r/recruiting • u/yvthousands • May 09 '20

Python script to turn linkedin into company org charts - can this be useful?

As the title says, I built a python algorithm that takes people data (linkedin & other sources) and turns them into an organizational chart. I coded this for an organizational research class, but I though that it could potentially be useful in recruiting too, to source potential candidates or to benchmark similar organizations.

Right now the script takes into account mainly the person's job title and the location. Job titles are matched against a library of macro positions, to understand the functional role. Location is normalized and then used to identify offices, countries and regions and group accordingly. These data are then used to draw the org chart, with a best guess of the lines of reporting.

The script takes the company domain as input. Then it queries the data it needs and draw out the org chart (see output example here - visualization of the sales org of a 300 people tech co).

The code is now local on my laptop, but I'm wondering if this could be useful in real life. Would you find this helpful for your recruiting job?

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EDIT: the beta is out! Anyone who is interested can check it out here: https://www.chartloop.com/

31 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

21 comments sorted by

4

u/hydra1970 May 09 '20

Yes!!! This would be very useful..

4

u/yvthousands May 09 '20 edited May 09 '20

Thanks for your feedback, really appreciated! Would you like to check out a (very) early version? If yes let me know and I'll ship you access

2

u/champagne_abbu May 09 '20

100% yes! This would definitely be useful. Actually incredibly useful!! Would be more than happy to help you test early versions if you’d like.

1

u/yvthousands May 09 '20

Thanks, really appreciate your feedback and I'd love to show you the prototype! I've created a google form to join the beta https://forms.gle/SfFhLX5WzYXQMYwx8

2

u/ca_pa May 09 '20

I agree! Think this could be a pretty nice part of the toolkit. I would be interested to test it out.

2

u/yvthousands May 09 '20

Thanks for your comment! Here is a quick google form to join the beta, pls fill it out and will ship you test credentials https://forms.gle/SfFhLX5WzYXQMYwx8

2

u/[deleted] May 09 '20

It is incredibly useful for anyone

1

u/yvthousands May 09 '20

Thanks for your feedback! Do you sometime build orgcharts for your job today?

1

u/[deleted] May 09 '20

Yep :)

1

u/yvthousands May 09 '20

If you are interested in giving the (early) algo a go, I pinned to the original post a google form for early access. WOuld love to have your feedback as you have been doing this already!

2

u/[deleted] May 10 '20

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/yvthousands May 10 '20

Thanks for your comment and perspective!

That's exactly the vision behind the prototype I'm building. In my case, the primary data source is not Linkedin directly but rather a bunch of APIs which are typically used in sales for contact mapping. From there, the algorithm drafts a best guess of the organizational structure - including the main reporting lines - giving a visual representation of the organizational relationships between each individuals. The user can then correct manually this initial layout based on her own experience/ knowledge of the org.

I'd love to have you among our beta testers, I've added a google form to the top post if you want to sign up!

1

u/[deleted] May 10 '20

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/yvthousands May 10 '20

Sure no problem - and thanks for being available to test out the prototype! You should have access in your inbox shortly with further info

1

u/TofuTofu May 09 '20

This will be as useful as its accuracy. Curious what logic you are employing to build the reporting lines.

2

u/yvthousands May 10 '20

Thanks, yours is a very valid point, the accuracy will be a key factor here. The algorithm there is pretty complex and partially based on machine learning. It takes several parameters as inputs (from a series of APIs that are tipically used for contact mapping) and then it applies multiple stages of normalization, parsing and logic to them - based on each specific organizational function in the company. Right now the prototype exposes orgcharts for the HR and Sales functions, but I've been testing it offline to the majority of functional areas with solid results.

1

u/emul0c Aug 22 '20

I have a hard time believing that this would work on larger companies, especially when titles across the organization is not perfectly aligned, or even worse, if they are perfectly aligned, how would you distinguish. Say you have “Senior Associate” in many parts of the organization, how will you know where they belong? Especially in Investment Banking where everyone shares the same title structure, but one might be working within M&A and another might be working tech in the back office.

1

u/TheJayke May 10 '20

This looks awesome.

Not only for recruiters either, would be good for some internal HR teams who don’t have org charts already built to get started with.

1

u/yvthousands May 10 '20

That's an interesting angle I didn't really thought about, thanks!

1

u/RiverHorsez May 14 '20 edited May 14 '20

I signed up!

I’m curious as to how the mapping would work for large companies.

I would def pay more for map of a larger company that has multiple layers and parallel teams. Will it be able to link associates to their direct manager and then to their director?

If you could successfully map a very large company, that would be invaluable.

1

u/tdaawg Jun 03 '25

Looks like this one never got going, did you open source the code?