Let’s get down to it Dan – can you describe Scavado in nutshell?
Well…… Scavado is a sourcing tool that automates Boolean search strings, to find passive candidates on the web. Instead of going to a job board and looking for candidates that every other recruiter can find, with Scavado you can put in simple searches which enable you – via our software – to scour the web for CV’s, employee bio’s and social media profiles.

Don’t we already do that?
(laughs)
We do get a lot of recruiters who ask us……’well we use LinkedIn, we use those tools, what can Scavado do for us that other tools can’t?’

The answer is two things:

One, we bring together a lot of tools which recruiters would traditionally use and bring them together into a single dashboard. So you can conduct your searches in LinkedIn, in Zoominfo and so on, but rather than do so on a per site basis, you can do it through a single search within our software programme.

Two, we enable you to build a pipeline of those people you’ve found. There are a lot of tools out there which support the sourcing aspect, but don’t have anything else. So with Scavado, you have the sourcing function, and then the ability to create and manage a candidate pipeline, without leaving the software. Basically, we’re combining Boolean search automation for passive candidates, along with in platform ATS functionality.

Sounds great. How did you come up with the idea?
Our premise is that Recruiters should be one the phone. They shouldn’t be spending time …..effectively writing computer programming language. Scavado generates automated Boolean search strings which a recruiter would otherwise have been spending time writing by hand.

One of our customers spent $140,000 on training their entire sourcing department on Boolean search, and they measured their ROI and found zero percent improvement on the key metrics they monitored – increased placements per requisition, reduced time to hire and so on.

…..are you saying that Boolean searching does not work?
Well, when you take a recruiter and put them in a class and teach them on Boolean search strings, you are not changing who they are. It’s too hard, it’s too complicated and takes too much time. Standard Boolean searching forces recruiters to be programmers. Recruiters are salespeople

I think you’re right….
(…Wise Man Say then goes on a preamble about the genius of Boolean masters whilst claiming that none of their wisdom ever really gets used by the majority of the industry who are too busy selling…..)

What else do we need to know?
It’s tool is designed to find names. It’s not for those who want a ready-to-go list of active candidates. It’s about headhunting, candidate identification, tapping the passive candidate market.

OK cool – get it. How do you make your money, Dan?
We’re a subscription based service. Subscriptions are $2000.00 per user per year.

And the future for Scavado is…?
We want to continue to do what we do well, which is manage the sourcing process. Further automate. There still seems too much work involved in sourcing for candidates. Scavado is going to be looking at future enhancements that will continue to make it easier for recruiters to identify passive candidates.

How long until world conquest, Dan?
(laughs)
Well, I don’t think world conquest is in the plan. We just want to help recruiters do their job more efficiently and through that process, help more people find work.

Thanks Dan, it’s been a pleasure
No problem. Bye!

Thanks to Daniel Estrada, CTO of Scavado. Follow Dan on twitter @dcestrada and Scavado on @Scavado

Wise Man Say helps companies with their recruiting. Available for hire: strategy, training, do-ing. Contact Hung at hung.lee@wisemansay.co.uk or 0207 739 9358

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If you’re a follower of the NBA, live in New York or maybe just somebody who has a twitter account, you might have heard of a guy called Jeremy Lin by now. In case you haven’t, here’s a video that might give you some idea.

One week ago, Jeremy Lin was a no name basketball player who had been scratching around the league for a roster spot and buried in the depth chart of a dysfunctional New York Knicks. 1 week, 4 games, 4 straight wins, 4 MVP awards and a record breaking 127 points later, Lin is the biggest story in US Sports, a social media phenomenon, and – suddenly – a renewed symbol of the American dream.

The story of Jeremy Lin got me thinking about Talent – how we assess it, recruit for it and manage it once we’ve got it. It seems to me that there are lessons in the Jeremy Lin story that we recruiters have probably heard before, but never seem to really learn. Here’s what I think they are:

1. You’ve Got To Know What Good Looks Like

We are constantly told to look for the best. Our clients want – of course – ‘A Players’, ‘Elite Talent’ and ‘Top 5% of Market’. And most of the time we charge off onto the search without really thinking through What Good Looks Like. We assume we know; worse, we often assume our clients know.

Jeremy Lin teaches us that we need to constantly challenge these assumptions.

