TalentSpring Blog

Recruiters raving about their Successes from the TalentSpring product

Bryan Starbuck — 2010-10-23T04:57:57-07:00

For a recruiter, there is nothing better than having a product that starts filling their positions faster than their typical tools and workflow.

We recently asked our TalentSpring customers for their results. We were flooded by the number of people with their success stories. TalentSpring employees have spent the last 4 years toiling away crafting a product recruiters love to use and that fills positions.

NOW HERE ARE THEIR STORIES:

Note: We have Future 500 customers but most of them aren't allowed to use their company name. I love the recruiter who filled 20 positions with TalentSpring!!! (from a single recruiter)

Jeff Tudas, Recruiter, Information Control Corporation

“I have really enjoyed using TalentSpring. It has revolutionized the way I source for candidates. The combination of advanced searching and across the board results is the most efficient tool in the industry.”

Ken Winters, CEO of Staffback

“TalentSpring is an innovative new technology that provides exactly the type of economies of scale Staffback clients expect as part of our cost effective hiring solution. We are pleased to be in a long term agreement with TalentSpring and are committed to providing this value added service to Staffback clients without any increase in our flat hourly rates. The new economy demands using technology to make process improvements without increasing overhead, and TalentSpring has been one of our key advances in 2009.”

Bill Crago, President, The Executive group

“We have found that Talent Spring has been one of the best purchases on any new products we acquired in 2010. Our recruiting firm has over 25 years in service to our region and we constantly need a good talent pool that can be quickly sourced. We have found the ease and flexibility where additional talent sources can be added or taken away independently from the internal source pool built in to the network. It will remain one of our mainstay investments.”

Dan Staggs, Managing Partner, iMatch Technical Services

“TalentSpring has allowed our recruiters to find valuable candidates faster than they could previously and has been a critical tool for success.”

Learn how the product delivers these results in the Whitepaper:

Matt Schreyer, President, Instigate, Inc.

“TalentSpring has greatly reduced our recruiting team’s time-to-source and at the same time improved the overall talent pools for each recruitment effort.”

Jason Wilde, Owner, JWilde & Associates

“TalentSpring makes finding qualified candidates quicker which frees us up to focus on matching and recruiting. In addition, the TalentSpring interface makes it easy to organize search terms and candidate lists and rewards when set up thoughtfully.”

Doug Sprague, Principle, Priority Solutions

“I have been working with Kevin for over a year now. He was low key and yet very focused on our needs. As a recruiter it can be difficult to find quality fits and TalentSpring really helps speed up that process. There system is clean and easy to use and gives me access in one spot to many excellent resources. A true time saver.”

Amy L Dewey, Recruiter, OCE North America Document Printing Systems

“TalentSpring enables Recruiters to focus more time on recruiting and less time on sourcing. The system offers flexibility to source job boards and databases all with one click. You set the criteria and the system does all of the work!”

Walt Youngblood, Corporate Recruiter, RTUI

“We have a need; a need, for speed! Managing large numbers of multiple Job Board resumes for several dozen Field Managers nationwide, had become next to impossible. TalentSpring provided us multiple resume database search aggregation, precision and organization; cost effectively! Our positive TalentSpring results were immediate and dramatic. The TalentSpring Customer Service and Training Team made transition to TalentSpring Semantic Search successful, quickly. Now, we can provide almost instant zip code specific, semantically ranked and fully qualified candidate results to our Field Management, on demand. We just cannot achieve the same level of recruiting success for our Management…without TalentSpring! We highly recommend this excellent tool and look forward to many more excellent improvements to this indispensible product soon!”

Learn how the product delivers these results in the Whitepaper:

Steve Ahlquist, Director of Staffing, Dynamics Research Corporation:

“What the recruiting team at DRC likes about TalentSpring are the multiple job board and social networking sources that are captured from each search string entered. This saves a considerable amount of time in finding qualified candidates.”

Ron Bloch, Senior Recruiter, Dynamics Research Corporation

“One of the reasons I like to use TalentSpring is the ability to easily create a database of candidates from LinkedIn”, “TalentSpring keeps evolving and yielding better results, e.g., through semantic search.” “ TalentSpring creates a targeted database of qualified professionals, including passive or explorers, whom I can reach out to .”

