Paraform's Talent Density Algorithm
By Collin Qian
Preface:
This Talent Density Algorithm is geared towards engineering talent.
What is Talent Density?
Since the dawn of time, everyone has been searching for the most "cracked" engineers. Yet, with so many factors playing into this measure, the definition remains unclear. Leetcode problems solved, school ranking, open-source contributions, independent projects, previous work experience, and numerous other factors all contribute. Different recruiters and hiring managers may have their own definition of what talent looks like to them. Our goal is to bridge the gap between a hiring manager's needs and a recruiter's candidate pool and specialties.
Paraform's Talent Density Metric
As an initial step toward this end goal, Paraform has developed our own metric for measuring a company's talent density. We have grouped companies into 3 tiers:
- S Tier: Exceptional Talent (Top 0.5%)
- A Tier: Great Talent (Top 5%)
- B Tier: Neutral (Not Shown)
with our calculation using 3 key factors:
- Employee school rank (weighted at 0.4)
- Companies worked at before by employees (weighted at 0.5)
- Company growth (weighted at 0.1)
We believe these three metrics are most telling of a company's talent density. For top schools, we compiled a list of leading engineering institutions from around the world. For top companies, we used a list of the most frequent "ideal companies" that hiring managers want to see their candidates come from on our platform. For company growth, we calculated the annual headcount increase for all companies.
We then normalized all three measures and combined them to create a total talent density score.