In the notoriously stats driven US sports culture, where every shot, pass, dribble and foul is captured, measured and analyzed, Lin’s talent should have been easy to recognize. And yet he has been mysteriously and routinely, under-recruited throughout his sports career. The consensus top high school player in California at the age of 18, Lin received no scholarship offers from any of the Colleges he applied to. Of the 10 applications sent, only 4 bothered to reply, all of them saying ‘no’, with one of them even getting his name wrong. And so he walked on at Harvard – who did not offer any sports scholarships – and subsequently led the hitherto inept Harvard basketball programme to it’s best ever seasons, becoming MVP in his final year and ultimately being in contention for recognition as best Point Guard nationwide. But again, upon graduation, the pro’s didn’t come calling and he went undrafted by all of the 30 teams in the NBA that had the opportunity to take him.

He walked on again, and this time when he did make an NBA practice squad, he was either sent immediately to the developmental league (4 times) or cut in order to make salary cap space for others, before he got any meaningful time on court. And when he finally latched on with the New York Knicks, Lin only got to play because injury crisis had left the coach with no other able bodies. Team coach Mike D’Antoni – a guy who might know better having mentored another non stereotypical point guard in Steve Nash earlier in this career, had Lin in training, liked what he saw but…..didn’t know.

Head coach Mike D’Antoni said on Tuesday that he was “afraid” to play the 23-year-old guard because the Knicks had fallen seven games under .500 just six weeks into the season, and he didn’t know what to expect from Lin.

D’Antoni had seen “bits and pieces” of what Lin could do during team scrimmages, “but there were other things I questioned just because I didn’t know. And I was afraid to do anything. We’re already in a little bit of a crisis and I just couldn’t be, you know, pulling straws,” the coach said.

‘Didn’t know’?

What is a coach for if he can’t judge a talent? And not just any talent, but one that would immediately set about breaking league records, piling up the wins and demonstrating his skill level against the top players in the game? The coach must have seen his ability, but chose not play him until he ran out of bodies and out of options.

The war for talent in pro sports is fierce, and yet team after team, coach after coach ignored the evidence on Jeremy Lin – both facts collectedly by leagues he played in and that which was evident in front of their very eyes.

Why?

It’s hard not to think that it was because Lin did not ‘fit the profile’. And it’s because everyone thought they knew What Good Looked Like. And What Good Looked Like was not a skinny, Asian guy, from an Ivy League school. The fact that a player of this type of profile hadn’t happened before, meant that – at some level – people thought it wouldn’t or couldn’t ever happen – even when the evidence suggested otherwise. The entire basketball establishment succumbed to a vast confirmation bias – looking for information that fits into preconceptions – rather than drawing conclusion based on the facts you see. And in the case of Lin, he was a aberrant twice over – not only Asian American but also from a posh school.

Recruitment Lesson No1 of the Jeremy Lin story is: you have got to know WGLL. And WGLL must be based on data you can measure, rather than preconceptions that you inevitably bring into the process.

2. You’ve Got To Give Talent Opportunity

It’s undeniable that it took the most unlikely sequence of events for Jeremy Lin to get his opportunity. Some sources say that he was within says of being cut by the New York Knicks before the line up problems gave him his chance. It’s scary to think if that might of happened – that Lin might now be out of a league he’s just set alight with his phenomenal play. How much talent has gone out of the NBA in this way? How much talent has gone out of any league or organization or company, simply being allowed to walk out the door for want of opportunity?

Recruitment Lesson No 2 of the Jeremy Lin story is: Every talent needs an opportunity. Recruitment is often a manager’s knee jerk reaction for a need for resource, but before you go and reach for the externals, you might do better to assess whether you have anyone in the organization would could perform in the role. Who knows – the difference maker you’ve been looking for might already be on staff – but without the chance to prove it, neither you nor he might never know

3. You’ve Got To Avoid Collecting Star Names

The intriguing subplot of the Jeremy Lin story is that the New York Knicks have won 4 in a row, without their two established players – NBA Superstars, Carmelo Anthony and Amare Stoudemire. Its also been clear that the performance of lesser lights on the team – previous squad fillers like Steve Novak and Iman Shumpert – have taken a significant step up in their level of play since the superstars have been out, and Jeremy Lin has been in. A big part of what makes Lin good is that he makes everyone else around him better. Now we all believe that team chemistry is a significant factor in organisational success – this has been proved, by science – but we struggle to understand it, and hence tend to do little other than mumble management mantras on team fit and missing opportunities to make the decisions that actively encourage and reward team based behaviour.

