RealTime Talent’s Newest Labor Market Data Tool

Since August 2015, RealTime Talent has connected Minnesota academic institutions, workforce training centers, employer associations, and economic planners with one of the most robust real-time labor market data tools available in North America. Selected out of dozens of similar systems, CEB’s TalentNeuron Recruit offers access to robust micro data on employer job openings in a low-cost, user-friendly interface. Here, we aim to answer some common questions about this data tool, including why we love using it in Minnesota.

  1. What data does TalentNeuron Recruit collect and where is the data stored?

TalentNeuron Recruit collects online job postings worldwide, pulling from over 25,000 different sources for just North America alone.  It spiders to over 15,000 job boards and over 12,000 different corporate sites and aggregates data on what employers are looking for in a new hire.  Using custom designed algorithms and a user-friendly interface TalentNeuron Recruit organizes information into data that is valuable for planning and service delivery.  TalentNeuron Recruit has been collecting postings since 2005, currently storing over a billion individual job postings in a centralized database.  Four years of data up to today’s date is available by subscription by username, with over 300 usernames currently distributed across Minnesota.  The data is extremely current, reflecting immediate changes in labor market demand, with the unique ability to drill down to details that traditional labor market data cannot. For example, data is searchable by:

  • Date Range (up to current date and time)
  • Geography (city, county, MSA, district, state, region, nation)
  • Employer (direct, staffing, anonymous postings, contract, temporary, seasonal)
  • Occupation (SOC), Industry (NAICS), Job Title, Function
  • Requirements (certifications, education, skills, licensing)
  • Experience Level (entry, mid, senior)


  1. What is purpose of this data tool?

TalentNeuron Recruit is a real-time data tool focused on bringing up-to-the-minute labor market information to employers, regional planners, education, and those serving job seekers.  It provides valuable information on the current hiring demand for certain positions and skill sets, giving a glimpse of which employers are currently recruiting, how they recruit for key positions, what their specific skill needs are, and where they advertise vacancies.  Companies can compare their postings, median salaries, and qualifications to competitors and gain valuable recruiting insights.  TalentNeuron Recruit can also be used to understand what new skills, jobs, or fields are increasing in demand and where qualified candidates can be found.  It can also scan a resume, job posting, competency pyramids, career pathways, or curriculum content and match job postings that have similar requirements.


  1. Who uses TalentNeuron Recruit regularly in Minnesota?

While the potential applications are vast, here are a few ways that Minnesota organizations are using the tool right now to overcome our labor force challenges:

  • Workforce Investment Boards (WIBs) use TalentNeuron Recruit to help clients find jobs, by analyzing resumes, performing advanced searches based on client skills and experience, or exploring salary and experience in desired career pathways;
  • Government and employer associations use the data to show businesses what is going on in their markets, study employer competition, explore leads for new business opportunities, and to give advice to companies on how to recruit or fill their jobs;
  • Non-profits and organizations find TalentNeuron Recruit useful when developing grant proposals, analyzing organizational impact, and evaluating whether to scale up or scale down training programs;
  • Researchers use the data to report on micro trends in current job openings, employer demand, and study emerging fields like Healthcare IT and our “gig economy;”
  • Education (K-12, higher ed, training organizations, certifications) use TalentNeuron Recruit for the elaboration of career pathways, curriculum development, and employer engagement.

Currently, 85 Minnesota organizations hold user agreements in TalentNeuron Recruit, with an estimated 890 individuals who have used the data tool to better align Minnesota’s labor force and job opportunities.


  1. Does TalentNeuron Recruit link to any other data systems or sources?

TalentNeuron Recruit includes third-party data in the tool:

  • All jobs are matched up to BLS SOCS as well as NAICS codes (updated annually), making it easy to compare data to other data classified in this way
  • US College and University Graduate data (a survey produced conjointly by the U.S Department of Education, the Institute of Education Sciences and the National Center for Education Statistics. They gather information through a direct survey sent to more than 7,500 institutions. This includes research universities, states colleges and universities, private religious and liberal arts colleges, community and technical colleges and non-degree-granting institutions)


  1. What is the benefit of TalentNeuron Recruit using data from other sources?

TalentNeuron Recruit uses the Standard Occupational Classification codes as defined by the most recent data available via the Bureau of Labor Statistics, allowing for sorting positions by how they would be classified by BLS or DEED.  The site also allows for sorting by job function, skill, and other qualities, making it a very flexible tool that can adjust to an ever-changing market.

The Hiring Scale, a measure of difficulty to fill a particular position, is calculated using information from the online job postings in conjunction with monthly local unemployment rates and graduate data.

BLS wage data by occupation is published on TalentNeuron Recruit to estimate annual salary for positions where there are too few postings for a position to establish a reliable median posted salary.


  1. Where can I go for more information on TalentNeuron Recruit?

For general information visit CEB’s website.  If you are an organization located in Minnesota and have specific questions about the tool or would like to know if your team can get access, we invite you to reach out to RealTime Talent’s User Engagement Project Manager, Marian Rengel, at