Let’s face it - finding the best talent for your clients is no simple task. That’s why Bullhorn has been continually working to streamline the candidate searching process.

Today, I’m very excited to deliver a major enhancement that will help you place your candidates faster than ever before…Introducing Bullhorn Universal Search

Bullhorn Universal Search simplifies the sourcing process, allowing you to simultaneously search more than 70 million resumes on over 10,000 free and paid job boards and social networks, including LinkedIn, Monster, HotJobs, CareerBuilder, Dice, Craigslist and the open Web.

The Secret Sauce:  Advanced Matching – Saving You Weeks of Time a Year!

While the shear depth of sources in Universal Search helps make finding great candidates easier, advanced matching helps recruiters be more productive by dramatically reducing the number of results needed to review by intelligently predicting which candidates are the best fit for the job. 

For example, I recently ran a search for a java developer in the Boston area across multiple paid and free sources.  I got 123 results, and of those, I felt 30 matched my keywords well enough to warrant a detailed review. Do I have time to review 30 potential candidates?  No, but previously I had to find the time. Wouldn’t it be much better if I only needed to review say, 10, instead of 30? Absolutely!

After using Universal Search’s advanced matching capability, I’m left with the nine best candidate resumes at the top of my list – now that’s more like it. In this example, I saved more than one hour by only having to review nine results instead of 30. Think about how that adds up.  If I run one search every day and get similar results, that’s about six hours a week, three days a month, and 37 days a year of time that I would have spent searching through resumes. How much additional revenue could you produce with 37 more days added to your recruiting calendar?

So how does advanced matching work? 

1. Universal Search looks across the sources you selected and brings back results that match your keywords. 

2. It looks through a database of more than one million historical job placements to find job descriptions just like yours, and then extracts the important attributes shared by the candidates who successfully filled them.

3. Universal Search filters your search results using these success attributes so the ones that are most likely to lead to placement are at the top of your list, effectively filtering out candidates that aren’t a good fit. 

Bullhorn Universal Search is available today. To learn more, read the FAQ, or contact your Bullhorn account representative.

Now, you can manage your business on the go on your iPhone or iPad without worrying about manually updating your Bullhorn account. Bullhorn Mobile Sync adds automated tracking and synchronization to Apple’s email and calendar functions without requiring you to learn new software. You get the best of both worlds - the native iPhone experience you love, plus effortless integration with the power of Bullhorn!

To read the full release, click here.

If you would like to enable Mobile Sync for your iPhone, please review the requirements and then contact your Bullhorn account manager. To find out more about Bullhorn Mobile’s full capabilities, go to www.bullhorn.com/mobility.php

Clients often ask me about our investors, since financial strength is an important consideration when choosing a business partner. Bullhorn has lived through three different stages of corporate development. First, we were a venture capital-backed dotcom. Later, after refocusing our efforts to build a Software as a Service staffing and recruiting front-office application, we bootstrapped our way to profitability. Most recently, we’ve gone back to the VC backed approach to fund the organization’s current stage of growth. Having experience with both bootstrapping and VC backing, I can say that both have their merits. But, each has its time and place. This is true not only for software companies with VCs, but for any sort of business start-up with outside investors. 

Lean and Mean
Bootstrapping is a great way to build a technology business to a certain point. It forces you to learn how to be pragmatic and listen carefully to your clients. If I had to point to a single thing that drove Bullhorn’s early success the most, it was that we had to win to survive. We could either delight our customers or go out of business. Anyone who started a business in 2009 probably knows exactly what I’m talking about. 

Spend Money to Make Money
Bootstrapping, for all its positive effects, also has a downside, especially when it comes to technology companies. Once you’ve validated your business model, you reach a point where you need capital to support your growth. You need to promote and sell your offerings. You need to invest in infrastructure to be able to support your growth. You need to invest in outstanding services staff. All of these things require upfront investments. If you’re too cautious about spending, you open the door to competitors. If you’ve proven to yourself that you’ve built a great business, you’ve probably proven it to others as well and given enough time, they’ll over take you. That’s when venture capital investment can help.
 
VCs as Puppet Masters
In the article, Wadhwa paints VC investors as driving the agenda with entrepreneurs - forcing them to make decisions that serve only their interest - driving relentlessly toward a pay day. I’ve heard this from other entrepreneurs: “You took VC money. Do they call the shots now?” or “How long until they make you sell?” Most people picture VCs as puppeteers - having complete control over their portfolio companies and manipulating the management team’s every move. But, the reality is that most investors don’t have any control over the course a company will take. They can only do two things: make suggestions to management and replace the CEO. There’s no doubt that this is a powerful lever, but it’s really the nuclear option. 