No one disputes the star quality of players like Carmelo Antony – he is, what is he – an outragously gifted athlete, who is brilliant at playing his game. However his is a talent which sucks the life out of all others and needs the ball all the time as he does not know how to play without it. Can he play second fiddle? The answer for Melo is no – he’s a great soloist, but one that eveyone else must adapt to accomodate his ‘me-first’ style.

Recruitment Lesson No3 of the Jeremy Lin story is….. don’t be obsessed by big names and big reputations. When you are building your organisation, you start with a clear philosophy – a clear style of play – of how you want your team to function. You then build a culture that encourages the behaviours that deliver this style, recruiting the personnel who have the attributes to fit into the scheme. The big name might be the glamour pick – and what on the surface might feel like a safer option due to industry renown – in reality is a high risk move to drop in a centrafugal talent into a team framework that had developed without him.

4. You’ve Got To Be Careful of Linsanity

It’s no metaphor to say that Jeremy Lin is taking the US by storm – his remarkable story, winning personality and oh-so-punable name – is creating a cultural movement across the States – complete with it’s own language, dress and sense of community. The phenomenon has even got it’s own name – Linsanity – and so if you’ve never been on a bandwagon before, jump on board now and feel it for yourself.

But this brings us to the final lesson the Jeremy Lin story has to teach us. Recruitment Lesson No4 is to be ever mindful of the power of emotions generated by group think; the momentum driven by crowds can set the agenda, stifle intelligent debate and create onclusions based on feelings, rather than sober analysis. How often have we agreed to a requisition, a candidate, a technology supplier or a strategy, because everyone else in the room seemed to think it was a good idea? When everyone else goes Linsane, it’s worth while taking a step back from the exuberance and recognise, once more, what the facts are

Jeremy Lin deserves his plaudits, but he has, as yet, only started 4 NBA games* in his young career, and a few weeks ago, nobody even knew his Li – name.

Wise Man Say helps companies with their social recruiting. Available for hire: strategy, training, do-ing. Contact Hung at hung.lee@wisemansay.co.uk or 0207 739 9358

*5 after another Linspired victory against the Minnesota TimberWolves on Saturday 12th February

Social Media Week is kicking off next week, an international festival of social media events held in cities throughout the world, including, of course, our own right here in London.

For those in recruitment who haven’t yet got into social, there’s no better time to jump in right into the mix by attending and participating in the events next week.

Most of them are free, short form (1-2 hours long) and hosted by some outstanding companies who are happy to share their knowledge and experience. For a full list of schedule click on this

What’s not to like? Yes, we know you’ve got calls to make, clients to manage and reqs to fill, but the bump and grind of recruitment is not going to stop if you miss a couple mornings next week.

As a bonus, you even have a chance of bumping into me – I’ll be attending as many as I can. Here’s a list of the events I’ve registered for, and why you should go too.

1. Corporate Digital Communities, Do They Work?

Aready one of the most talked about topics in 2012, Community in many respects is Social Recruiting, at least in the form that purists can endorse.

How can online community be used for recruiting? Do branded communities actually exist? Can you only use it as a source of data to mine, or is it possible to engineer them to produce the member behaviours which lead to hiring outcomes?

2. Is Eye Witness News, News?

Traditional journalism’s defence of profession – can you trust the man-on-the-street? A general topic that is hugely relevant for recruitment, especially social tools dramatically shift the balance of power between candidate, agent and employer. How can you ensure that candidates become advocates of your brand rather than critics of it? How can you trust the account of the first hand witness? Are we going to see astro-turfing and sock puppetry, as competition for skills, jobs and candidates get dirty?

3. How To Hit 300,000 YouTube Hits in 3 Days

Video-in-recruitment will go mainstream this year, with perhaps the most accessible idea being it’s use as an Employer branding channel. We’ve already seen the very bad, some of the very good and even the so-bad-it’s-good. How do you create a viral Employer branding hit on YouTube? Worth an hour of any recruiters time.

4. Social Recruiting & Gen Y

A last year’s headline, in this year’s event. It will be hugely interesting to see whether any real progress has been made, both by Gen Y in their job search techniques and by those organisations who are hoping to reach out to them. My gut tells me that there remains a yawning gap between theory and reality, as undergraduates default to legacy behaviours of job hunting, but it would be good to hear the conversation and see just how far social recruiting / social job search has penetrated to those who now need it most.

5. Health & Vitality For Social Media Excellence – Superfoods & Chocolate!

OK, so I’m on a diet. And I’m interested in the random. What foods should I eat when I go onto to Twitter? Do Donuts damage my blogging style? Can I just get healthy please?

