Here’s a bit more context – we looked at two of the earliest companies using Candidate Search, and looked at their thousands of jobs, submission times, and placement times.  We then compared their submission and placement times for the 5 month period before they used Candidate Search and the 5 month period since they started using Candidate Search, and the results were clear.

The best way to learn about Candidate Search is by watching the demo below.

If you use Bullhorn currently, and haven’t signed up for you free upgrade, you can do so here.  If you don’t use Bullhorn currently, and want to improve your time to submission and time to placement, let us know.

We just announced our Winter 2012 release, featuring all new Candidate Search, updates to Web Responses, a new product feedback system and more.

Check out the December 2011 product update to get all the details, and join us for a webinar to learn more.

You can also check out the following resources:

• Press release announcing Candidate Search and Winter 2012 release
• Blog post by Bullhorn CTO, Geoff Greene about Candidate Search
• Watch a demo of candidate Search below

During Bullhorn’s 11 years of helping recruiters put people to work, we’ve spent lots of time developing technology to find the right candidates in their candidate databases. So have others, because candidate search is a critical step towards filling almost any job. Despite all the effort, few recruiters would say the problem has been licked. However, our upcoming Winter 2012 release makes a big leap forward in Candidate Search. If you’ve ever wished finding candidates in your resume database was faster, easier or just plain better, then read on.

Why is candidate search so hard?

There is a big, gnarly terminology problem when it comes to finding candidates. The terms you need to search for may not actually be the terms that you see on a resume or job description.Here’s an example from the world of technical staffing, where roles are are awash in lingo and skills are constantly changing. Heard of “Java” and “SQL”? They’re so 2005. It’s all about Ruby, Python, Mongo, Grails and EC2 now. Worse, many of these technologies have aliases. A developer experienced with the database technology MongoDB, may not put MongoDB any where in their resume, rather it will appear as “Mongo”, “NoSQL”, or “sharding.”

Search terminology is a big problem for recruiters in any specialized industry. Especially those new to recruiting. They’d better be highly trained in the art of b.s. if they want to survive. Unless you’ve spent a year or two with an industry, it’s tough to be successful, because you don’t know the lingo. The only way to hang around long enough to get that experience is to be great at building a personal rapport, make lots of phone calls, have thick skin when people get annoyed and maybe be lucky. No doubt this tough learning curve partly explains our industry’s costly employee turnover.

Introducing the next generation of Candidate Search

Our new Candidate Search tames the terminology beast and helps recruiters scale the learning curve. It studies your job description, an ideal candidate or your initial guess at keywords and suggests terms to help you pinpoint the ideal candidate.

How do we do that? We’ve analyzed more than 5 million resumes, identified keyword relationships and built a Learning Library that provides suggested terms to help you complete your search quickly.Here’s a simple example, searching for a staff accountant. I start with a few key terms from the job, such as “accounting” and “payroll.” Our new Candidate Search then suggests that I also include “general ledger”, “accounts payable”, and “balance sheet” because these have proven to help find the right candidates. And the Learning Library is futureproof since it gets smarter the more it is used. As the terminology evolves, Bullhorn Candidate Search adapts.

Recruiters no longer have to worry when a hiring manager throws out a skill they’ve never heard before. Chances are, others have and already figured out how to find the right candidates. And for the new recruiter who is still learning the lingo? Bullhorn’s new Candidate Search flattens the learning curve so they can succeed faster.

There’s a lot more in our new Candidate Search as well, such as dragging and dropping keywords to visually build your search, personalized views that let you search and view results just the way you want, and team collaboration that makes it easy to share knowledge and expertise across your company. We also make it easy for a recruiter to search their entire candidate database — resumes, notes, flags, dates — all at once. Search grandmasters can create complex Boolean queries as well. We’re in beta right now, so stay tuned as we put the finishing touches in place and begin rolling it out soon.

I’ve shared a few more thoughts on the challenge of search and our new capabilities in the video below.

Placement to payment is broken
The placement to payment process runs from placement to time and expense tracking and approval, through to the time you get paid and the time you pay (ie: accounting and payroll.)  Few firms today have completely automated this.  Several big gaps exist.

