Global Talent Search Challenge

We've added some new features and reworked many of the relevancy algorithms at thesocialCV.com and to celebrate, we're going to let the world's best recruitment professionals tell us everything we got wrong with them. In partnership with Boolean Strings [run by award-winning authority on Boolean, semantic, and deep web search, Irina Shamaeva] we're pleased to announce our Sourcing Challenge.

 

For details and instruction on how to enter click here.

For short video tutorials on thesocialCV.com click here.

We are Hiring: Business Development Executives

Business Development Executives – thesocialCV.com
£Competitive + Generous commission
Soho, London

Want to make your peers jealous? ...Then come and help us change the rules.

As we approach our 1st birthday, thesocialCV.com is looking to expand its commercial team with
energetic, new business people. Social media has changed recruiter behaviour, permanently. With
over 107m profiles from 238 countries, thesocialCV.com is the most comprehensive candidate
source available to recruiters today. We are already working with global recruiters in 11 countries
but we are looking for individuals to focus on core revenue growth in the UK.

Of course there are targets, of course there are KPI’s and of course there’s an experienced manager
to help you settle in. However, success will be determined by your;

• Creativity – If at first you don’t succeed, come at it from a different angle

• Hunger – Constantly motivated to close that next client

• Initiative – There’s no time like the present, just try it, what’s the worst they can say?

• Thick skin – not everyone’s going to like you, you just need to ensure more do than don’t.

You will have had experience of turning new business into established clients and relish the chance
to make a difference. You may be a recruitment consultant looking to move media side or working
at a job board wondering how to fast –track your career. Either way, you want to be at the start of
something game changing and help to build a multi-million £business.

We offer a great package with uncapped commission, a truly innovative working environment and
the opportunity to be part of an award winning team.

Oh, and you’d be based here.

If you think you have got the right credentials then contact us for full details and an initial discussion:
@JCCooney or jon@workdigital.co.uk or DD: 020 7316 9206

Some soundbites:

thesocialCV.com launches: http://www.recruiter.co.uk/thesocialcvcom-launches/1009343.article
thesocialCV.com launches CV analysis tool FreshUp: http://www.recruiter.co.uk/thesocialcvcom-launches-cv-analysis-tool-freshup/1011809.article

Should a Small Enterprise Take a Portfolio Approach to R&D

by Bill Fischer, co-founder WorkDigital Ltd.

The Panda algorithm change in Google Search quickly demonstrated, what many already had an intuitive sense of, that a business that had a dependency on Google was one that was not in control of its destiny.

Our company, after seeing small algorithmic changes and strategic shifts at Google (for example their real-estate classified advertising tests in Australia), started to move our R&D investment to products that were non-dependent upon Google. We started this process a couple of years ago and if we hadn't, a weak economy and Google's latest changes, could have proved terminal to our company. Fortunately, the R&D we did, has turned into several new products that are currently driving most of our revenue growth.

SEO is stil important to our company and we've recently rebuilt some of our products in response to changes to Google and Bing. But, when we were completely at the mercy of the smallest changes to their search algorithms, it was difficult to take a longer-term view of the business we were building. A substantial number of companies and business models are predicated upon a certain level of organic traffic. The economics for our Workhound.co.uk product and for most job aggregator products, doesn't pencil out nearly as well without organic traffic. Even buying traffic via SEM, puts a company in the arbitrage game, where organic traffic to a competitor can quickly wreck the model.

It may seem a stretch to refer to a search algorithmic change like Panda as a Black Swan event especially since it is an algorithm in constant flux. But, since the business impacts can be terminal, it's probably worth thinking about in that fashion. Nassim Taleb has definitely informed our thinking on these types of issues and I highly recommend his latest interview with EconTalk which provides a great introduction to the subject matter of his next book and some evolved thinking from his previous works.

Test Lab: Social Contact Dashboard

Another week, another new feature. Check out this brief video from thesocialCV test lab demonstrating the new Social Contact Dashboard.

• manage all your online networks from within thesocialCV.com

• easily follow, friend and connect with new candidates

• integration with Facebook, Twitter, email, Plaxo, etc.

Test Lab: Near Operators

Check out a brief demo of how, why and when to use Near Operators when sourcing candidates, from thesocialCV test lab.