Randy Marsh, Talent Acquisition Specialist, StaffBack

"Conduct multiple job board search assignments with one click of the mouse"

Walt Youngblood, Corporate Recruiter, RTUI

“TalentSpring helped RTUI hire one high-profile South Florida Sales Professional in one hour ~ flat; Start-to-Finish.”

Learn how the product delivers these results in the Whitepaper:

Semantic Search for Recruiting whitepaper

Bryan Starbuck — 2010-10-08T10:15:04-07:00

Shally Steckerl and I co-authored this 17 page whitepaper on semantic search to make understanding semantic search for the recruiting industry easy to understand.

The whitepaper focuses on how to achieve sourcing candidates for better than is possible with Boolean search by using Semantic Search that is taylored for the recruiting industry.

Semantic Search is about accomplishing the first pass at QUALIFYING candidates against a job opening (requisition).

The TalentSpring product for example enables spanning 120 million resumes (across Monster, CareerBuilder, HotJobs, Dice, niche job boards, open web, etc.). It can then efficiently find the best resumes almost immediately from those 120 million.

Whitepaper Co-authored by:

Shally Steckerl
VP at Arbita

Bryan Starbuck
CEO of TalentSpring, Inc.

We also have videos that illustrate various aspects of Semantic search for recruiting.

Video #1:

Video #2:

These videos are great for sourcers, agency recruiters and corporate recruiting departments. These videos are useful for understanding the topics covered by Glen Cathey (Boolean Blackbelt), Monster 6Sense, Monster PowerSearch, Monster Semantic Search and similar products. Semantic Search is the technology that goes beyond what is possible with smart search, contextual search, conceptual search, proprietary search and intelligent search algorithms. TalentSpring integrates with Applicant Tracking Systems, HCM (Human Capital Management Systems) and ERP systems. Semantic Search has been covered at recruiting conferences, including ERE, SourceCon, OnRec, Kennedy, HR Tech and similar conferences.

Recruiting = Marketing + Sales

Bryan Starbuck — 2009-10-27T22:44:12-07:00

Amybeth Hale, our industry's Research Goddess, has a great post on:

WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN PR, MARKETING, AND ADVERTISING, AND WHY RECRUITERS SHOULD CARE

I am very passionate on this subject so I added some of my thoughts to this blog post.

RECRUITING = MARKETING + SALES

I strongly believe RECRUITING = MARKETING + SALES.

Most of recruiting is the SALES side which is directly working with candidates: Resume databases, ATS resumes, networking, referrals, career fairs, etc.

The marketing side can be incredibly wasteful and a poor use of time, except in rare cases that have a high ROI. (Just like marketing a product) My view is that recruiters often shift into marketing, especially social media marketing, when they want to use their creativity and mix up their work. I think there are a few tasks that create an easy ROI (mainly ATS published job postings and SEO). Much of the other marketing is often hard to have a better ROI than working with resumes directly.

ASPECTS OF MARKETING WITHIN RECRUITING

I believe the the marketing side of recruiting falls into goals within recruiting:

Marketing = Education + Free Demand Generation + Paid Demand Generation + Branding

Branding:

The goal here is to attract more appropriate candidates, than would otherwise would come to the company.

More appropriate candidates can be defined by: a) Higher quality, b) better match to the company culture, c) people that respect the work environment or organization's goal.

Education:

The goal here is to education possible applicants so they select a company over a competitor -- or they understand important aspects of unique job types.

Free Demand Generation:

This is the most obvious part of marketing that should always be applied since it has a very high ROI and has low risk.

This includes:

Job Openings in ATS published on the company's career portal
Job Search engines picking up ATS job postings
SEO traffic
Email Nurture Campaign to previously applied candidates
Articles (content)

Paid Demand Generation:

These are often used most cautiously because of the expenses involved.

This includes:

Paid Job Postings
Brand and pure Advertising (RAAs)
Paid Leads for CRM campaigns
Social Media

I put social media marketing in this category because from what I have seen, to scale the results from this method, it requires equally scaling labor -- which is important to fully factor into recruiting plans.

I'm a big believer in measuring marketing efforts against ROI metrics. Paid demand generation is often used when Time-to-Fill is too long or not enough resumes are causing a problem in the recruiting pipeline.

The best ROI here is often when a recruiting department finds a specific category of positions are stalling to fill because of a lack of quality or quantity of resumes.

