Do We Match?

By Paula Santonocito

Dating websites Match.com and eHarmony aim to help soul mates find one another by honing in on compatible characteristics. Now, career sites are bringing the online dating approach to the employment arena.

Focused on filtering
In many ways, this sort of matching seems a logical step in the evolution of online recruitment.

Traditionally, job boards have focused on skills and work experience, while candidate personality, preferences, and cultural fit have been assessed separately.

But keeping the processes separate has created a bottleneck, and led to frustration for both employers and candidates.

At least that was what Mike OíBrien, Co-founder and former CEO of financialaid.com, a pioneer in providing college finance solutions online, concluded while attending an ERE conference in 2004 with Nick Jimenez, who was then Manager of Strategic Talent Acquisition for James Hardie, a leading manufacturer of fiber cement siding and backerboard.

ìI was baffled by the fact no one was doing filtering,î OíBrien says. ìThe big problem with recruiting is people who confuse activity with productivity.î

In 2005, OíBrien founded Climber.com, a recruitment website focused on a better match. Today, he serves as CEO; Jimenez is President.

Climber.com officially launched in April 2007. In June, Nielsen/Net Ratings ranked it as one of the 10 most-visited recruiting sites.

Looking beyond the basics
The siteís appeal is its ability to offer candidates, people it calls climbers, a better employment fit. It does this by delving deeper into past employment experience, and also asking people to provide what OíBrien refers to as ìcolor.î

The candidate profiling process, which Climber.com calls Career Fingerprinting, takes about 20 to 30 minutes. For users accustomed to zipping in and out of job boards, thatís arguably a lot of time. But Climber.com views the time investment as part of candidate screening. ìIf someone doesnít go through that process, itís not someone we want to move along to a partner site,î OíBrien says.

Climber.com believes client companies benefit from the process. ìFor our partnership companies, the more filtering the better,î OíBrien says.

By drilling down to specifics, job success becomes a bit more predictive, he says. As a result, an organization yields a higher return on investment (ROI).

Itís a different approach to the employment process. ìWeíre not a job site all; weíre a career move site,î says OíBrien.

Candidates complete anonymous profiles that include such things as the types of organizations they want to engage them, where they want to live, and salary. Profiles are stored in a database, similar to a resume database.

Employers also furnish in-depth information. Client organizations provide Climber.com with profiles on their best employees against which future requirements can be benchmarked; each organization in effect creates a company DNA.

Climber.com then acts as the matchmaker, presenting organizations with lists of potential candidates, while still protecting candidate anonymity. If an organization has an interest in a particular candidate, a Climber.com advocate contacts the candidate by telephone and reviews the opportunity with him/her. If thereís an interest on the part of the candidate, Climber.com shares contact information with the company recruiter and steps out of the process.

ìItís a bricks and click strategy. We source online, but we talk to a lot of candidates,î OíBrien says.

Utilizing a sometimes forgotten recruiting tool, the telephone, personalizes the experience. It also helps climbers understand their value, OíBrien says.

Aiming higher
Climber.com currently has 200,000 registered users. Approximately 30 percent of all climbers conduct active searches, using the site as a traditional job board; the other 70 percent are passive candidates. Itís the passive candidates Climber.com seeks to match to hiring companies; all marketing messages are aimed at them, OíBrien says.

Candidates come from a variety of backgrounds, and are across the board in terms of age and experience. The site generates a lot of interest on the part of career changers and people with between eight and 10 years experience. Approximately 75 percent of climbers are college-educated. From an industry standpoint, the siteís focus is IT, health care, finance, and sales. But, when it comes to climbing, as in the corporate ladder, the site doesnít place limits on candidates. ìA CEO of a company came through recently,î OíBrien says.

There does seem to be a common denominator among site users, however. ìWe do well with people who care about themselves,î OíBrien says.

The deeper step in the matching process combined with human-based filtering allows for better candidate alignment, according to OíBrien. Better alignment, in turn, results in greater employee engagement, which benefits both climbers and the organizations that hire them.