1. It’s not the 1970’s anymore
Believe it or not, most staffing firms still have paper timecards and expense reports, and I think everyone would agree that’s a very antiquated approach and something that just doesn’t make sense anymore in today’s online, 24 x7 world.  Paper timecards and expense reports create a slow, manual, costly, error prone process.  One issue or mistake in the collection, reconciliation and data entry into your accounting and payroll systems can significantly derail or stop invoicing or payroll.

2. The dots aren’t connected
Most staffing firms aren’t making a complete connection between their ATS and these systems.  Data has to be manually entered and reentered and that again is slow, costly and error prone. And even if you are on what are supposed to be integrated front to back systems, there can frequently be functions that aren’t 100% automated.

3. Staff can’t answer questions
Without an automated placement to payment process front-line sales and recruiting staff can’t easily answer the following questions:
- What’s the status of my timecard?
- Where’s my check?
- When should we expect that invoice?
So they have to loop someone in from the finance time to search for answers, sometimes by digging through stacks of paper records.  Not only is this inefficient, but it damages relationships with candidates and clients.

4. Front to back shouldn’t hold you back
If you are on a front to back system today, you may not be using the best tools for the job.  Your ATS won’t be the easiest to use, or the most effective as helping you place great candidates, nor will you be using industry leading solutions for payroll and accounting from companies like Intuit, Microsoft, ADP or Paychex.
If you aren’t using the best stuff out there, particularly for sales and recruiting, then you are potentially not getting or filling as many jobs orders as possible.  And you are locked into a solution that doesn’t give you flexibility to change accounting or payroll, nor can it grow as your firm does.   There really is no need to sacrifice though.

Enter Bullhorn Time and Expense
Bullhorn developed a new module to close these placement to payment process gaps so that recruitment firms can reduce costs, move faster and improve customer service.   Bullhorn Time and Expense extends our recruiting software platform,  automates online time tracking, expense reports, and approvals, while integrating with the best accounting and payroll systems available.

Bullhorn Time and Expense can help you by:
1. Saving up to 75% of your processing costs of timecards and expense reports -  For example, Bullhorn Time and Expense user DeWinter Consulting  saved more than half of the annual cost of a full time head to administer timecards, expense reports, invoicing and payroll.
2. Automating time and expense tracking – With online tracking and approvals you can automate this process, and ensure it’s completed easily and in a timely fashion.
3. Providing pinpoint accuracy in billing and payroll –  By having online time and expense data automatically connected with payroll and accounting systems like QuickBooks, Dynamics Great Plains, ADP and Paychex you can eliminate mistakes that can occur with duplicate data entry.  That means you can bill and pay on time, with 100% accuracy every time.
4. Improving client service – Sales and recruiting have access to online reports to easily answer questions about timecards, expense reports, invoices and payroll.  And this means your team can deliver great candidate and client service that not only will help you keep the customers you have and but will make it easier to win new business as well.

To learn more about how Bullhorn Time and Expense works check out the press release, see a demo on bullhorn.com, or drop me a note in the comments at the bottom of the post.

To get a setup like mine, once you have your Mac, do the following:

1. Buy VMware Fusion ($49.99 on vmware.com through the end of 2011).  There are lots of other virtualization options like Parallels, but VMware Fusion has the best integration with the Mac OS.
2. Install VMWare Fusion on your Mac.
3. Run VMWare’s Migration Assistant and follow these instructions to migrate your old windows PC to run on your Mac.
4. On your Mac, start VMWare Fusion, and run Unity View, so you can put the IE icon in your Mac dock, and then run IE like it’s a standalone app on your Mac.
5. Use Bullhorn as you normally would, and enjoy your Mac.

So what does this mean for recruiters using Bullhorn?
It means that candidates can choose to Apply with LinkedIn, and send you their LinkedIn profile to start their application, in lieu of a traditional resume.   Now candidates may like this because they feel their combination of work history can now be presented with their recommendations, and that this may be a better way to start the application process.   Plus if a candidate chooses this approach, they also instantly receive guidance on how they are connected via LinkedIn to people that work at your firm.

What’s great about this too is that if you are a Bullhorn ATS/CRM or Bullhorn Reach user, you can take advantage of this today.  Here’s how it works.

