Welland’s suggestion — or warning — could equally be applied to the recruitment technology market in 2012. Some of the most innovative technology available today for recruiters has been developed on British soil by small start-ups and is in global demand. Our Game Changers special sets out to show why and showcases not just the technology but the people behind it.
The six game-changing products featured here have all made their mark in 2012 and, with outward global expansion planned, 2013 looks to be an even bigger year for them. It’s remarkable given that three of them only launched or relaunched earlier this year.
What makes these products game-changers is that they provide recruiters with real solutions that deliver a real business benefit. Thankfully, the era of technology for technology’s sake is coming to an end.
Recruitment will always remain a high-touch people business but what these products show us is that the right technology, applied at the right time, can make us even better at what we do, whether it’s working faster, smarter or in completely new ways.
Meanwhile, in our Roll of Honour, we also salute stalwarts who can be credited with first putting Britain on the recruitment software industry map and there will doubtless be more development and innovation to come from these quarters. The combined talents of all the developers featured here means the UK’s recruiters can look forward to a rosy technology roadmap ahead.
2012 will be remembered as a great year for observing British talent performing on the world stage. We celebrate the brains behind the latest crop of game-changing recruitment technology here.
Allthetopbananas (ATTB) Mobile
What is it and why is it a game-changer?
A range of mobile applications developed for job boards, recruitment agencies and direct recruiters. What originally set them apart from many other mobile apps is a job alerts feature, which works across all the native platforms ATTB develops for. This lets a jobseeker know when a position that matches one they have previously searched for goes live in the app. Alerts are in a similar format to that of a text message and when the jobseeker clicks on the message, the app opens and takes them directly to the new job.
Every day, ATTB Mobile sends hundreds of thousands of alerts to the apps it has built and has had more than 1m of its apps created for job boards, agencies and direct recruiters downloaded. More than 30% of jobseekers that access its aggregator site are now doing so via a mobile device and ATTB expects this to rise to 50% next year.
ATTB’s mobile apps clients include PepsiCo, Sodexo, Intel, Pfizer and Research in Motion and major corporates in Scandinavia, the Middle East, Japan, Canada and the US as well as Europe. Apps are available in multiple languages and for multiple devices.
Who came up with the idea and why?
Commercial director and Allthetopbananas owner Cris Bradshaw explains that when Apple launched its apps store, ATTB became the first job site in the UK to launch a native app that jobseekers could download and search its jobs on in 2008. Such was the response from job boards and corporate HR teams that it decided to launch ATTB Mobile and take the Mobile Career App and Mobile Career Site products to market.
“We are seeing major shifts in attitude to mobile recruitment and the early adopters like PepsiCo have already harvested great benefits from their apps,” says Bradshaw. “Other key corporates and SMEs are rapidly adopting mobile app solutions, as they do not want to be left behind. It’s a bit like the re-run of the internet days, only much faster.”
The company plans to expand its mobile solution to the US and elsewhere in Europe over the coming year.
What can we expect to see over the next 12 months?
ATTB Mobile is working on integration with applicant tracking systems systems to allow a seamless ‘apply direct’ function from the mobile device.
Tell us something recruiters won’t know about you
As well as having 12 staff members, ATTB has three other key members of staff: Tibetan terrier Maddie, Clifford the Cavapoo (a cross between a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel and a miniature or toy poodle) and a miniature Dachshund called Theo. “They get so worn out after coding all morning that they tend to have a little siesta most afternoons,” jokes Bradshaw.
cube19
What is it and why is it a game-changer?
Cube19 uses advanced visualisation techniques to provide recruitment agencies with a vast amount of data and business intelligence in real-time, so executives and managers can manage more effectively and make more informed decisions.
What makes it different from other analytics software is that cube19 also allows agency leaders to provide data at an individual employee level with the ability to set up bespoke key performance indicators (KPIs) for a particular person.
It is also extremely fast — it can serve up pages and pages of data from Microsoft Excel in seconds — and can deliver it in the form of a snapshot if that is all a recruiter requires. Also, pie charts and boring graphs won’t be found within its analytical data, but far more visual and dynamic graphics are there to interact with.
