Recently, a number of people have asked me about resume parsing technology (a.k.a. resume processing and data extraction). I've been tracking this market over the last few years and I thought it might be helpful to provide a quick overview of resume parsing technology and point out the leading vendors.
Background. Resume parsing technology was created in the late 1990s to help recruiters deal with the influx of electronic resume documents received over the Internet. Resume parsing saves recruiters and candidates the time and aggravation of manually entering resume data into a database. Resume parsing software is able to take resumes formatted as Word, PDF, HTML, etc. documents and transforms them into fielded data (e.g. pulls out contact info, skills, work history). Fielded resume data helps recruiters track candidate credentials better and can be helpful in matching candidates to jobs.
Most off-the-shelf staffing and recruiting software has built-in resume parsing. While some of these packages use custom-built parsers, most have embedded third-party components. Sandy McKellar (Workflow) made an interesting comment to me today - he noted that there are a lot of patents out there that may make custom development difficult. I say, the technology out there is solid, so stick with the off-the-shelf components -- if you can.
Vendors to consider. If you are in need of resume parsing technology you will certainly want to check-out:
- Burning Glass LensXRay
- daXtra CandidateCapture
- Hireability's ALEX
- Resume Mirrors' REX. This technology seems to have the highest market penetration.
- Sovren Resume Parser
- Textkernel Textractor
Smaller organizations may need a less scaleable and less costly solution e.g. eGrabber Resume Grabber, for parsing data into ACT, Outlook, etc. rather than into an ATS or FO.
Other trivia. Over the years there has been some consolidation of this market. You may have wondered what happened to:
- 2006: Magnaware's assets were acquired by Resume Mirror's parent company, Talent Technology Corporation in July 2006
- 2003: Mohomine was acquired by Kofax in April 2003.
- 2002: Revsolutions' ResumeBreaker was acquired by Resume Mirror in July 2002.
- 2000: Resumix merged with HotJobs in 2000. HotJobs uses Resumix's technology for parsing.
If you have additional history, vendors, or comments to add to this post, please do so by posting a comment.
Thanks to Marc Drees, founder of MatchSupport, for his additions to this post.
