Elevated careers: eHarmony for jobseekers

US-based eHarmony is launching a job matching service that will work along similar lines to its dating website.

Perfect match

US-based company eHarmony is launching a job matching service that will work along similar lines to its dating website, by matching jobseekers to roles based on compatibility.

Elevated Careers, launched in the US last year, will start up in Australia within months.

Vice-president Dan Erickson says the site will use a skills fit algorithm to leverage data from resumes and career transitions that will help predict how likely a professional is to be hired for a position based on work history.

The site will use 16 key factors delineating how a person’s core work values fit within a company’s culture, which Erickson says has proven crucial in predicting an employee’s job satisfaction and engagement.

The site also will examine interpersonal work relationships specific to the compatibility between an employee and a hiring manager, drawing on eight factors taken from the eHarmony relationship matching system and factors uniquely related to the workplace environment.

Erickson says the job matching site will create happier, more productive employees while reducing company churn.

Innovative pitch

Creative Innovation is inviting applications from emerging leaders, innovators, and social and for-profit entrepreneurs to win a scholarship and the chance to pitch at Creative Innovation 2016 Asia Pacific, being held in Melbourne in November.

Creative Innovation is aiming to bring together international thinkers and leaders to share strategies, solutions and best practice in the workplace across a range of industries, with a focus on leadership, innovation, education, technology and science. Scholarship winners will receive prizes worth $10,000, including attendance at Ci2016, the opportunity to present a 60-second pitch to Ci2016 delegates and mentoring. Applications close July 29.

Female fellowship

International law firm Herbert Smith Freehills is working with OnRamp to increase the participation of women returning from career breaks, including maternity leave, to match them to vacancies within firms. The partnership with OnRamp is aimed at gaining greater access to untapped female lawyer talent pools in Australia and Britain, and to foster workplace diversity.

Herbert Smith Freehills regional managing partner for the US and UK Ian Cox says female lawyers will be selected to undertake a one-year fellowship, including on-the-job training, support and experience, to reignite their legal careers.

IT’s reigning men

Despite efforts to improve diversity in the information technology sector, a report by Davidson Technology in conjunction with LinkedIn has found that men outnumber women two to one, with figures in some states reaching up to 69 per cent of the workforce being male.

The report, which analysed more than 435,000 profiles of people working in IT, found women working in executive roles bottomed out at 14 per cent.

Davidson chief executive Brendan Kavenagh says that in a time of focus on the number of women represented in all business sectors, the IT sector is one of the poorest gender diversity performers.

“Under-representation has always been an issue for our industry and it is an issue that is not going away,” Kavenagh says.

“Attraction strategies need to be well thought out and planned. Similarly, retention strategies are equally as important.”

The report found the top five IT roles with a greater representation of women included program managers and directors; release or change managers; designers; business analysts; and test managers. Core coding roles were less likely than other IT jobs to be filled by women.