ìWhat weíve found is we can provide a lot of value to people,î OíBrien says.

People and personality
Another site focused on providing a better match is eBullpen, which launched in beta in May 2005.

eBullpen also requires that site users complete profiles. The profiling process asks about candidate qualifications and experience, but eBullpenís emphasis is on personality traits. ìIts focus is personality, but its real focus is people,î says Susan Govea, Partner of eBullpen.

Unlike Climber.com, eBullpen does not feature jobs at its website. The site is a talent pool, Govea says.

Candidates complete anonymous profiles, which are available to client companies. When an employer is interested in someone, eBullpen notifies the person, creating an opportunity for an online connection. ìThe allure of eBullpen is itís completely anonymous,î Govea says.

Currently, eBullpen has between 35,000 and 40,000 profiles at its site. Approximately 30 percent are from entry-level workers; 50 percent are from mid-level professionals; and 20 percent are from executives. Companies from a variety of industries tap into eBullpen, but service industries, like hospitality, insurance, and construction, have found a lot of value, Govea says. In addition, people-oriented jobs, where the focus is on a person and a personality type, like sales and customer service, are popular. So too are mid-level management positions, particularly jobs for new managers.

Govea indicates that smaller companies especially find eBullpen helpful because they get that additional layer of personality matching without having to go through a screening process and pay for it.

How accurate is the personality component? Jobseekers get free personal reports and immediately have an opportunity to identify with report findings. ìWe have a 99.8 percent success rate; very few want to retake the test,î Govea says.

Nevertheless, Govea points out that the personality test is not meant to replace a final screening test. Rather, itís meant to be used as an initial screening tool, to help find candidates. To this end, Govea says it succeeds in providing much better matches.

Driving the process
Apparently employers are more than a little interested in a matching process that goes beyond aligning whatís provided on a traditional resume with a job posting. Companies liked the idea of eBullpen so much that they requested private label versions of the site. To satisfy this demand, eBullpen launched TalentPen.

TalentPen is a network recruiting model, geared toward the talent pool model, Govea explains. ìYou can cut down on search time by having a ready pool of talent to search from even before itís needed,î she says.

Some employers are using TalentPen as an element of succession planning. But its biggest user has been the staffing and recruiting industry.

Recruiters, as well as hiring companies, are drawn to the product because they see an opportunity to get a better match. Yet, while its process is new, its objective isnít. Hiring has always involved getting a good match, Govea says.

Today, however, organizations are delving deeper. Govea notes how in recent years company culture has emerged as one of the areas contributing to the matching process, citing research that finds personality plays a major role in this regard. ìFit with the organization, values, cultureî is the main reason organizations incorporate personality assessments into the recruiting process, according to ìThe TalentPen 2006 Recruiting Survey.î

Interest in better matching is also being driven by a different perspective on talent acquisition. ìI see this going toward more of a relationship-based recruiting model, with companies forming relationships with people much before they need them--with companies establishing themselves as a destination, as opposed to a paycheck,î Govea says.

Technology too is a driver; it facilitates better matching, and allows organizations to build online relationships with jobseekers.

But, according to Govea, new-found awareness may be the ultimate driver of the process. ìI think in general the recognition of the cost of the talent and replacing that talent. In the last three to five years, organizations have become more acutely aware of the value of the talent as an asset to companies,î she says.

ìWhen we started launching this in í04 we were doing it on deaf ears.î

Paula Santonocito is a business journalist specializing in employment issues. She is the author of nearly 1,000 articles on a wide range of topics, including online recruitment, which she has covered since the early days of Web-based employment advertising and candidate sourcing. In addition to serving as features editor of Online Recruitment Magazineís North American edition, she is AIRS News editor, overseeing news content for the global recruitment training and technology solutions company at www.airsdirectory.com. Articles by Paula Santonocito are featured in many global and domestic publications and information outlets, including HRWire, a publication to which she regularly contributes. She can be reached at psantonocito@yahoo.com.