2: Talent and the Data Science Revolution

It is an understatement to say that we are living in a data revolution. The only way to have stayed “off the grid” for the last 20 years is if you lived on a deserted island. Nearly every aspect of our lives is now shaped by digital technology. From the moment we wake up to the moment we go to sleep, we are interfacing with a black slab of internet connected glass, be it our phones, laptops, or watches. You may even fall into the 27% of Americans who let Jeff Bezos listen in to your household conversations via its Alexa devices (Perez, 2019). These advances in technology have fundamentally changed the way we communicate, consume, and work. To psychologists like us, what is most remarkable about these developments is that behavior which is mediated by digital technology is behavior that is empirically coded and ready to be analyzed by artificially intelligent algorithms that can understand complex patterns and make predictions about our thoughts, desires, and preferences. If the separation between our offline and online self is now non-existent, how is the world of talent identification and recruitment changing?