In the run up to our technology event on the 26th September (you can book your complimentary tickets to the morning and afternoon sessions now) we are hosting blog posts from some of our exhibitors. This is written by Brandon Metcalf, Founder and COO of Talent Rover.
When talking with colleagues, friends, clients, or even potential employees about Talent Rover, I am always asked a fairly basic question with a somewhat more complex answer.
What led me to create and co-found Talent Rover?
I was frustrated with continually asking when there would be software that could solve the needs of the staffing industry and I was tired of being offered a solution in a pretty package full of promises and fancy buzzwords only to be disappointed in its lack of functionality and features.
My staffing career had me in many roles: recruiter, sales manager, regional management and eventually making the leap to technology with a focus on strategy and management of hardware, software, database administration, networking, deployment and development. With each new role, came new frustrations. . .
Why couldn’t my software focus on sales, recruiting and the back office? Why wasn’t social media integrated? Why couldn’t I use the system on my iPhone or home computer? Why was it so hard to find someone’s phone number? Why did logging a call take 30 minutes? Crashed! Frozen, again! Why do I have to enter the same data into three different systems? Why do my associates need to complete an Excel spreadsheet for me to understand what they did this week? Why couldn’t I easily generate a report without having to pay my software vendor $150? What’s with the abysmal customer service?
My list of complaints was seemingly endless, and I couldn’t have been the only one with these issues. But no one was addressing these problems.
It was around this time that LinkedIn was first starting to make an impact on the staffing industry that I began to realize that recruiting was changing. The way recruiters would find candidates was shifting from networking events to social media and in turn the demands of my clients were evolving too. It was clear that technology was going to change everything. In response I started leading LinkedIn training sessions for the recruiters at my firm and began to investigate what other tools were out there that we could utilize. This led me to have even more questions about why these functions couldn’t be integrated into our software, ultimately making the recruiters more efficient at their jobs.
The staffing and recruitment industry is still going through an evolution. The technology that our candidates use both personally and professionally is the driving force behind these changes as well as mobile devices, cloud storage and software as a service. Emerging trends such as cloud computing, social media and mobile recruiting have opened up opportunities for staffing software solutions to become better suited to the way recruiters want to work. The obvious next step in my mind was to build a solution that utilized an already trusted and recognized cloud computing vendor and take advantage of the software as a solution model which allows for mobile access and decreases IT costs. Beyond that, I felt that the entire staffing organization should be able to utilize the same software. By utilizing a fully integrated front to back office solution, leadership is able to monitor and run their business from one centralized tool.
As my product was transforming from a “what if…” idea to a tangible business solution I began to see just how many everyday recruiting hassles could be simplified and improved. Features such as job leads, electronic signatures, search and match, online onboarding, online timesheets, expense reports, gross profits and social collaboration were added to make this the only tool needed for the entire hiring process. Innovation did not stop with the initial product design. I am constantly researching and creating new ways for Talent Rover to improve the way staffing organizations work.
Now leading Talent Rover and being focused on evolving the staffing industry beyond an applicant tracking system, the question that I find myself asking is, why would you not want to embrace these changes? This is why I co-founded Talent Rover, to create a solution that eliminates the frustrations that myself, and I’m sure many others in the staffing and recruitment industry, have had. I wanted to create a solution that doesn’t just use buzzwords for the sake of using the buzzwords, something that wasn’t just a well orchestrated marketing campaign and then didn’t deliver. I understand the industry because that’s my background – I lived it, and I think that Talent Rover reflects that fact. This software is built to embrace the needs of someone in the staffing and recruitment industry by someone who was successful in the industry.
Initial Consumer Reaction to Talent Rover
The most exciting part of my job is having the privilege to be in a potential customer’s office and explain face to face why I built Talent Rover and really show them why it is so special. One of my favorite moments happened recently during a presentation to a potential customer outside of London, England. Our meeting was scheduled to last for 3 hours, but ended up going for 12 ½ hours!
For the meeting, the customer brought in not only executive leadership and the IT team, but recruiters, sales, compliance, accounting and other back office associates. Having sat through countless software demos when I was on that side of the desk, I know how grueling just a 2-hour demo can be. So the fact that the sales associates and recruiters were willing to miss out on a full day’s work and be fully engaged was pretty incredible. I was expecting a rotation of people in out through the day, but it didn’t happen, everyone stayed. Not only did they stay, but they were also invested, asking in-depth questions and really wanting to see and experience more.
At the end of the day, the software consultant who the customer hired to help them with making the decision let me know that no one left because they were excited, they wanted to see more. They understood that their current software was making their jobs more difficult and that it didn’t need to stay that way. They saw how Talent Rover could change everything.
About Talent Rover
Launched in 2012 in San Francisco, Talent Rover is the intuitive, fully integrated, cloud-based software solution exclusively built for the staffing and recruiting professional. Built on the reliable and secure Salesforce platform, Talent Rover integrates mobility, social media, customer relationship management (CRM), applicant tracking (ATS), human resource and benefits management (HRIS), back office and analytics for a singular, adaptable solution. It also allows global management of employment regulation. Talent Rover users analyze, evaluate and measure information in a more streamlined and flexible manner to achieve greater levels of efficiency, faster time to placement and increased revenue. With low risk and minimal investment, Talent Rover is the most competitive solution in the market today.
Great post!