SALES via Semantic Search for Recruiting:

FULL DISCLOSURE: I'm the CEO of TalentSpring, which I consider a leader in semantic search for recruiting. We aggregate resumes and candidates on the open web and use our matching technology to take employers to the best candidates.

Semantic Search for recruiting doesn't require any marketing. Employers go directly to the best resumes without labor or costs. This is my best of all worlds. It includes resume database for active candidates. It includes leads to candidates on the open web for high quality passive candidates.

This can often be the lowest labor and cheapest because resume databases are low cost when they can work for a range of job positions.

PR:

I'll define PR as media outlets that could cover a company. From my experiences with my company, I have found that a company will get media coverage from time to time. However, it isn't something that a company can scale when they want. Once in a while, a company like Google or Zappos will have the ability to have a big impact with PR. However, unless the company can create that kind of attention, then this can't be a big part of a recruiting strategy to scale to deliver wide coverage of results.

Metrics:

Metrics are a great way to track a recruiting departments to make decisions. Specifically:

Quality
Costs
Time-to-Fill
Quantity of Fills (for the Head of Staffing)

When it comes to planning strategies for recruiting, it is important to calculate metrics. Implementing Free Demand Generation is a no-lose situation and should almost always be performed.

Here are example scenarios:

Semantic Search ROI:

Labor: High Number of positions able to be filled per recruiter per year
Costs: Low costs per fill. (Resume databases, free internet, semantic search product)

Organic (No costs):

Labor: Number of positions able to be filled per recruiter per year. (Maybe lower fills-per-year than other methods)
Costs: Zero

Paid Demand Generation:

Labor: Number of positions able to be filled per recruiter per year
Costs: Hard costs per fill. (Job postings, etc.)

This Semantic Search on Recruiting whitepaper gives details on improving metrics (Quality, Time-to-Fill, Costs) with that method.

New on TalentSpring: Testimonials and More...

Bryan Starbuck — 2009-05-28T21:37:48-07:00

TalentSpring gets better every week. Today's newest improvement is our new landing page.

What we do is new and unique so we have always had a challenge explaining it. This landing page does a great job covering what we do.

We are a resume aggregator across resume databases (like Monster, CareerBuilder, HotJobs, niche job boards, etc.)
We include passive candidates from the open web, including social networks
We are a semantic search engine for resumes because we rank resumes based on how well resumes match the needs in the job description
We allow employers to go directly to the top candidates based on a deep and exacting match to their job opening -- without having to use keyword search like boolean search.

See more here.

See more about our resume aggregator and resume semantic search engine.

Semantic Search for Resumes & Recruiters

Bryan Starbuck — 2009-04-20T14:14:03-07:00

The following video shows how TalentSpring uses semantic search on resumes. It includes how recruiters and sourcers find the best matching resumes across job boards, passive candidate sources, and ATSes.

Precision Questioning Technique for Recruiters

Bryan Starbuck — 2009-03-17T14:59:51-07:00

My recent guest post on Cheezhead is about using the precision questioning technique in phone screens with candidates that look great on paper.

The goal is to enable recruiters to add strategic value by being able to filter and have higher quality candidates enter the interview.

This precision questioning technique has long been used by executives in business analsys. This talk gives a template for recruiters to apply this to their organizations.

Joel used the title "the future of recruiting" for the post, which I thought was interesting. As powerful tools enable sourcing candidates to require less labor (such as our product, TalentSpring), recruiters will be freed up from transactional work and can shift to add value in a more strategic way.

Slide Presentation:

Slide Presentation

Video:

Precision Questioning for Recruiters -- Cheezhead post from Bryan Starbuck on Vimeo.

TalentSpring is a Resume Aggregator

Bryan Starbuck — 2009-03-11T11:30:47-07:00

The following is a good overview of our newest product:

Matching technology that uses semantic search to find the best resumes that match a job requisition
Resume aggregator across job boards. (This part is similar to Infogist or TalentHook)
Passive candidates are included from social networks and other passive sources

Is Sourcing Dead?

Bryan Starbuck — 2009-03-03T14:52:27-08:00

Is Candidate Sourcing Dead? is a great blog post that is a forward looking view into how recruiting is evolving.

The answer is "no", of course. However, sourcing is changing as the internet is allowing a wide range of passive candidates (without resumes) to be "almost" accessible.