105 Million Candidates and counting...

105 Million is a pretty big number and quite news worthy, as evidenced by recent headlines;

• LimeWire settles with RIAA for $105 Million
• 105 Million People in the US have Diabetes or Prediabetes
• Italy to receive 105 Million euros from the EU to safeguard Pompeii
• Man Charged in $105 Million Ponzi Scheme

Well, today thesocialCV.com joins those elustrious headlines with one of our own, we have 105 Million Candidates!

Is it possible to map the global workforce? TheSocialCV thinks so. It's taken more than four years of development and required running more than 10 billion online records through a semantic processing engine but thesocialCV has now indexed more than 100 million professional profiles and has mapped more than 200 million professional interactions.

Click image to download PDF.

Sneak Preview of FreshUp

Quest Search and Selection

"We understand the part social media plays in finding and understanding unique candidates. Quest is an innovator and ahead of the rest when it comes to sourcing. thesocialCV.com is the only product that allows us to search through a multitude of social media sites quickly and accurately, resulting in a good variety and balance of candidates to put forward".

Simon Whittington - MD - Quest Search and Selection

New Changes to TalentRank

by @williamfischer

It's taken us a long time and many iterations to develop the right algorithms for sorting candidates. As a company that is mapping the global human capital pool of billions of individuals, we're constantly adding more signals to our TalentRank algorithm. Nuance is everything when trying to winnow 100 million candidates down to the right 20.

One of the conclusions based on user testing is that we should offer several solutions and let the recruiter decide which approach delivers the best candidates for them. This is why we will allow recruiters to sort candidates to use our aggregated algorithms that look at dozens dimensions, but also allow them to sort specifically on the dimensions that are of most import to them.

In practice, what does this look like. Let's look at John Sumser @johnsumser vs. Felix Wetzel @felixwetzel vs. Bill Boorman @billboorman. Our system has given them very similar professional engagement scores.

read more >>

TwitJobSearch Partners with EmptyLemon

TwitJobSearch is happy to announce it's new partnership with EmptyLemon. EmptyLemon is a specialist IT job board that puts employers in direct contact with job seeking IT professionals.

"In our push to put IT job seekers in direct contact with employers and their vacancies, we are naturally turning to Twitter to promote our opportunities and careers information. We are looking forward to working with TwitJobSearch to engage with this audience" says Andy Stevens, Marketing Manager at EmptyLemon.

TwitJobSearch's primary focus is on getting the right job seeker to the right job vacancy in as few steps as possible and we believe that EmptyLemon's commitment to only hosting jobs from direct employers helps us to achieve that.

“Through it's semantic technology and advanced search algorithms, TwitJobSearch.com is built to display the most relevant jobs first, and then allow jobseekers to quickly access the application, in one click where possible. Working with companies like EmptyLemon, who aim to reduce the steps jobseekers need take to apply, is a perfect fit.” commented Katie Canton, Product Manager at TwitJobSearch.

Through their alliance with TwitJobSearch, EmptyLemon will be able to accelerate and streamline the amount of time and resources their clients dedicate to recruiting employees. Other organisations working with TwitJobSearch include: RBS, adidas, Quest, ChangeBoard, The Telegraph and Incisive Media.

Follow EmptyLemon on twitter

Follow TwitJobSearch on twitter

The Launch of thesocialCV.com

After 3 years in development and 6 months in private beta, thesocialCV.com launches today.  The product emerged from R&D conducted in early 2010 for a partner product we launched with Google. It makes use of sophisticated semantic tools to aggregate data contained within social profiles. The product currently contains more than 65 million candidate profiles and is indexing an additional 400,000 daily.

thesocialCV.com will be sold on a seat-license basis and at launch is partnering with leading global recruitment software providers and staffing firms that can put the product on more than 300,000 seats by year-end. "We've been overwhelmed by the commercial interest in the product,"  says sales director, Jonathan Cooney. "Our challenge has been identifying the right partners and locking down a commercial strategy."

In private beta, we worked with leading edge recruitment companies representing more than 35,000 staff to test the user experience, feature sets, and relevancy algorithms. Through tests with market and thought leader companies, thousands of tweaks were made to the product to address the unique challenges of recruitment professionals. "Live testing is a critical part of the product development and most critical when optimizing our search algorithms,"  says product manager, Katie Canton.  "Our new TalentRank algorithms and our semantic skills extraction processes, for example, were dramatically overhauled during our private beta."