In short, it takes analytics for recruitment firms to a new level. Following a period of research, the product went into development in September 2011 and was launched in May 2012. Cube19 was ranked in the startups.co.uk’s ‘2012 Start-ups 100’ list as one of the most innovative and disruptive new companies in the UK. The product is currently being rolled out to clients in the UK, US, Singapore, Hong Kong and Australia.
Who’s behind it and why?
Cube19 founder Dan McGuire landed his first job in recruitment at the consultancy SThree in 1999 when he was 18. A few years later he acquired a stake in the multi-posting and advertisement distribution specialist Broadbean Technology which was sold to DMGT in 2008. After the sale, McGuire analysed the vast amount of data the company had at its disposal but never used. “We found that, had the company been using it every day in the previous years, we would have made fundamentally different decisions on many key issues, many of which would have had a significant effect on our valuation,” he says. “It’s a common problem for a lot of companies and I realised that if I could find a way to deliver relevant and optimised information to every individual in a business and drive fact-based decision-making, the opportunities were limitless.”
What can we expect to see in the next 12 months?
Cube19 is doing in-depth analysis that looks at every possible way to derive more value from staff, clients and the business as a whole so look out for more analytics tools.
Tell us something recruiters might not know about you?
After Broadbean was sold, McGuire had intended to take a year off to travel. He went to Asia and Australia for three months and decided to come back for the summer before going away again. Before he knew it he had invested in three technology companies, was sitting on three company boards and had founded cube19.
ebsta
What is it and why is it a game-changer?
A toolbar for browsers and the Microsoft email package Outlook, ebsta automatically alerts users to relevant information from different sources when they are working online.
Currently used by more than 5,000 recruiters worldwide, it has proved a big hit because it links the previously disparate worlds of online candidate and information sources such as social media and job boards, with internal candidate relationship management (CRM) systems and the Outlook inbox. For instance, if a recruiter is looking at a candidate’s online profile, ebsta will alert it to any information held by the company inside the CRM system or Outlook about that person such as relevant records, contact details, notes and email. It means recruiters can work far more quickly and it maximises the value of the information contained within the CRM.
Product development began in April 2009 and ebsta, in the guise of Drag & Tag, launched in June 2010. It was relaunched as ebsta earlier this year (the name change came about after the developers decided the product didn’t ‘drag and tag’ any more) and has quickly grown its user base beyond the UK, to the US, Canada, Hong Kong and Australia. The US could soon be its biggest market.
Who came up with the idea and why?
Founders Guy Rubin and Zac Roberts have worked in the online recruitment sector for many years and saw the same issues over and over again. “Management, for good reasons, wanted their staff to work from a central corporate database but the staff wanted to use up-to-date websites and email systems,” says Rubin. “Individually people were very efficient at maintaining their own data but the company’s data as a whole was often poorly maintained.”
The pair knew there must be a better way of doing this and came up with the idea for ebsta. Rubin, who is chief executive, worked as an auditor before helping to set up iProfile, a technology start-up in 2000 with similar goals to LinkedIn. He left with Roberts in 2007 and spent two years providing consultancy services to online media companies and recruitment businesses.
As chief technology officer, Roberts, who has worked with Rubin for the past 12 years, heads up the product development team. The company has doubled its user base and staff since 2010.
What can we expect to see over the next 12 months?
In the next year, ebsta will continue to integrate with third-party data sources such as CRM system developers and leading professional networks. It also plans to develop a more scalable sales model and is looking to release a Google Chrome version early 2013.
Tell us something recruiters won’t know about you
If founders Rubin and Roberts were not business partners they would be mortal enemies. Rubin’s side of the office is a Tottenham Hotspur shrine, while Roberts prefers the armoury of Arsenal.
Firefish Software
What is it and why is it a game-changer?
Firefish is an all-in-one web-based recruitment platform. It set out to be different from other recruitment software by enabling firms to manage and run their business from their recruitment website. It has built-in workflow from advertising jobs through to hiring as well as tools for intelligent matching, tapping into social media channels, interview and assessment management, recruitment and web analytics, compliance management and contract management.