6. The Psychology Of Influence

It’s been fashionable to hammer the notion of online influence for some time, notably led by those who might be perceived as powerful ‘influencers’ themselves. So why the interest? We are unmistakably drawn to the concept of online influence, and the quantification through numbers creates a scoring system with baked-in gaming mechanics that drag us into a vortex of checking in, tweeting and pinning interest. Great line up on the panel, and a must-see must-go for anyone interested in what will inevitably become an important recruitment & job search metric. What is this guy’s influence in his chosen field?

Social Media Week starts next week. Wise Man Say will be there. You should be too.

Wise Man Say helps companies with their social recruiting. Available for hire: strategy, training, do-ing. Contact Hung at hung.lee@wisemansay.co.uk or 0207 739 9358

Damn.

Well, where the hell have I been? Well – so far this year – on holiday, mostly. But for the last 5 months of 2011, I was embedded with the great guys at BraveNewTalent, the careers social network & community site connecting the Facebook generation with Global Employers of Talent.

As Interim Head of Recruitment for this fast paced, rapid growth technology start up, my task was pretty clear – to design & implement a recruitment strategy that would deliver a department of 20+ highly skilled, in-demand open source developers to a tight End-Of-Year deadline.

Needless to say plenty of lessons were learned in the 4 1/2 months it took to do the job. I will be sharing some of these lessons with you throughout this season in the hope that you might learn from my mistakes and build upon some of the things that went right:

A teaser of what’s coming up.

1. Recruitment Agencies – Lessons From The Buy Side

This will be my attempt at detailing the experience of working with recruitment agencies as a vendor manager – what was good, what was bad, what worked & what didn’t. Whilst the overall balance of agency supplied vs direct hires was low (around 11%), some agents nevetheless proved to be excellent partners; others, of course, less so. I’ll be laying down some rules that both parties need to know before they decide to engage in a buyer / supplier relationship. It has it’s place, but not if you don’t know why

Sample titles:
Know Your Recruiter, Recruitment Tactics In 21st Century (In Sepia), Badly Performing PSL? It’s Really All Your Fault

2. How To Recruit PHP Developers

Not easy. No at all. But after hiring on average 4 per month I think I’ve got a handle on some of the ways you can do it. It might surprise some to know that not all of it is about ‘sourcing’. A great deal needs to be right before you even start thinking about go-to-market, so amongst the topics I’ll be covering will be the role of the CEO, the significance of the Employer Brand, the need for data, the importance of process and of having an assessment process you can trust. But also, the sourcing:

Sample titles:
The End Of Boolean Sourcing, Recruiting Active Candidates Is A Waste Of Time & Why Glen Cathey Is The Last Samurai

3. Bootstrap Recruitment Techniques

The ethos of Start Up doesn’t end when investment comes in. Bootstrapping recruitment was part of the challenge, and in truth, a real life test of the theory of being able to hire technically skilled staff without the use of traditional recruiter tools, services or cost.

I will be detailing a number of free or low cost recruitment techniques which you can and should use when recruiting for Open Source skills.

Sample titles:
Essential Google Extensions For Recruiters, Hacking Gated Communities, Best Sites To X-Ray

4. Recruiting Through Events

Don would be good

Old school is the New school in recruitment, and event based recruitment has returned in a very big way, especially as niche skill practitioners self identify into communities.

It’s a nice irony that Recruiting-at-places has emerged as one of the most interesting phenomena to come in the post social, digitized world, but as we’ll see in the season, turning full circle will become a recurring motif in the recruitment space. I have examples of where it worked and other’s of where it didn’t, and they’ll be thoughts on what I would do if we ever did it all over again.

Sample Titles:
Your Best Recruiters…..Aren’t Recruiters, Numbers Count, How To Recruit Effectively At The Silicon MilkRoundAbout

Naturally, I’ve not lost interest in the wider issues impacting recruitment beyond the start up scene. Expect a return of the Future of Recruitment interview series where I’ll be highlighting recruitment tech that are trying to do something different, a reboot of The Wise Man Show with the talking heads of the industry and a cascade of well researched (ahem) opinion on everything from CV’s (still?), interviewing, the use of video, of Talents in Pools, Networks & Communities, candidate experience, employer branding and all the rest of the ideological flotsam that constantly swirls around the topic of Social Recruiting.

Thanks for reading so far – it’s good to be back, whatever the Gods may say

Wise Man Say is available for hire. Strategy, Consulting, Training, Do-ing. Contact me at hung.lee@wisemansay.co.uk