Let’s Not Fire the CEO
Most entrepreneurs are terrified of taking venture capital because they fear being replaced. If you’ve never grown a company from $1M to $100M, it’s natural to be unsure about whether or not you will be up for the task. But, most VCs won’t give you money if they don’t believe you can make it. And, they’ll usually be upfront about it if they have doubts. They invest in people just as much as they invest in products and markets and they want a big return on the capital they invest. Replacing a CEO is never easy and puts their entire investment at risk. The likelihood of finding another executive with the passion and enthusiasm of the person who built the business is low. It’s really in their best interest to make it work. 

Stop Listening and Start Listening
CEOs get fired for one of two reasons: they either don’t listen to their investors or they listen to their investors. CEOs who don’t listen to their investors are very distressing for them. If investors believe you won’t entertain their input because you don’t value their opinion, they’ll worry that you’ll drive the company off of a cliff. They’ve seen more companies succeed and fail than you have, so you should be willing to listen. On the contrary, if all you do is follow the advice of your investors to a T, then you’re not a CEO - they are - which is also daunting for investors. 

Achieving Balance
To build a successful organization, you have to be in tune with your clients, your team, your investors and your gut. If all you did was implement every suggestion your clients ever gave you, you would end up giving away your product and you’d go out of business. Clients typically don’t share your perspective because they aren’t standing in your shoes. So, similarly, if you did everything your investors told you to do, you’d make a lot of poor decisions. Achieving balance is critical. Your investors can be incredibly helpful in avoiding bad hires, analyzing acquisitions, thinking about sales and marketing strategies. But, unlike you, they aren’t on the ground, close to the clients. They will never have the full perspective that you will. So, when they steer you in a direction that you don’t think makes sense, you should acknowledge them, but tell them you disagree. In fact, it’s similar to what you do with clients every day. 

Exit via Brute Force 
Lastly, when it comes to giving investors a pay day, whether through IPO, strategic sale or a financial buyer, investors are entirely reliant upon management to drive the agenda. Very few companies would want to acquire a company where the management team is unwilling to participate in a merger. Wadhwa mentions registration rights in his post, where investors have the right to force a company to a public offering. While it may be possible to force to IPO, it’s hard to imagine a CEO trying to build enthusiasm for a public offering with a gun to his or her head. That’s far from the ideal exit scenario for any investor. 

While it’s exciting to imagine that there’s a lot of skullduggery, arm twisting and palace intrigue in the board room of venture backed technology companies, goal setting, strategic planning and pitched debate are the modus operandi. Ultimately, everyone is aligned toward a common goal: building an innovative company that delivers products and services of incredible value to its clients. Investors know that if you accomplish that, great returns will be a natural by-product.

If you would like to enable Mobile Sync for your account, please first review the requirements and then contact your Bullhorn account manager for support. Depending on which edition of Bullhorn you have, there may be a small per-user fee.
I look forward to sending along more details as we approach July 1st.

Ric Leeds
Product Manager

Consider these suggestions to discover what makes your audience tick:

5. Do they embrace social media?
If so, what social networking sites do they spend the most time on? Are they interested in these sites for business or personal purposes? Where and when do they begin to interact vs. simply digesting information? Some of the larger social media websites offer follower/member demographic information that can help you determine whether or not your specific audience spends time on their site.  If your audience is more professional, consider starting with LinkedIn, whereas if you are staffing within the marketing/PR space, you may consider launching a blog and broadcasting your content through Twitter.
 
6. Who are their influencers?
Every industry has influential leaders. Learn who those individuals are within each of the markets you service.  What value do they provide to your audience?  How can you provide similar value?  Is there an opportunity to partner with an influencer?  If you are considering launching a blog and are not sure if you will be able to provide content on an ongoing basis, find out if any industry influencers would be interested in cross posting or contributing to your blog. 
 
7. Are there common denominators?
If you have multiple audiences with different behaviors, sometimes you can identify a common denominator that ties them together. As unique as their behaviors may appear from the outside, many audience groups have similar professional objectives. I am not suggesting that you group together all of your audiences, but if there is an opportunity to create a campaign that can be mirrored across each service segment, you will do less recreating and rather focus your efforts on scaling the campaign.

8. What can web analytics tell you?
Spend some time analyzing the backend activity on your website. First, this will provide you with details relating to existing high volume search terms, referring websites, search engine traffic and unique navigation patterns. Second, once you finalize your digital marketing strategy, you can use web analytics to set up specific campaign goals, enabling you to easily track inbound activity and results from the start.  Some great web analytics tools include: Google Analytics, Yahoo Analytics, and Hubspot.

More helpful resources on “Audience Mapping”

Social Media Examiner: http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/3-simple-steps-for-creating-social-media-visibility/

Do you realize what starts with the Big Boys trickles down the food chain? I hope so, because we have seen that happen with VOP, Prime Vendor, Vendor Management, etc. 

