Mapping Out the New Generation Sourcing Tools

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The Dream Software, that was the subject of my talk at SourceCon, is the new generation of sourcing software tools. Please check out my conference presentation slides at this link:

SourceCon-Atlanta-PPT-Irina

The blog post below continues to map out the architecture and the functionality of the future-generation tools. This post is “conceptual”. What I mean to say is, if you are a recruiter planning your budget for the next year, please do not expect to jump to a quick decision which tool(s) to purchase, based on the post.

I have recently written “a proposal” of a new Dream Software design – not as much with the idea of implementing it (am too busy already!), but mainly to name some of the challenges in building this type of software. The point being, collecting and correctly matching the pieces of the same profile from different online sources is not easy – and is worth quite a bit! Somehow, every vendor provides some extra features, but as far as I am concerned as a user, additional functionality is optional. As an example, as a recruiter, when I am already viewing a profile, I don’t need extra intelligence that helps me to assess the profile. As another example, I am not looking for social media tracking done for me, to guess that a person might be ready to make a move; the LinkedIn Signal is plenty. As a  third example, I don’t need to be told which developer writes good or bad code. As my business partner Julia says, “Bad developers write bad resumes”.

There is, however, a valuable and a “natural” potential extension of these systems that seems to be right at the creators’ fingertips, as they collect distributed profiles…

There’s an extremely clever add-on to LinkedIn, called Talent Pipeline, that is exactly that type of extension I’m thinking of – in this case, to the LinkedIn members profile database. Talent Pipeline allows recruiters to upload their own sources of data, such as resumes and Excel files with lists of professionals, and attach this data to the system already in place; then access all of the data, both users’ and LinkedIn’s in the same manner. In Talent Pipeline the uploaded data is cross-referenced against LinkedIn profiles (using the most reliable way). If there’s no matching LinkedIn profile for an uploaded record, a LinkedIn-profiles-look-alike is added, marked as “not linked”.

 

Let’s apply this concept to the Dream Software systems: if I could add my own data and create or update the existing profiles in the system, that would be a delight! What could be a better starting point for a new profile creation than the data from my ATS, or the data I have sourced with my target profiles in mind!

At this point I feel a need of a new term. Shall we call it the Deep Web add-on to the Dream Software systems?

Last week I got a call from yet another up-and-coming Dream Software vendor SwoopTalent that has this Deep Web add-on concept in mind. They have many other extra pieces of functionality planned, but I’d say, if they concentrated on this feature alone, it would be worth while.

Dice.com holds a special place in regards of putting a Deep Web add-on in place. They have already cross-referenced the existing ~2 MLN resume data with theSocialCV’s collection of ~130 MLN profiles, as part of introducing the new Dice Open Web add-on. Hey, the term Deep Web would match nicely with that!

My impression is that they weren’t creating new profiles in the system and refreshing the existing profiles while cross-referencing with resumes in Dice.com. Hopefully they will do that soon, if they haven’t yet. At the same time the brilliant minds behind theSocialCV are planning the Fresh-Up system that would refresh user’s own data, such as a collection of resumes in an ATS and send the results back to the user. So, Dice is in an excellent position to get all of the dream features work together. Of course, Dice Holdings‘ base of acquired job boards and software is very diverse, so it’s not the easiest logistical task to merge it all into one integrated dream system, and what the order of the integration steps might be.

As for LinkedIn’s Talent Pipeline, a better market positioning (not as an ATS replacement) and cleaning up the user interface would give this part of Recruiter functionality the visibility it deserves. I guess LinkedIn is already doing very well as a company! It’s just if you have Recruiter access, don’t miss the Talent Pipeline.