Executive recruiting software for the startup search firm

Every executive search firm starts somewhere. Many begin with a recruiter breaking away from an established search business and a desire to build something new.

Many founders have the vision, the strategy, and the contacts – but they are walking away from infrastructure. Established search firms have executive recruiting software in place. Tens (hundreds?) of thousands of populated records. Teams of researchers. Premium LinkedIn accounts. Boardex subscriptions. GatedTalent access.

How can the startup search firm build a technology platform to compete without breaking the bank?

Search firm playing fields are leveling out.

Korn Ferry is one of the largest search firms in the world. It has a global database with 7 million candidate profiles. Huge. But think about that for a moment – any database built over decades has to be maintained. And, of course, there has been huge turmoil in employment markets over recent years as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.

How many of those 7 million profiles are likely to be up to date?

The startup search firm actually has an advantage in the sense that it is starting from scratch. Any database record created today is going to be up to date. Indeed, the likelihood is that by the end of your first week in business, 100% of your candidate profiles will be accurate – very few established recruiting firms can boast that!

Information on potential candidates is readily available.

A recruitment consultant creating a new search firm generally needs to operate under a constrained budget. An established executive search firm may be paying tens of thousands of dollars a year for subscriptions to services like LinkedIn Recruiter or Boardex. Clearly, these are highly valuable services that the founder may be used to – but the good news is that the vast majority of the information they provide is available to the recruiter without a paid subscription.

Virtually every LinkedIn profile- in your network or beyond – can be found on Google with a Boolean search. Detailed insights into executive careers, compensation, board memberships, and similar may be found on sites such as Bloomberg, Yahoo Finance, and so on.

Furthermore, publicly available data is often more up-to-date than privately held profiles. If the recruiter knows where to look, sourcing the right candidate can be done without investing in premium information services.

Offering the startup executive search firm a competitive advantage

What this means in practical terms is that the startup executive search firm has the ability to build a valuable database from scratch in a highly cost-effective manner. However, to maintain the value in any new database, they need to ensure data is maintained constantly. For a small firm without extensive administrative and research support, this needs automation.

As a result, the key requirements for a startup search firm’s executive search software will be:

• The ability to cost-effectively source up-to-date information on potential candidates
• The ability to record that information in a database / CRM with little or no data entry
• The ability to add proprietary notes and comments to that contact record
• The confidence that the core information on the executive will be automatically updated over time.
• The ability to track a list of candidates as they move through the recruiting process.
• The ability to be used by a sole trader or to share data with future team members
• Cloud-based, with a free trial, followed by a cost-effective SaaS subscription, with no upfront fees!

Over time, of course, the search firm may need more. Analytics and other performance metrics. Online portals. Culture fit analysis and so on – and it’s important that any investment in a new executive recruiting software will offer these types of functionality when required – but none of this is core on day 1.

The startup executive search firm is the core market for Talentis

Talentis is a new breed of executive recruiting software designed to take advantage of artificial intelligence and big data technologies to help executive recruiters better manage information associated with the hiring process.

Talentis is designed to be a recruitment software, candidate sourcing software, and a Linkedin Recruiter alternative – all in one.

The team behind Talentis has a proven track record in delivering technology solutions on behalf of executive search consultants. Dillistone Group Plc (a public company) and Ikiru People is the team behind FileFinder and GatedTalent – recognised leaders in the executive search software space. FileFinder was repeatedly named the top executive recruiting software in independent research by BND. Our sister brands developed candidate assessment software and software for the contingency recruiting agency.

Talentis is entirely new, however. Starting with our own years of experience in providing technology to the executive search industry, our product team then spoke to innovators in and around our sector. We invested a lot of time and effort in collecting information from the ground. We spoke to recruiters working in retained executive search firms and contingent staffing agencies. We spoke to users at our clients and users of products developed by our direct competitors.

The result – not an ATS – that stands for applicant tracking system – Talentis is not about applicants, job boards, .or job seekers. It’s not about managing resumes (although it can). At the core of Talentis is the executive search process – the research-driven approach that sets out to find not any executive – but the right executive – the perfect candidate to fill a specific executive role. It helps the headhunter source candidates, engage with them, and then manage the entire process.

However, unlike every other executive recruiting software, Talentis starts from the perspective that tracking publicly available information on executives and board members is a more efficient way of building an understanding of the candidate pool than simply populating a proprietary database that duplicates that information.

Talentis is based around a TalentGraph of – literally – millions of executives and billions of URLs. It “interprets” what a user is researching and allows her to access relevant information at the same time. In practice, this means viewing an executive’s profile on LinkedIn (or elsewhere), clicking a button, and immediately having the ability to add her to – or progress her on – a search assignment.

Once a great candidate is added to a search, the recruiter is able to tag her with private information which is proprietary to the recruiting team itself. Publicly available bio-type information is refreshed automatically; privately held candidate notes and comments are managed by the recruiting team.

Evaluate Talentis with no commitment

For a startup executive search business, implementing a new platform is a big decision. While your requirements may be basic initially, as your business model develops and changes, you need to be confident that you are invested in a solution that will grow with you.

We believe that Talentis is the perfect fit for any startup and smaller executive recruitment firms. It’s a cloud-based SaaS product with no upfront fee and – optionally – no long-term commitments. Furthermore, it’s available with an entirely free (no risk, no credit card!) trial. We’d invite you to watch any of our webinars or book a 1:1 demonstration and then take a free one-week trial of the platform and see for yourself if it is the ideal candidate for your business!