How the Estonian Unemployment Insurance Fund Uses Machine Learning

11+ years

Author

Martti Vilumaa
Partner

You can also download this case study as a pdf document.

Skip a time-consuming analysis of thousands of applicant CVs and let a machine learning system provide you with the best candidates for your job ad. With machine-learning algorithms, you can do it within seconds.

The Estonian Unemployment Insurance Fund is an unemployment-related social insurance provisions administrator for the entire country. A big part of its daily work is focused on advising people on a job search and their employment choices, as well as advising employers and finding suitable talent matches for them.

SEE ALSO: Digitalization of the Estonian Unemployment Insurance Fund

To make the job search process and linking matches easier and faster for both potential employers and employees alike, the Insurance Fund decided to build a job mediation environment that would give a little extra support.

Helmes was tasked with creating a top job mediation portal that uses machine learning to do the matchmaking.

Save time by upgrading to automation

This platform is essentially a job portal with several advanced features. The ad-on that makes it so smart is a complementary machine-learning component. It has been developed as a part of the job mediation module, and its main job is to match the job ads with appropriate CVs. It allows ranking the applications according to the applicants’ skills, previous job experience, other proficiencies, and so on.

The ad-on that makes it so smart is a complementary machine-learning component.

It is an incredibly useful tool for the employer since the portal cuts away the waiting time for the applications to arrive. Also, there is no more need to invest time to work through the information of all the interested candidates to find the ones who are qualified.

When a job ad is posted at the portal, it is first validated by the Unemployment Insurance Fund specialist and then released to the system. The system sorts through tens of thousands of CVs already entered in the system and preselects appropriate matches who best correspond to the requirements. It also filters suitable matches and places them in rank order. Employers see only those CV-s that match the job description.

A similar pre-selection is done for the job seeker, who now has an automatic display of the job ads from appropriate fields. The job seeker has to push only one button to apply for the position in interest.

Let’s peek into the backroom

The job mediation platform enables the following …

General

  • Search the job title, which scans the CVs and ads for standard job titles to help users to insert them.
  • A recommendation component according to the standard job titles using the International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO).
  • Find and match job seekers with ads according to multiple criteria.
  • Find suitable ads for job seekers according to multiple criteria.

Person

  • Enables a public search of all job ads.
  • Create a CV with ease in a couple of minutes with prefilled data from the Insurance Fund’s system and four national registers.
  • Manage the personal data of the job seeker (add and edit CVs and generating a PDF format).
  • Receives automatic reminders of the new suitable job openings.

Employer

  • Job ads data service for the employer where all its job ads can be viewed with detailed information.
  • Job ads managing service for adding, editing, and extending the ad.
  • Closing job offers and marking the results.

Consultant

  • A processing system that enables consultants to direct job seekers to specific job ads, to inform job seekers about the job ads via e-mail, and to note the ad is not suitable for a particular job seeker.
  • Allow consultants to accept or reject job offers.
  • A staff search service that allows forwarding matching job offers to suitable candidates.

Hundreds of thousands of users

This platform significantly decreases the time and money invested in finding the best matches in the job market. Plus, it is extra fast – the matching of job ads and job seekers takes place in real-time. When a job ad is published in the system, it calculates the best matches immediately according to the current data.

The win for businesses with this system is that each employer receives a preselected list so they can get in touch with suitable candidates. Job seekers are offered ads that match their interests and qualifications. And both happen at lightning speed.

EMPLOYER …

I have used the Estonian Unemployment Insurance Fund’s self-service and job mediation for about five years. I must say it has been the easiest platform to explain to our recruiters. What is more, people matching our needs are always available. We have a lot of positive examples when the consultant has forwarded job seekers to apply, or people have applied themselves and got the position.

Kristi –  recruiting specialist AS ISS Eesti

CLIENT …

Helmes has proactively helped us to develop the self-service portal that more than 50 percent of our customers use. Our self-service is a well-accepted tool by job seekers, career changes employers, and partners and is gaining momentum year after year. The most significant impact of the job mediation module is that we can provide better and faster matches between the people and job ads. The cooperation between Helmes and the Unemployment Insurance Fund in creating a self-service portal has been agile, flexible and we have been able to react to rapid environmental changes, as was the case in 2020 emergencies and lockdowns. Helmes is a strong link in our larger team of development partners to provide the necessary services to our customers and to contribute to the implementation of e-government in Estonia.

Indrek Mõttus –  IT development manager

Get in touch

Get in touch

We develop recruitment software.

Martti Vilumaa
Partner
+372 525 5589