The product will be integrated into the core platforms of global ATS and CRM providers. For leading ATS platforms, the product allows them to offer their clients:  

• Access to a talent pool of more than 65 million individuals globally.  Adding 400,000 daily.
• Ability to build custom talent pools and get notifications when candidates update profiles.
• Ability to update/refresh current CV database with real-time info.
• A 360 view of candidates to assess engagement and corporate fit.
• Access to TalentRank and semantic skills extraction CV search capabilities.

 WorkDigital Ltd has become a veritable incubator of semantic search products..  "It's an interesting technical challenge, and I'm sure we've got a long way to go to get it right," says thesocialCV CEO, Howard Lee.  "But when building a talent pool of more than 600 million individuals, we had to take a look at new approaches to building relevancy algorithms and faceted metadata search to meet the demanding needs of recruitment professionals."

In private beta, thesocialCV.com was the Winner of the 2011 Onrec Technical Innovation Award.

Click here and click here to read some pre-release product reviews.

Best Technical Innovation in Online Recruitment

Katie Canton, Product Manager, and Howard Lee, CEO, accepting their award.

Last night, March 23rd, Onrec held their 8th annual online recruitment awards at The Grange City Hotel in Tower Hill. thesocialCV.com wasnominated for, and won, it's first award: Best Technical Innovation in Online Recruitment in the Generalist category

Thank you to the judges, onrec and all that nominated. To view the full list of winners, click here.

Social Media: the Leading Channel for Graduate Recruitment?

We are happy to announce our new partnership with Graduate Prospects, the UK's official graduate careers website.

“We need to give the best support we can to help students have something lined up for when they graduate, and to help those that are out of work to compete for the jobs that are available.” - Charlie Ball, Research Director at the Higher Education Careers Services Unit (HECSU)

TwitJobSearch, the first real-time job search engine, is excited to be working with the UK's official graduate careers website, Graduate Prospects.

The new partnership is a recognition that social media is becoming an important part of the recruitment landscape and will increase Graduate Prospects' reach and engagement with recent graduates via social media platforms.

“We are excited to be working with the Graduate Prospects. With graduate unemployment at a high, it's more important than ever to use non-traditional channels to reach them. Graduate Prospects is a UK market leader in creating innovative solutions tailored to the needs of graduate job seekers and we are pleased to have been engaged by them for the emerging social media recruitment channel.” commented Bill Fischer, co-founder of TwitJobSearch.

Through their alliance with TwitJobSearch, Graduate Prospects will be able to accelerate and streamline the amount of time and resources their clients dedicate to recruiting employees. Other organisations working with TwitJobSearch include: KPMG, KFC, adidas, HAYS, Quest, Guardian Media Group, and Incisive Media.

 Follow Graduate Prospects on twitter. Follow TwitJobSearch on twitter.

How do you Organize the World's Largest Talent Pool?

We have no idea.

We've been going through tens of thousands of search results and testing several relevancy algorithms and we're not getting any closer.  As thesocialCV.com is building more than 600 million profiles, it's kind of important. So we're going to let the customer decide.

Let us know, what do you prefer?

• Faceted Search
• Advanced Boolean Queries
• Semantic Skills Extraction and Matching
• Social Authority Rankings
• Job Title Match
• Click-Thru Data from Live Searches
• User Generated Ratings
• Career Path Match
• SocialGraph
• or other approaches, we're happy to make them all available but we need your help.

Here's an example of one relevancy system we've developed, TalentRank.  

We know there must be other, maybe better, approaches. The key is to turn that gut instinct a recruiter has when they scan a CV (their blink response) and turn it into an algorithm that can automatically find the best candidates. What's more important: Job Title or Skills relevancy? The quality of the company or the quality of the education? Professional engagement or are they an engaging professional? There are hundreds of dimensions that can be used to evaluate a CV.

We need to find a way to turn the analog gut feel to binary.

Here are some reviews and a discussion of the TalentRank system from live, pre-launch, demos of the product:

The Future of Recruitment? by Wise Man Say

Breaking the Mould? by James Mayes

Open Thursdays

Since building thesocialCV.com at the end of last year, we have had a lot of interest from rec cons, employers, job seekers, ATS systems, my nan, you name it. We want to be able to chat with all interested parties, but we're busy and we know that you're busy, so to aid the 'idea sharing' we are announcing Open Thursdays.

We've cleared our calendars from 10am to 5pm every Thursday to talk to you.That's 7 one hour slots every week to talk partnership opportunities, product ideas, integrations or anything else that you think we need to hear.

Click here to book your spot on thesocialCV.com tungle page.