TalentSpring Blog

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

Are you in the TOP 10% of your industry (Win up to $100)

Bryan Starbuck — 2008-04-16T22:09:21-07:00

TalentSpring has a new fun feature where people who are in the TOP 10% of their specialized area win up to $100.

TalentSpring has launched a new feature where people can enter their resume, get matched with employers looking for their talent, connect with great people in their industry and have fun competing against others. You can track your progress and take steps to increase your chances.

Those who are in the top 10% WILL win $20. Those who are in the top 2% WILL win $100. Some limits exist on the number of people and dates, so enter sooner rather than later.

People can get a birds-eye view of their industry and can connect with friends, improve their resume based on community feedback, and learn ways to progress in their industry as they track their career growth.

We would love your feedback on how to reach our goal of giving you a great way to learn how to advance in your chosen career path, or what you need to do to change career paths and succeed.

We are also trying to give you the most desirable hard-to-find job positions that meet your personal goals of finding a great job that will offer you the best advancement opportunities on your career track.

Good luck in the competition and please drop us a line so we can make this a great site for you and your personal career advancement!

VIDEO: TalentSpring’s benefit to Employers

Bryan Starbuck — 2008-04-15T15:58:11-07:00

We have a new video on how TalentSpring works for employers:

TalentSpring does the following four things for Employers:

#1 Find Resumes MATCHING the job opening
TalentSpring enables employers to search resumes with a narrower match to their open position. Employers can search and be very specific about their needs for their open position. Our technology enables us to return resumes that are an exact match, EVEN IF the resume doesn’t include ANY of the words in the employer’s search.

In this example, the employer needs a “GAME PROGRAMMER working on the NETWORKING STACK for a MOBILE PHONE GAME that is a CASUAL GAME”. On other job boards, they couldn’t use this narrow of a search because almost no resume will include all of these words.

With TalentSpring, the employer search will often look like: “GAME PROGRAMMER working on the NETWORKING STACK for a MOBILE PHONE GAME that is a CASUAL GAME”.

Then the list of resumes matching this criteria will be displayed. The matching technology is one of the big reasons TalentSpring is completely different than other job boards.

Resumes matching all of the criteria will appear on top. Resumes including some but not all of the criteria will appear lower in the list.

#2 Sort the MOST QUALIFIED to the TOP of the resume list
TalentSpring’s next specialty is to SORT (or RANK) the highest qualified resumes to the TOP of the list.

The challenges with traditional job boards is that recruiters today are required to perform a literal keywords search for words that will be in the resume. These keyword searches force recruiters to be overly broad in their search which results in 10,000s of resumes being returned.

Employers are normally constrained to reading only 180 resumes or less because recruiters rarely have more than 3 hours to spend reading resumes for any one open position.

The job board is doing a disservice to recruiters if it can’t SORT the highest qualified resumes to the TOP of the list of resumes.

TalentSpring uses “resume STANDOUT scores” that allow us to sort or rank resumes against the employers search criteria.

Click here to view how we can sort or rank resumes by qualifications against the search terms.

#3 Weekly Email Roll-up of TOP Matching Resumes
When a company hires an external contingency based recruiting firm, that firm will return a short-list of resumes that fairly closely match the open position. TalentSpring works in a similar way.

With TalentSpring, you can sign-up for “TOP TALENT ALERTS”, which is an email you will receive on Mondays and Thursdays. You will ONLY receive the email if:

The resume is new, AND
The resume is a very close match to your open position, AND
The resume has a STANDOUT SCORE that means it scores in the TOP 50% of the industry.

More importantly, you can browse the resumes by their STANDOUT scores to see exactly how qualified the resumes are within their industry.

#4 Acquiring Resumes of High Quality and Hard to Reach Candidates
The final focus of TalentSpring is on acquiring resumes from top candidates in any specific industry.

TalentSpring has a big announcement coming soon on how we acquire top job seekers.

We would love to hear from you. What do you think about our approach to building tools for corporate and contingency based recruiters? What areas interest you?

-Bryan

Video on Moving your Career forward with TalentSpring

Bryan Starbuck — 2008-04-14T16:58:03-07:00

TalentSpring considers that everyone should have direct access to the list of job openings that: a) match their ideal job, and b) will move their career forward. TalentSpring is the tool to enter a resume and then receive that list of ideal jobs that specifically map to your interests. These are the highly sought job opening that can move your career forward.

