Data mining an increasingly useful tool in HR

BIG data is big in human resources (HR), and some large companies are mining deep within employee data to sniff out redundancies and retain the best within the organisation.

John Termotto, senior director of global talent acquisition at Akamai Technologies, is a big believer in data. When he joined the company two years ago, it was at 2,000 employees. Today, it's reaching 4,000 and he expects Akamai to cross 5,000 by next year.

Akamai is the world's largest content delivery network provider, whose services are employed by the likes of TV stations and video game companies in order to make high-end applications such as streaming video run faster to the end-user. The company estimates that about 30 per cent of the world's Internet traffic flows through its network of globally distributed servers.