1. You publish your jobs to job boards and social networks via Bullhorn Reach.  If you are using the Bullhorn ATS/CRM, you can import them to Bullhorn Reach with just a single click.
2. A job seeker finds a job on say, Simply Hired, and when they click through that link, they are taken to your specific job listing on Bullhorn Reach.
3. On that page they can choose to contact you via Bullhorn Reach by hitting the “Let’s Talk” button. At that point, they can either manually complete a form and upload a resume or choose  “Apply with LinkedIn.”
4. If they choose the “Apply with LinkedIn” button, a version of their LinkedIn profile is sent to your account and you will get an email with a link to it.
5. And, if you are using the Bullhorn ATS/CRM, when a candidate uses the “Apply with LinkedIn” button, that action also gets captured as a web response against the job, and the candidate profile in the ATS gets created automatically using the data that the candidate provided via “Apply with LinkedIn.”

Pretty cool, right?  We’re very excited to be partnering with LinkedIn on this from the start, and looking forward to seeing how recruiters are going to take advantage of this new capability going forward.

You can read more at the Bullhorn Reach blog:

What do you think about “Apply with LinkedIn?”  Let us know in the comments.

Please check out our mobile recruiting software demo on BullhornTV.

Since we’re talking about mobile recruiting and staffing, I’ve been thinking a lot about how mobile has simply revolutionized how recruiting and staffing professionals work.

Almost a year ago to the day (in July 2010) we launched Bullhorn Mobile Sync, our new over-the-air sync feature which put your Bullhorn email, calendar and contacts on your mobile device.   To date, we have thousands of recruiting and staffing pros sending and receiving messages from their mobile device that all automatically track against contacts and candidates in Bullhorn.

What I think is amazing is what has happened in the mobile market in the last 12 months since we released Mobile Sync.  Here are a few highlights as of June 2011.

• 428,000,000 mobile devices were sold in the first quarter of 2011 alone, 19% more than the same quarter in 2010 according to Gartner.
• There are over 100,000,000 Android devices activated worldwide at a rate of 400,000 activations per day!
• The average monthly data – email, web surfing, videos, etc – consumed by smartphone users is between 500MBs and 600MBs.

And along with those crazy big numbers, there have been lots of shifts in the wireless landscape:

• Verizon now has the iPhone 4.
• AT&T and Verizon are rolling out their 4G / LTE service (if you have a 4G device, you then know how sweet it is!)
• Andriod has 53% share of the Global smartphone market share, 36% share in the US.
• Apple generated $1.78 Billion (billion!) in sales from its Apps store alone in 2010, more than doubling 2009.

And did you see Cisco’s forecast? Cisco predicts there will be 15 billion networked devices by 2015 with a considerable percentage of mobile devices included in that number.  15 billion. Staggering.

It’s pretty clear that this sea change is well underway both in the mobile market as well as how you want and need to do business to stay competitive.  During the last 12 months, we spent a considerable amount of time talking to you to understand what you want from a Bullhorn mobile recruiting app to recruit, collaborate and close business while you are away from the office.

So that brings me back to where we started – the all new Bullhorn Mobile.  Mobile computing is a juggernaut that won’t be stopped.  If you aren’t already working recruiting and selling on a mobile device, then I bet in the next 12 months you absolutely will be.  We think the all the new Bullhorn Mobile will make that a reality for you.

Please check out the demo of our new mobile recruiting and mobile staffing software on our YouTube channel – BullhornTV, and let us know what you think!

And learn more on bullhorn.com and in the press release.

Ric Leeds

Bullhorn Product Management

We covered a lot of information in the webinar, so here’s a summary of what we addressed and how to take the next step.

Trends

- Our 2011 Trends report, with information on plans for growth, hiring, and more is available here.

Mobile

- The new Bullhorn Mobile is coming. Sign up for the new Bullhorn Mobile between now and end of June and save 33%. Contact your account manager for additional information.

- If you want to apply to join the beta, you can do so by visiting the Bullhorn Resource Center, searching for “mobile beta” and then completing the application form. And please note note that beta participation is limited.