TalentSpring does by using three steps:

#1 Find your Ideal Employers

TalentSpring first needs to find the EXACT kind of jobs that qualify as your IDEAL job. We do this by data mining your resume to confirm the job categories that map to your ideal job. In this example, a person’s ideal job is “GAME PROGRAMMER on MOBILE DEVICES working on the GAME ENGINE”. After uploading the resume, we will confirm the ideal category of job with:

#2 We Get the Attention of Your Ideal Employer

Here’s the secret on most company’s hiring process: Employers almost never spend more than three hours reviewing resumes, which translates to about 180 resumes for any open position.

After that, hiring manager needs to return to managing their team or the recruiter needs to move on to other open positions. TalentSpring solves this by scoring resumes based on how qualified the resume is towards the ideal job type. In the example above, her resume will be scored against the following categories:

Game Programmers working on the Game Engine
Game Programmers on Mobile Phones
The general category of Game Programmers

If your resume scores in the TOP 50% of those working in these areas of the industry, then we send out the TOP TALENT ALERT to bring those ideal employers back to you.

#3 Picking Your Career Advancing Job Opening

We have two goals: We want to email TOP TALENT ALERTS to 400 companies that are hiring within your ideal job category. And we want 30 companies to contact you about their job openings. From there, you decide which jobs could best advance your career.

This video explains the details:

TalentSpring thrives on feedback. Do you agree that our system solves one of the biggest problems in the hiring process? Do you disagree? Does our web site give you a list of job openings that accurately map to your ideal job categories? Please post your thoughts here.

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

TalentSpring Launched Our Newest Version

Bryan Starbuck — 2007-12-17T18:31:49-08:00

The TalentSpring team has recently launched our newest version. The new version includes improved matching technology and a completely newly designed web site.

Here is how employers begin their search:

Employers don’t search with keywords. Instead, they enter text to narrow to the exact kind of employees they are looking for. An example of a good search is “Game Developer for Mobile Phones in a Startup Company” which allows TalentSpring to find resumes that match search criteria – even if those words are not in the resume.

Next the employer will be asked to confirm the exact kind of resumes that match their needs:

Then the employer will see the matching list of resumes:

Employers can then use “Diversity” and other filters on the left to further filter candidates. Employers then browse the resumes. This enables employers to begin browsing resumes starting with the highest
ranked resumes.

Signed,

The TalentSpring team

TalentSpring Beta 2 Coming Soon

Bryan Starbuck — 2007-11-03T22:06:17-07:00

The TalentSpring team has been busy working hard to build Beta 2 of TalentSpring. We have used the feedback from beta 1 as well as our usability tests with corporate recruiters and contingency recruiters in order to refine the product.

Keep an eye out for our upcoming beta 2 version of TalentSpring.

Thank you to everyone who gave feedback on TalentSpring beta 1.

Next Generation Job Board brings best matched candidates based on specific position needs

Bryan Starbuck — 2007-05-18T00:05:50-07:00

TalentSpring delivers a list of resumes organized with the highest caliber candidates on top for employers specific candidate searches. This allows employers to go directly to the strongest candidates in an industry.

How TalentSpring Works
You enter your resumes into TalentSpring. You then pick the exact job category you work in, such as: “Computer/Internet > Programmer > Language > Java” or “Nurse > RN”. Then you sit back and let TalentSpring do the work of sorting candidates to employers who are looking for your specific talents.

It's a public marketplace where you can browse candidates, depending on the personal privacy settings of the candidates. Some have made their resume viewable by other candidates; some have strict privacy settings so only employers can see the resume after the candidate has granted permission.

TalentSpring's Company Beliefs:
The Hiring process SHOULD NOT just be based on:

Who you Know
Self-Promotion
Random Luck

The Hiring process SHOULD be based on:

A market driven by finding the best candidates for your open position
Candidates with the strongest accomplishments -- at work, school, and elsewhere - get noticed.
Candidates with the strongest performance with the qualifications you need get interviewed

P.S. For Employers...
If you are hiring, you can sign up to receive weekly notifications of new resumes in the top 25% of their industry (for the positions you are trying to fill). There is no cost to receive the new resume notification.