LatinOcean - Marketing and Web Technologies Applied to Talent Management

company name: notchup

based in the US, currently in beta mode. you can apply for registration or get referred (send me your email if you want to go straight in)

the idea: give candidates cash for taking interviews with employers and recruiters; members are also encouraged to spam, i mean refer the site to people that might be interested in joining by given the inviters a % of the money made by the invitees in one year.

the user experience: clean design (although someone commenting on the techcrunch article reckoned that the layout was a ripoff from google’s grandcentral. uploading your profile from linkedin is meant to be easy too, though I did not manage to connect. On the other side of the equation, employers get to see a blind profile which they can choose for interview and lay out the cash

The site offers 100% money guarantee, not sure about the terms of reimbursement though.

It will be obvious to you that the model can fall on its bum before it comes out of beta if there’s abuse, lack of talent or buyers. I am wondering tho if you as individual agency or corporate recruitment department would be prepared to materially reward candidates at interview, shortlisting or placement stage of the process. Or, are you already doing that?

Hope you have a safe weekend

Popularity: 3% [?]

Hope you all had a fab beginning of 2008 - personally, I had a ‘fat’ beginning to the year, after all the holiday food that I am still trying to work off..

Just to bring to your attention what might be the type of online operation we’ll see more of in the coming months if it works for their stakeholders, Recruitment portals or markets are intended to aggregate employers and recruiters and take the friction out of a what is still very convoluted, and therefore costly, exchange. A couple of players coming up with soft and hard launch dates soon:

- VacancyBid, you can catch Danny Nerezov, the 24-year old CEO, on Facebook any day of the week. From their site:

VacancyBid is a Sydney based company which exists to lower the cost hire for employers, and create maximum revenue opportunities for recruiters.

- NeedRM; I met CEO Michael Rhodes many moons ago about this initiative, so I guess the business model has been reasonably worked. The tag line for the company from their homepage:

NEED Recruitment Market is a recruitment revolution that has the capacity to change global business dynamics. As an efficient recruitment marketplace that sits between employers and recruiters, NEED delivers real value to traders by harnessing the speed and global reach of the Internet.

I will be watching with interest to understand how they go to market and how well received they are specially in the context of:

- the continued growth of the BPO/Managed services deals between employers and one agency which brings its own exchange platform, thus locking out unauthorised delivery by other agencies

- the continued scarcity of talent, e.g. recruiters wondering “why do I need to go and bid for work which may not be overly profitable if I still have job orders I cannot fill?”

- the fact that these markets may rely on externally sourced data to reveal its effectiveness, that is employers/recruiters have to go back to the system and flag an engagement as closed (person placed)

In some ways, recruiters are already bidding for work using the classifieds model: if the see company abc publishing an ad for an accountant on a job board, I won’t be surprised if they receive a few calls from agencies canvassing the demand on an ongoing basis.

As I said, the marketplace is still partially intermediated. There’s a few challenges, I certainly don’t have the solution. My bet is technology alone will not diminish friction.

have a great year

Popularity: 3% [?]

Climber.com

Tagline: “We are like dating for jobs”

Jist: Matches candidates with employers based on resume type information plus something that resembles a preferences and attributes profile (e.g. are you money-driven, does you work have to have a positive social impact). Climber calls this the Career Fingerprint.

Snapshot today: At the moment the jobs matched to the system’s registered users are keyword-matched ads from the Indeed engine, but as employer preference data grows the matching is expected to be more comprehensive. Professionals have private profiles and decide to share personal/contact info to specific employers.

Initial assessment: The attributes and preferences profile is superficial; then again, it is not meant to be a rigorous tool to assess a person’s suitability for a role. Given this, if the profiles were to convey the candidates/employers likes and dislikes, there is an increased chance to assess a level of compatibility between potential hire and hirer at the onset.

I would also like to know how this information is embedded (e.g. taken into account) in the recruitment process. Maybe RPO and corporate recruiters are readier than others to use this information effectively.

Down the track: It has the potential for interesting metadata

My philosophical question: At the end of the day do you hire on (soft) compatibilities or hard skills?

Went for a bit more info, but the system is like, down

Popularity: 4% [?]

A few months back I reported Checkster going on alpha testing. It is now open for access before release.

Checkster has a retail offering for individuals (candidates) and an offering to recruiters/hirers. Having seen products like those marketed by Insala, I did not find the tools used ‘brand new’; having said that, people might find some of the insights extracted from the reports useful to focus career or job seeking efforts.

On the b2b side, the twist is that these tools are being used in the recruitment process as an incremental source of reference checks, as opposed to when a professional is out-placed, undertaking company-sponsored career development, etc. I expect the value of having these assessments will be directly proportional to how they contribute to get the right individual for the job (measured in terms of tenure, performance on the role, etc.).

Popularity: 2% [?]

TalentSpring, in beta mode during q2 2007

Founders: Bryan Starbuck, CEO - Andrew Boardman, Development Manager - ex-Microsofties, no recruitment pedigree (not that there’s anything wrong with that). Their bios on the site here

Tagline: wisdom of the crowd brought into the candidate selection processes

How it works: potential candidates enter their profiles, subject to voting on other peoples’ profiles. system algorithms are meant to pick candidates who put crappy scores. recruiters use these scores to spot top talent in their corresponding industries and pay to contact the people they like (recruiters need to enter a JD in the system)

Value prop for job seekers: you resume stands out in front of recruiters because it carries a user-generated score (the merit score)

Value prop for employers/recruiters: easier to spot top talent because of the - you guessed it - Merit score

Comments:Does it sound a bit like jobster to you? I am unsure how the merit score is a good assessor of the quality of the candidate, and if recruiters will rely on the score to make contact/interview decisions. Very early stages though.

Thank you to Kris for the tip

Popularity: 3% [?]