languages.

What Multilingual CV Processing Means for Your Business
Access to multilingual CV technology has far wider implications than simply making it easier to accurately parse CV's in a variety of languages. It can transform what your business can do, creating new opportunities for efficiency and growth.

Going Global – Being able to process CV's in any language opens up the possibility of expanding your recruitment business into new markets or regions. For instance, a business that specialises in sourcing English speaking candidates to work in the UK could now be in a position to help with sourcing Spanish speaking personnel to work in the Gulf of Mexico for the same client. DaXtra Capture allows CV's written in Spanish that contain the relevant skill sets to be acquired and passed to the client for review by their local office.

Increased Competitiveness – Ultimately, a recruiter's business depends on the ability to deliver quality candidates to their clients, resulting in successful placements. This in turn depends on having as wide a pool of candidates as possible, while still ensuring candidates meet vacancy requirements. Being able to process multilingual CVs means a much wider pool of potential candidates, but applying the same requirements for matching, giving a significant competitive advantage over recruiters who are limited to just one language.

Access to Multilingual Candidates – Just because a vacancy requires an English (or German or Japanese) speaking person does not mean that a candidate's CV must be written in that language. In the modern business world it is increasingly common for business people to speak more than one language to a high level of proficiency, and this is especially true for the use of English in European and Asian countries. So it is quite feasible that a German or Japanese engineer could speak perfect English and have exactly the skills and experience required for a vacancy but post a CV online in their own language. DaXtra Capture would be able to find this CV based on skills matching and add it to the CV database. Candidates will typically indicate on their CV what other languages they speak, which will be encoded as a skill within the database and can be searched against.

More Efficient Cross-Region Recruitment – As well as independent recruiting businesses, DaXtra is widely used by a number of global companies who manage their recruitment internally. These companies face exactly the same challenges as specialist recruiters – high CV volumes and limited resources combined with an urgent need to find high quality candidates. But in addition, they often face the additional challenge of trying to recruit locally in different languages, often resulting in duplication of effort across regional offices. Imagine having a single CV acquisition and job matching solution that can be used by all offices even if they are operating in a number of different languages. As well as meaning reduced software costs, this offers increased efficiency. CV's acquired by one office for a particular vacancy will be available for matching by all offices – so candidates not placed for the original vacancy are available for consideration for other vacancies. Native language speakers will still be required as normal in the relevant offices to speak to candidates, conduct interviews and so on, but the use of DaXtra's multilingual CV technology will make the process of sourcing candidates far quicker and easier.

Multi-Lingual CV Software – contact us now to request a demonstration.