The Dream Software  a New Generation of Sourcing Software Tools

Presenter: Irina Shamaeva,Partner, Chief Sourcer, Brain Gain Recruiting

Founder, People Sourcing Certification Program http://sourcingcertification.com

http://www.linkedin.com/in/irinashamaeva http://twitter.com/braingain

Blog: http://booleanstrings.com

Outline• Sourcing Methods Evolution

– The Easy Ways to Source: Job Boards– Googling – LinkedIn

• Candidates That Are Not Found– Distributed Profiles

• The Dream Software Definition– Cross-Referencing: Challenges

• Major Players: Overview• LinkedIn’s Talent Pipeline, an Unexpected Competitor• What’s Next?

Disclaimer

• I am not affiliated with any of the tool providers, job boards, or with LinkedIn

• Views are my own

The Easy Ways to Source: Job Boards; ATS

• Full information: resumes; contact info• Structured data: parsed resumes• Faceted search:

The Hard Way To Source: Googling

• Google searches for web pages based on the basic web page elements: a title, a URL, images, phrases

• We are looking for professional profiles

• Translating from English to Googlean is hard…

• Also, Google can only access the surface data

LinkedIn, “the” Business Network

• 200MLN profiles• Structured search• But my neighbor Ellen, a super SAS-

programmer, a Ph.D, is not on LinkedIn• LinkedIn profiles are not resumes; most have

insufficient data and lack keywords (example on next slide)

Candidates That Are Not Found on LinkedIn

• This is the candidate whose resume from Indeed.com the hiring manager liked the best

Should We Search on Each Site??

Candidates That Are Not Found

• Even if we go to several different sites for sourcing, we will not find some candidates:– If different social profiles have different pieces

that, combined, pre-qualify a potential candidate, then no single search on any of these sources would select the person

• Example: the GitHub profile shows software engineering skills but doesn’t have a location; LinkedIn has the location but no keywords

Candidates Without Ways to Contact• Additionally, on some sites, a profile may

pre-qualify a potential candidate, but there’s no contact info and no messaging capacity

• Cross-referencing helps but may be labor-intensive

• The ideal candidate did not respond on Indeed

Distributed Profiles

The Dream Software

The Dream Software would search for distributed profiles. By a “distributed profile” I mean professional information about a person collected from many sources where she has some presence, such as the evidence of her skills, experience, location, current employer, certifications, education, contact info, or any other info.– (posted in Nov 2011 on my blog http://booleanstrings.com )

The Pioneers (2011)

2/2013: Major Players: an Overview• TalentBin• Dice / theSocialCV• Entelo

• Gild• RemarkableHire

Terminology Variations

• Distributed Profiles - IS• Implicit web resumes - TB• Breadcrumbs - TB• Digital Footprints - TB

– Communication Vectors - TB

• Aggregated social data - Entelo• Web’s largest talent database – Entelo

– Communication channels - Entelo

The Dream Software, a Universal Challenge: Ranking

• If we have a large number of distributed profiles…

• …and can search by locations, skills, and keywords…– Great!

• But how should the search results be ranked?• More generally, how does the tool provider stand

out from the crowd?

The Ranking Challenge

• Each of these tools has addressed ranking in its own way

TalentBin• Has a brand name• Thoroughly covers software engineering• Has been expanding to cover: patents;

medical publications; mailing archives• Large indexed database• Ranks skills, such as programming languages

– Based on the activity and the “influence” on professional networks

• Uses a sophisticated skills taxonomy

Look where the candidates actually *are*!

Social Networks Software Engineering Specific

Design SpecificOther Professional Sources

Horizontal Professional Sources

Vertical Discipline SourcesPatents Mailing Lists Journals

Mailing ListsPublicationsVerticalSocial

We convert digital footprints into profiles

TB Ranking: Skills

• Software engineering focus• Pleasant User Interface • Ranking: “is likely to make a move”• Add-on named Sonar also watches companies

Entelo Ranking: Recently Updated

TheSocialCV - 2011

• UK-based• Searching is triggered by social activity• Strong “semantic” component• Ranking: Active online

Dice Open Web

• Continues theSocialCV lineage• The User Interface is nicely integrated with

Dice’s• Needs to expand the target population

coverage (currently 2MLN)

Gild

• Software Engineers only• Ranking: the code quality

– Gild analyzes publicly available software code– Then, watches what engineers, who have written

lots of good code, do, and looks for others “like” them

Remarkable Hire

• Ranking: “Social Evidence”

Dream Software vs. LinkedIn

• A BIG problem:– LinkedIn is a “walled garden”

• LinkedIn is against its data being used in volumes– Even the public profile data– Quote from a LI manager at a meeting: We do not

want to become Linked-Out

LinkedIn’s Talent Pipeline, an Unexpected Competitor

• LinkedIn Recruiter has disabled export in Excel…• However, LinkedIn now offers the Talent

Pipeline– It’s not a CRM or an ATS– It’s a way to import your data into LinkedIn and be

able to search across your data and the LI data– Imported data is automatically cross-referenced with

member profiles– Powerful!

Example: Input & the Result

Now What?

• Make your choices with your eyes open• Neither LinkedIn Talent Pipeline nor Dream

Software products (nor Job Boards) cover “everything”– The Talent Pipeline and the Dream Software cover

different territories, all of them important– Can be combined if you have the budget– You can compensate for either by clever cross-

referencing if no budget

Learn To Cross-Reference• Free tools

– Rapportive– Falcon.io– (many more)– (happy to talk offline)

What’s Next?• My wishes for the future

– Dream Software slows down on inventing ranking and instead concentrates on reliable profiles’ merge and the volume of the data collected

– Dream Software gives us control over the sort order– Dream software prompts for ways for the user to reach

potential candidates, based on the users’ networks– Dice prospers as a job board with a Dream add-on– LinkedIn releases its public data to the public so that the

Dream Software has verified captured LinkedIn data– LinkedIn allows export, not just import– LinkedIn fixes bugs

Boolean Strings &People Sourcing

• Blog http://booleanstrings.com

• Largest Sourcers’ Community:– "Boolean Strings" Group on LinkedIn– Boolean Strings Network

• People Sourcing Certifications– http://sourcingcertification.com

• I am available for sourcing/research

Q&A