I was chatting with Adam Gordon from Social Media Search last week and he told me all about his fabulous new offering Candidate.ID, put together with marketing automation expert Scot McRae. The key principle is that most people on a recruiter’s database haven’t been spoken to in the last 6 months so whenever a vacancy comes live, it takes recruiters time to go through the database to develop a short-list and much of that time is taken up talking to people who are no longer in the market.
Candidate.ID’s approach to solving this is all about scoring each candidate’s motivation to make a job move and this is done using their IDScore algorithm which allocates points to each candidate based on their interaction with a recruiting company’s content. The IDScore’s based on a logical balanced scorecard.
- If a candidate’s only looking at industry-focused content you’ve sent them, they aren’t looking for a move so it’s probably not worth your recruiter’s time calling them
- If they’re looking at content which indicates the top skills they need to develop to get ahead, this gives the basis for a warm conversation
- If they’re clicking on your content which focuses on how to create a brilliant CV, network their way into a new job, prepare for an interview and similar, they’re hot for a conversation; so, If they’re imminently placeable, it’s important your recruiters contact them before they share their CV with anyone else
The two big benefits I see in this approach are:
- Your Candidate.ID database is brimming with activity all the time as candidates interact with your content and therefore when your recruiters search by location, job title and employer, they can include a supplementary vital filter (the IDScore – motivation) which helps you get to shortlist quicker. If you’re in IT contracting where speed to candidates is everything, this feature will help you save huge amounts of time and give you major competitive advantage
- The impact of continually nurturing your database means that you can influence more candidates to look at the opportunities you present to them, peppered into other content which will help them get ahead in their careers. The goodwill you generate from your candidate database will also create a drip-feed of new-to-market people, enthusiastic about talking to you before other recruiters. If you’re in legal recruitment for example, where every active candidate is worth a £20,000 fee, Candidate.ID is designed to help you place more people
Now, the down-side. This isn’t an easy thing to do. Only the most competitive recruitment companies will want to adopt this approach. If you’re on Easy Street, there’s no need to use Candidate.ID. If on the other hand, 10% extra competitive advantage is well worth the effort, you will be willing to invest the effort. The two key things you must have to make this product work are:
- A large database or the ability to create one, and ideally a sustainable way to continue to build it
- A steady flow of compelling content your candidates will want to keep reading
Candidate.ID’s ‘bureau’ service can help recruitment companies with these if needed but regardless, you should be investing in them independently anyway.
Adam told me that a number of the recruitment companies they’ve been working with have kicked off their use of Candidate.ID with a ‘Pathfinder’ project; a one-off month-long ‘wake the dead’ campaign including a large number of candidates from recruiters’ databases who haven’t been contacted for 12 months or more. This is designed to generate placeable candidates fast and seems to be a great way to start using the product.
In summary, most of Candidate.ID’s functionality is similar to many existing recruitment CRM products. The big difference is the deep insight it gives you on individual candidates’ behaviour and the competitive advantage that offers.
See www.candidate.id / @Candidate_ID
