Sifting through a candidate’s social media postings can be time-consuming. And though one can gain many indicators as to what type of person the candidate is through their social media postings, it does not tell the whole story. The client wanted to delve deeper into a person’s risk profile to also see what type of other people’s posts that particular person liked or commented on. Additionally, what were the groups the user belonged to and were these groups considered risky. It wanted to compile a better risk profile of that person, especially if that person was applying for a high-profile position in a company. Furthermore, the company wanted to ensure that nothing from the candidates’ past would embarrass the company in the future. It is about analysing a person’s behavioural traits from their actions on social media platforms and then presenting these behavioural traits to their end customer to determine whether they are suitable or not for the position and/or employer.

Tangent Solutions created an automated advanced search functionality that assists the user as they delve into a person’s complete social media history. A blend of technologies from a number of cloud vendors was used, lending from each of their strengths e.g. using Google API for searching. Due to the complexity and long compute time of the searches a server-less architecture was used to manage the asynchronous processing of results. A custom front end was developed that allows staff to enter candidate information, perform a search, capture screenshots and then answer custom generated questions to calculate a score and report.

The results of this project are truly an indication of the value that digital transformation and modernization can bring to an organisation. The modernized approach brought by Tangent Solutions has allowed the client to vastly reduce the amount of time and effort required to perform searches. A massively requirement for a high potential start-up looking to scale.

The solution developed for Farosian enables them to offer a unique service at scale to their customers. The capability of the Azure to manage long running jobs in an elegant way at scale allowed this start-up to offer a truly unique offering to the market despite the technical complexity of the solution. Farosian believes this type of risk profile could become a standard throughout the recruitment industry for every candidate looking for a job. It is important to note that the risk profile is not prescriptive, but rather just highlights certain aspects of the candidate. Ultimately it is the employer’s responsibility as to whether they are comfortable with those behaviours or not. Due to the massive quantity of data on the internet, finding all potentially relevant information on candidates is beyond the capability of most companies. Additionally, providing the solution developed by Tangent Solutions requires the compute power and ability to scale of Azure to ensure the searches are still executed in the time required to deliver business value. The Farosian project and technologies used are a text book example of how the power of the cloud can unlock innovation and empower businesses.