This blog post is a good read for any recruiter or sourcer.

It was written by Glen at Boolean Black Belt.

Cheezhead's review of TalentSpring

Bryan Starbuck — 2009-02-27T17:09:26-08:00

Cheezhead has a review of our new Product launch.

The review: TalentSpring on Cheezhead

TalentSpring's new Release

Bryan Starbuck — 2009-02-26T21:26:16-08:00

We have a great video including all of the new support in our newest release:

RecruiterGuy video on Twitter for Recruiting

Bryan Starbuck — 2009-02-20T05:07:19-08:00

A while ago I wrote a blog post on using Twitter in recruiting (see here).

Chris at the RecruiterGuy.net wrote a great blog post and video going into more ways Twitter can be useful for Recruiting.

The blog post is worth checking out: The Blog Post

Is twitter a wastes of time?

Bryan Starbuck — 2008-11-20T21:31:30-08:00

Several discussions in this year's ERE Conference in Florida were about Twitter. Most of it was fragmented about what it means in the recruiting industry.

I wrote a guest blog post on Cheezhead on Twiitter in the recruiting industry: Is twitter a waste of time?

Here are the video and slide deck:

Twitter for Recruiting (Hiring) from Bryan Starbuck on Vimeo.

TheRecruiterGuy interviews us at ERE 2008 Conference

Bryan Starbuck — 2008-11-19T17:33:40-08:00

I had a chance to finally meet Chris Hoyt at ERE this year. Chris runs the popular recruiting blog TheRecruiterGuy (see here)

He did a quick interview of me in the RecruitingBlogs lounge:

Takes 10% as much effort to hire someone in the bottom 90% of the class

Bryan Starbuck — 2008-11-07T21:18:21-08:00

Seth Godin had a great quote that

"It only takes 10% as much effort to hire someone in the bottom 90% of the class."

The point is that all companies need to hire exceptional talent in order to be competitive and deliver exceptional results.

See full blog post.

ERE Conference 2008

Bryan Starbuck — 2008-11-07T21:14:28-08:00

Alex Greene and I just came back from the ERE Conference in Hollywood Beach Florida.

Two of the high lights were meeting

Carmen Hudson (People Shark)

...and Michael Marlatt of Cloud Recruiting.

Sourcing Beyond Recruiting 2.0 {updated on 9.14.08}

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: trends emerging)

Video Interviewing at the '08 Kennedy Recruiting Conference

Bryan Starbuck — 2008-07-02T16:53:14-07:00

TalentSpring recently attended the Kennedy Recruiting Conference in Las Vegas and had a chance to video blog many of the technology companies there. We focused the videos on the core way the companies help agency recruiters, corporate recruiters, and sourcers.

These videos are from those interviews.

Kennedy Conference Video 1 of 3 from Ryan Myers on Vimeo.

Kennedy Recruiting Conference Video 2 of 3 from Ryan Myers on Vimeo.

Kennedy Recruiting Conference video 3 of 3 from Ryan Myers on Vimeo.

39% want to Quit if their company BLOCKED access to Facebook

Bryan Starbuck — 2008-06-12T15:38:04-07:00

This Telindus report shows that 39% of young workers (19-24) would consider quitting their job if their employer blocked access to Facebook at work. Another 21% would be "annoyed".

Ann All's reaction is "Grow up, Punks". I completely disagree. I'm 35, not a millennial, however, I think that that attitude is just fine in today's work environment.

Employees would want to flee an employer if they wouldn't let them go to the bathroom whenever they wanted, or carry a cell phone and answer the phone. An employer such as this would be considered a control freak and employees would definitely be seeking out other employment options.

Young professionals with a strong worth ethic will often "glance" at Facebook 2 or 3 times a day -- taking less time out of their workday than a smoke break. Older workers just don't understand, but Facebook is used like an email application. It is a communication tool that you "glance" at to check for recent communication from friends.

I didn't understand it until I noticed the following behavior:
OLDER WORKERS: If they want to coordinate with friends to meet for dinner after work, may pick 5 friends and send them email.
YOUNG WORKERS: They reduce their usage on email. Communication occurs instead on MySpace or Facebook. Instead of emailing 5 friends about dinner, they can communicate by posting on their social network. Many more of their friends (50+) can see the message. Then the friends that are interested will join for dinner. THE ADVANTAGE is that they are not sending an INTERRUPTING email to their friends, and they may find more people to join them for dinner (people they wouldn't have sent email may end up wanting to come).

