Simppler makes recruiting simpler
- Summary:
- Simppler solves for a common recruiting problem: finding the best candidates from referrals. It's an obvious problem with a complex answer made simpler.
Some of the earlier, new-generation solutions I’ve seen used spider technology to search the Internet. These tools found the digital breadcrumbs all of us leave on the Internet. These spiders and related programs piece together a profile about you. They include items such as your name(s), contact info, current employer, past employers, education, positions held, home address and more. They find this information from hundreds of sources. What these technologies create are detailed profiles of people that recruiters would love to access.
The next improvement came in the loading of this information into an in-memory database so that hundreds of millions of profiles are quickly scanned. However, to make the scanning truly useful, the best vendors added a taxonomy tool to correlate a requested job to the various titles people have associated with their position. For example, a ‘physician’ could also be known as a “Doctor”, “MD”, “M.D.”, “Cardiologist”, etc.
Some of the earliest pioneers of this kind of technology have been acquired. But now we see Simppler arrive on the scene.
Simppler adds new spins to the formula outlined above. Simppler’s executives know that the best hires many companies make come from current employee referrals. Simppler taps into these referrals and marries the data with external data and ratings from current employees. It then uses the taxonomy concept to present qualified candidates to internal recruiters and so dramatically shorten the recruiting time and associated costs.
The way it works is that an employer can request referrals from employees. Employees can submit bulk contact info via CSV file exports from their social media contacts or their email systems. Employees can even rate their contacts using a 5-star rating mechanism to identify the contact’s suitability to the firm, position and/or corporate culture.
Simppler crawls the web to complete the profile of these contacts and then helps recruiters match these contacts to open positions. Employees retain total control over the access to and content within their contact information/social media. What Simppler has found is that employers get more sharing of contacts and referrals when monetary incentives are used to get these referrals. I agree with that philosophy as companies who think they can just pillage the contacts that a person has created over a career for free is unfair, unjust and sure to create massive resentment.
When I spoke with Simppler executives recently, I asked how they solve a thorny problem for more senior job candidates. These are people who have held more than one career position, had a multi-faceted career or moved through many career ranks. Those individuals may be capable in many roles, but many recruiting technologies only concern themselves with a person’s current job title. It’s a huge waste of talent to look for people with only one skillset when polymaths are available.
Simppler search tool looks at anyone who possesses or used to possess one or more of the skills and titles listed in its taxonomy for the desired position. Once a person matches, employees can rate this potential job candidate based on the candidate's perceived ability to execute against the tasks required of the open position. I like that.
Recruiters overlook a couple of my past career positions. For example, I was a partner at Accenture, and only ‘see’ me as capable of writing blogs and doing tech industry analyst stuff. My full career history demonstrates my ability to do many things like running global shared services projects. Many colleagues who have to remind others that they have had a multi-faceted career.
Simppler’s an interesting firm. The founders have been part of several prior startups and have learned valuable lessons in launching technology firms. The company has needed minimal venture capital funding requirement as it attracted major customers since its inception. Early market interest/success usually foreshadows future market uptake.
Simppler won’t be an exhibitor at this year’s HR Technology show in Las Vegas. But if you’re going there to scout out new recruiting software, you might just want to call them up directly.
And, just because I can’t help myself to a good play on words: SAP should buy this firm as it would add credibility to their slogan “Run Simpler”……
Image credits: © Olivier Le Moal - Fotolia.com, screen shots via Simppler