Are you aware that some larger recruiting firms are now getting more than half heir revenue by providing services vs. earning placement fees?

 
Perhaps the light at the end of the tunnel is an oncoming freight train! YIKES
How do you plan to adjust to this new reality?

Let’s start by pointing out that every agency has at least two target audiences (hiring managers and candidates) each with different intentions: to hire talented employees and to find jobs.  Factor in multiple specialty areas and a variety of industries, and the target audience can become quite complex.
 
Audience mapping is the process of exploring the digital behaviors of your audiences before building out a campaign.  This exercise can be as elaborate or simplistic as you want it to be, though it’s vital that your information come from a credible place.  Throughout the mapping exercise, check in with people who have ongoing first-hand candidate and client interaction to ensure you are on the right track. But probably one of the most important aspects of this process is figuring out not only who your audience is, but what they want and where they are going to fulfill those wishes. 

The following list of questions will help you get to know your audience and further assess their needs:
 

1. Who are they?

Trying to appeal to corporate HR? Web Designers? Executive Assistants? Accountants? Java Developers? Traveling nurses?
 
Unless your audience is actively looking for a job or to hire talent, there’s a very slim chance that they will stumble upon your corporate blog, job board, twitter feed or fan page if it’s strictly all about you. Assuming that your prospects know your brand and will find you when the need arises is a mistake. Before building your digital brand, it’s vital that you forget about you and focus on your customers and prospects.
 
2. What information are they interested in?

To answer this question, you might consider surveying some of your current customers. I would suggest sending your candidates and clients a very simple survey through email and complement it with a written survey that can be filled out in your lobby while candidates are waiting for an interview. You could also poll some of your closer candidates and clients on the phone, which will allow for in-depth interaction. Are they looking for industry tips and trends? Do they want to network with other professionals within their industry? Would they value updates on your newest jobs? Leave an open comments section at the end of any written or email survey to allow for your customers to offer original ideas.  Some great internet survey sites include: Survey Monkey, Zoomerang, and Constant Contact.
 
3. Where do they get their news?

With thousands of mainstream and industry media outlets competing for the limited time professionals set aside to get their daily news fix, you can learn a lot by understanding which publications successfully and continually capture the attention of your audience. Consider calling into the sales departments of a variety of publications and tell the account representative that you are interested in learning more about their readership demographic.
 
4. How are they searching?

If you want your digital marketing activity to be found by your target audience, you should run a keyword search analysis to understand how they are searching via the major search engines (i.e. Google, Yahoo, Bing). This will end up being the most important exercise, and depending on internal resources available, may require the support of an outside agency. Don’t guess what your audience wants based on how well you think you know your business. There are free and low cost tools out there that will give you accurate data. Some of the more popular tools include: Google AdWords, NicheBot.com, WordTracker, SpellWeb.com, and KeywordDiscovery.com.
 

You should be looking for keyword phrases that have high search volume and then consider more specific (perhaps local) phrases that will have less search competition, but are still close to your business. Once you target a manageable list of key search terms, compare this data with the information you’ve acquired from steps 1-3. Note: Much more to come on this in the search engine optimization (SEO) part of this digital marketing series.
 

Stay tuned for Audience Mapping-2

I hear over and over again that managers use several rules of thumb to prioritize orders. They work those that are from clients that:

• Have a long-standing relationship
• Pay a great rate
• Are relatively easy to recruit for

These criteria shift as the market changes and client relationships evolve. A good fee today could look low in as little as three months. Clients can agree to give you an exclusive on their orders and that would dramatically change their rank in the food chain.
 

Just Use the Force

The challenge here is that the job order prioritization scheme is highly subjective and ultimately locked in people’s heads, like “The Force” in Star Wars. Some account managers try to use a flag on the job order within their ATS to designate that it’s higher priority, but these flags can become chronically abused and thus, ignored. 
Job order prioritization strikes me as too critical to business success to remain so subjective. Consider its impact on critical factors like:

• Client retention: while some firms are incredibly disciplined about saying “no” when they’re too busy to fill an order, most feel they have to tell clients “yes” because clients who hear “no” too frequently eventually stop coming back. But if staff is not prioritizing the jobs of important clients and they go unfilled, they may stop coming back anyway.
• Revenue: prioritizing jobs that have higher probability of success and bigger spreads means more will close and those that do will generate higher margin
• Expenses: given that industry turnover is 30-40%, at any given time, about a third of a firm’s recruiting staff is fumbling around in the dark before they master “the force” and can prioritize themselves the orders that most deserve their attention.