I think the "Bozo" rules apply:

Employees should flee a bozo employer. Such as one that restricts access to the internet.
Employers should let bozo employees go if they have problems getting their work done. This includes if they aren't getting their work done because of the time they spend on non-work issues (Facebook or not).

The real change is weeding out poor work ethic and not restricting access to Facebook. Solve problems with worth ethic should happen by improving the interview process. Employers also need to be proficient at handling employees who slip through the interview process, and deal with work ethic issues then (including letting them go if necessary). Blocking access to Facebook isn't a way to solve problems with poor work ethic.

Ann also says, "heavy Facebook usage can slow network performance". I have a long background in technology and I think this just isn't accurate. This may be accurate in retails stores with very little internet access, but most jobs are in an office with real internet access. I would estimate that "strong Facebook usage" would cost a company at most $1 per employee per year. That is like limiting employees use of the restroom due to the cost of water.

-Bryan

Bryan Starbuck

TalentSpring to present at NWEN's Early Stage Investment Forum 2008

Bryan Starbuck — 2008-04-14T16:17:49-07:00

TalentSpring was selected as one of the six technology companies in the Puget Sound area to present at NWEN's Early Stage Investment Forum 2008.

Click here for the conference details.

TalentSpring presents at WTIA

Bryan Starbuck — 2008-04-13T08:58:40-07:00

TalentSpring will be one of the technology companies presenting at the Washington Technology Industry Association (WTIA) conference.

The WTIA conference on April 24th includes some of the leading technology companies in Washington state.

Washington Technology Industry Association Conferance on April 24th

Recruiter Quote: "Someone still has to sort through the hundreds of resumes"

Bryan Starbuck — 2008-03-09T21:27:20-07:00

We at TalentSpring often hear quotes from recruiters about the challenges in sourcing. I will start posting these as I encounter them because they identify with our passions for advancing the recruiting and source industry.

I read the quote below after reading a post on Cheezhead today.

Former Head Hunter's Perspective 19-Feb-08 02:41 pm

"I used to work in agency recruiting and when Monster first came out, the owner of our firm was terrified that Monster was going to put us out of business. In the end, Monster probably syphoned off about 10-15% a year in revenue as companies filled positions via running ads on Monster, Career Builder, etc. So why wasn't Monster able to destroy the agency recruiting field? A couple of reasons. Someone still has to sort through the hundreds if not thousands of resumes received after an ad is run. A lot of HR departments simply threw up their hands and went back to paying 20-30% of the employees first year salary to a search firm. They did not have the time to weed out the resumes. Secondly, higher level employees never became comfortable using the boards for posting their resumes, and did not respond to job ads on the boards in any meaningful way. In the end, Monster (and others - especially Dice) have hurt agency recruitment revenue and will continue to do so, but until Monster's technology changes, agency recruiters will still be needed. Meaning - they must develop the means to narrow down the resume flow based on an employer's set of criteria and deliver the five best resumes for an opening. This could be a "premium" or "elite" service and would still be much cheaper than the thousands of dollars companies are paying head hunters. Perhaps this is where Google, as an acquirer, could develop the necessary technology. Secondly, Monster should develop an "executive" level set of services for upper management job seekers. A upper level professional expects more by way of service than an entry level sales rep. It seems to me that Monster is just scratching the surface and the next evolution of the company can really capture revenue from the recruiting firms. Keep in mind that recruiting firms generate BILLIONS in revenue every year. The key is to convince and demonstrate to internal HR recruiting departments that Monster can make their work day more efficient at a significantly lower cost. I hope that Monster is working on this as we speak, or talking to an acquirer with the technology to take the company to the next level."

Original URL: http://messages.finance.yahoo.com/Stocks_%28A_to_Z%29/...

-Bryan

TalentSpring launches a Humor Blog

Bryan Starbuck — 2008-03-09T17:50:57-07:00

We at TalentSpring launched a humor blog. The blog is focused on humor in hiring and in the work place.

The blog is at: humor.TalentSpring.com

Feel free to email us if there is anything you would like to post. Email us at Bryan@TalentSpring.com. We welcome interesting stories you have when hiring, either from the recruiter or job seeker point of view.

-Bryan