Talent platforms publish large numbers. Some of those numbers mean something. This is how to tell which.
Live from our candidate database
Counted at render time and refreshed every six hours. This is a supply-side view of one platform, not a national labour-market statistic.
Ask what the denominator is
A count is meaningless without knowing what population it was drawn from. Registered users? Active users? Users who ever uploaded a resume? These differ by large factors, and the difference is usually where the marketing lives.
Ask when it was measured
A figure with no timestamp is a figure that may have been true once. Any live-data claim should carry a generation time, and if it does not, assume it is stale.
Ask whether categories overlap
Domain pool sizes almost always overlap, because candidates have more than one skill. A vendor presenting them as a clean partition of the total is either confused or hoping you are.
Ask what is not being shown
Selective publication is the most common form of statistical dishonesty in this industry. If a report shows total registrations but never activity, the activity number is probably unflattering.
We publish both on our own report for exactly this reason — you should hold us to the same standard you hold anyone else.
Key takeaways
- Always establish the denominator; "registered" and "active" differ by large factors.
- A live figure without a timestamp should be assumed stale.
- Domain pools overlap — treat any clean partition claim with suspicion.
- Ask what is absent. Selective publication is the industry's most common distortion.
Questions
Why does MyInternships publish activity figures alongside totals?+
Because the gap between them is the most useful thing in the report, and hiding it would be its own kind of dishonesty. Publishing both lets you judge rather than trust.
Can we audit these numbers?+
Ask us for the filter behind any figure and we will give it to you. A number you cannot trace to a query is a number you should not plan against.