A Possible Solution: Deal Scoring

The solution is to devise a numeric deal score on each order as it’s received. Yes, I was a math major, so of course my solution involves math, but bear with me. The idea here is that you could look at the things like a client’s historical orders-to-fill rate, the fee or spread on the order, the client’s responsiveness to submissions, even the availability of the required skill sets in your candidate pool and give each order a deal score. It could be as simple as giving the deal a number from 1 to 10. Then, recruiters could simply come in each morning, sort the orders by the deal score and get to work on those at the top of the list.

This concept is not new to business.  In fact, here at Bullhorn we use this approach to solve a similar problem. Last year, Karen Maloney and our Marketing team generated well over 10,000 potential sales leads – way too many for the Sales team to follow up with an equal degree of diligence. So leads get scored based on where the prospect is in the buying cycle, the potential size of the opportunity, etc. Sales can then focus effort on those leads most likely to generate revenue. This is a well-established approach that “baked in” to our marketing software. 

By developing a deal scoring process, you will be able to see if a recruiter spends time on low priority orders and point them in the right direction. Ideally, this will help to drive down recruiter turnover and decrease payroll expense, plus improve retention of key clients and grow revenue.
Has anyone tried to implement something like this?  If so, how well has it worked?

Introduction: What is inbound marketing?
 
The days of relying solely on trade shows, direct mail, print ads and cold calls are over. As human behavior continues to adapt to the “digital age”, the marketing game is rapidly emerging to allow for something that for decades executives have craved: low cost, high quality business leads and measurable results.
 
Though outbound marketing still remains valuable, the evolution of new media communications and inbound marketing is proving the highest short and long-term return for businesses across all industries worldwide.  Rather than draining your budget on traditional marketing channels with dreams of catching your candidates’ or clients’ eyes, holding their attention and then persuading them to buy, inbound marketing flips traditional outreach upside down. As a staffing or recruiting firm, you want job seekers and hiring managers to come to you.  By developing a strong digital marketing infrastructure, you will consistently show up in the heart of where your audiences are searching and eventually the leads will begin to pour in.  
 
Understanding Inbound Marketing: The Octopus Approach
 
In explaining inbound marketing, let’s explore natural survival instincts that have been in place for centuries. Take the octopus, one of the most fascinating animals of the sea.  As a large creature, it’s not easy for the octopus to attract prey without seeming overbearing. 

Rather than creating a scene by awkwardly chasing after food that is much faster than itself, the octopus understands its surrounding environment and changes color to fit in with algae- a plant that thousands of sea creatures feed off. With very little movement, the octopus waits patiently for hungry creatures to come feeding, and the rest is history. 

Photo: Octopus blending in with surrounding algae

Like the octopus, your ultimate goal should be to position your website or blog among the digital surroundings that your target audiences (job seekers and hiring managers) are feeding off.   Keep in mind, the difference between a well thought out inbound marketing strategy and the above analogy, is that once you do manage to capture the attention of your audience, it’s not wise to attack them. There is nothing more annoying as a customer than to find out that you’ve been tricked and blatantly sold to. Inbound marketing should be permission-based, meaning your audiences choose to come to you and then decide to stay for a while. To do this well you will need to invest some time and resources into studying the behaviors of your audiences, learning how online technology and search engines operate, and understanding the different inbound marketing channels available.
 
This marketing series will explore, piece-by-piece, some of the more vital channels available and how each can be adapted by staffing and recruiting firms to enhance digital inbound leads. The series will cover topics including, audience mapping, search engine optimization, pay-per-click advertising, social media marketing, community building, digital public relations, lead generation, streamlining process through technology and tracking.
 
Stay tuned for part two of our series, “Audience Mapping”.
 

Other great inbound marketing resources:
 
Inbound Marketing VS Outbound Marketing: http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/2989/Inbound-Marketing-vs-Outbound-Marketing.aspx

Lead Generation Is About Being Found
http://www.ducttapemarketing.com/blog/2009/02/24/lead-generation-is-about-being-found/

Wayne Gretzky was an Inbound Marketer
 http://pauldunay.com/wayne-gretzky-was-an-inbound-marketer/

Shall we jump for joy? Perhaps this time it will be different for the Temp Staffing Industry and for Direct Placement. Educated clients are squeezing their labor budgets. They want more services and want to pay less. They are consolidating suppliers to cut internal costs and they are outsourcing many non core functions.

Will you want to shave your margins to retain clients? Do you to fight pricing with the big public companies?  Or should you start right now looking at how you do business?  Can you cut costs by using technology or by outsourcing some functions? Should you merge or partner with another firm to shave overhead costs? Until the economy gets overheated again it is a bit of a buyers market for talent.

Stay alert in 2010 because this time, it is different for our industry.
 

Jim Volpe