SME + Graduate
Connecting SME employers with students and recent graduates
O
ver recent years much has been
written about big data and how
it’s going to change almost
everything. The continuous
development in chip technology,
the speed of the internet, cloud
computing, and our ability to cost-
effectively store and analyse vast
quantities of data mean that big data
is rapidly becoming a reality. Here’s a
mind-boggling fact: more data has been
created in the past two years than in the
entire previous history of the human race,
and this growth trend will continue.
In its simplest form,
w h at i s b i g d at a ?
T a l e n t m at c h i n g u s i n g
u n i v e r s i t y v e r i f i e d d at a
Fraser Anderson
Director and shareholder
at Gradintelligence
Fraser is a Technology Entrepreneur
developing software to improve the
transition of students from study
to employment. He has 20 years’
previous work experience
make intelligent decisions. This can be
as obvious as a supermarket getting to
better know our needs as consumers, or
in the education sector in which we
operate, it could see employers being
connected with emerging talent based on
those skills and attributes that deliver the
best match for both parties.
Gradintelligence operates in the highly
specialised world of university student
data and is regarded as being home to
The business was formed ten years
ago with a vision of using the mass
of data that universities hold on
their students to better guide their
development while at university, and
match them to employment or further
study opportunities with much greater
accuracy and efficiency than has ever
been possible. That vision has become
a reality, and the company has recently
launched its Talent Matching Engine, the
first product of its kind using university
verified data plus other data sources to
connect SME employers with students
and recent graduates.
Going back to the big data concept,
Gradintelligence now holds over 750,000
profiles for students and recent graduates.
When this data is used for employer
matching purposes there are over a
quadrillion search permutations (that’s
a 1 and 15 zeroes!). While this statistic is
meaningless in isolation, the reality is
Big data means different things to
different people, but in simple terms
almost everything we do today creates
a data trail, a footprint that is collated
and stored. Blended with other data
sources such as social media, online
photos, and emails, this can then be
analysed for personal and commercial
purposes. The result is a much better
understanding of individuals, their
behaviours and preferences, which can
then be used by computer algorithms to
many of the experts in this field most
highly respected by their higher
education sector partners.
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