Onboarding

- If you are are bringing new recruiters or salespeople on to your team, make sure that you let them know about the Bullhorn Resource Center, as their first stop in learning how to use Bullhorn. To get to the Resource Center from within Bullhorn, click on the Support menu and then choose Resource Center.

- Training and Consulting: I covered a number of training options and a new series of consulting offerings that can help your existing team boost their Bullhorn skills as well as help you refine and optimize your overall processes. I also highlighted the Fundamentals and Advanced Training class as well as the Creating High Impact Employees consulting engagement. If you are interested in any of these options, please touch base with your account manager, or contact our professional services team directly at professionalservices@bullhorn.com.

Process Automation

I covered some of the more recent additions of prebuilt on demand integrations from our partners in the Bullhorn Marketplace and did a demo of a forthcoming integration with Vertical Response that makes it easy to execute an email marketing campaign to a Bullhorn distribution list. If you are interested in beta testing the Vertical Response integration with Bullhorn, please let us know here.

Social Media and Search

- Bullhorn Reach: Reach helps you easily manage your social networks, post jobs, and find new business.Sign up for a free beta account.

- Universal Search: if you are interested in adding Universal Search to your Bullhorn ATS and CRM contact your account manager.

-Contact Accelerator: Quickly capture candidates and contacts found on social networks and add them to Bullhorn. Download for free.

If you were able to attend, thanks again for joining us. If you missed it, I hope to see you online next time.

Jonathan Wall

Director, Product Marketing

A Brief Rewind

Back when Bullhorn was ramping up in the early 2000’s, Internet Explorer was far and away the dominant web browser. This was especially true in the corporate world, where it held well over a 90% market share.   At that same time, Apple’s market share of computer operating systems was less than 2%.

With this in mind, we developed a number of advanced capabilities leveraging Internet Explorer-specific technology.  This made sense because it enabled new capabilities for our clients and helped them automate processes that previously were complex and time consuming- all via the dominant web browser. It was simply the right thing to do for our customers at the time.

On the mobile front, smartphones were just taking off. In response to this, Bullhorn jumped out ahead with a mobile web that launched (believe it or not) in 2003.

Prioritizing Demands in Today’s Rapidly Evolving Market

Fast forward to today, and there’s no question that the browser and device market has fragmented dramatically with a raft of great alternatives.  As we continue to innovate and build out new product and services, it’s vital that we accommodate changing market dynamics and prioritize things that deliver the most immediate and valuable impact on our global customer base- all while continuing to advance recruiting agency-specific software capabilities.

Apple’s share of desktops and laptop operating systems has now quadrupled to 10%.  And mobile website usage is surging. Before you know it, the majority of people browsing the web will spend more time on a mobile device than on a desktop or laptop.

In response to these trends, we’ve made sure Bullhorn works great on Mac using virtualization software including, VMWare Fusion, Parellels, or VirtualBox. We have many customers using Bullhorn like this all day, every day. We actually provided a sneak peak of our next generation mobile app at the Staffing Industry Executive Forum last month.   This new capability is optimized for modern smartphones and tablets, and also works in any modern browser. You’ll hear much more about this soon.

But what about Internet Explorer?

Much of the recent feedback regarding Internet Explorer is that IE 7 and IE 8 are slower than other browsers, but IE 9 (just released a few days back) has actually caught up and passed the other browsers.   Bullhorn fully supports IE9, so we encourage you to check it out.

As I mentioned earlier, it’s all about prioritization. Our early leveraging of Internet Explorer makes supporting other browsers more complex and time consuming. To support multiple browsers, many features and custom integrations will need to go through vigorous development and testing. We are tackling this, but it will take time.

In the meantime, as we create new features in Bullhorn, we are building them to work across all operating systems, browsers, and devices.  This will ensure smoother transition for these features when we support other browsers down the road.

Watch an interview with Bullhorn’s CTO, Geoff Greene, for a closer look at Bullhorn’s integration with email and calendar systems like Microsoft Exchange, Outlook, and Google Apps.  Geoff shares some of Bullhorn’s history with email and how Bullhorn’s latest email innovations provide recruiting and staffing professionals with an easy-to-use integration that ensures recruiters can work as quickly as possible from any PC or smartphone.

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