Aimed at the entrepreneur-led SME recruitment businesses, it helps that audience to add value to their business by increasing their web presence and building social communities. It provides social media sharing buttons on every job advertisement which encourages candidates to share jobs with Facebook, Google+, Xing and some 318 other social networks.
It is one of the most democratic software products on the market with Firefish users involved in the decision-making process over development: users put forward new ideas and every six weeks Firefish adopts the top two. It recently formed a partnership with the online verification service miiCard to allow candidates to validate their identity on the web in real-time. Users are UK-based and while it plans to expand internationally, right now its focus is to meet the needs of UK recruiters — which Firefish says works in its favour against its US competitors.
Who came up with the idea and why?
Firefish founder and CEO Wendy McDougall has been involved in the recruitment and technology sector since 1996. She started the recruitment firm 9-20 back in 2004, which focuses on the technology sector so was aware of the latest advances in the web and integrated IT. “However, I couldn’t find any vendor moving this way,” she recalls. “In my frustration I decided to hire an in-house development team to build our own software. We started to win a lot of awards for our approach to online recruitment and were approached by other companies wanting to use our software.”
Glasgow-based Firefish Software was spun out in early 2010. Andrew Mackay is co-founder and technical director and has worked with McDougall at 9-20 since 2006 as lead developer and head of IT. Firefish has doubled its staff and turnover over the past year and since January the user base has grown by 173%.
What can we expect to see over the next 12 months?
More in the areas of social and mobile and where appropriate, it will work with third parties to add more functionality.
Tell us something recruiters won’t know about you
McDougall admits to being a “geek at heart that loves recruiting”. “But if I wasn’t doing this I would be skiing in the Alps or windsurfing in the Med,” she says, adding that the name derives from ‘fishing for candidates’. “We felt it expressed a bit of fun and personality, which we hope reflects the overall experience of being a Firefish client.”
Mystery Applicant
What is it and why is it a game-changer?
Mystery Applicant is an anonymous online feedback mechanism that gathers information on a candidate’s recruitment experience in real-time.
Although it was only launched in January this year, it has already received international recognition. And after years of talking about the need to monitor and improve the candidate experience, a developer has finally come up with a simple and effective tool to do so. Previously, such an exercise could take several weeks with data needing to be collected and analysed but with Mystery Applicant it can happen in an instant.
Applicants are invited to give their opinion by answering a set of questions and the results are fed back to the recruiter/employer via a dashboard so that they are able to identify the strengths and weaknesses in their candidate experience. Mystery Applicant can benchmark the candidate score internally with different recruiters and departments as well as externally with different industries.
The aim is to create new industry standards that will give all recruiters an opportunity to measure and benchmark their candidate experience. The user can filter the data by date, region, department, job family, individual recruiter as well as around key diversity statistics such as age, gender or education. The product took around 18 months to develop and behind a deceptively simple interface and dashboard lie some complex layers.
Who came up with the idea and why?
Founder Nick Price had worked in employer branding research for a number of years. He felt there had to be a better way of delivering data in real-time and decided there was no better place to start than with the candidate experience.
“Job applicants are frequently not treated as well as they should be and we can only improve this by measuring where things are going wrong, having real accountability and measuring the impact of change,” he says. “Marketing departments have always had a handle on exactly what consumers are saying about their products and services but HR and recruitment teams haven’t always been able to say the same about their candidates.”
The company launched in January and is building its user base. It says that the fourth quarter of the year is going to be a period of noticeable growth with expected client gains in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific.
What can we expect to see over the next 12 months?
It is developing the capability for candidates to deliver feedback via their mobile at different points of the process. Mystery Applicant will also be utilising its dashboard to monitor other areas such as post-hire feedback and will be looking to share its aggregated results and benchmarked industry data.
Tell us something recruiters won’t know about you?
Price spent his formative years growing up on the Isle of Wight and is still an Islander at heart along with being an avid Southampton fan. One of his first jobs was working in a gift shop on the Isle of Wight that sold a combination of holiday shoes, ice cream and live rag worm for fishing bait — although not from the same counter.
TribePad
What is it and why is it a game-changer?
TribePad is a global end-to-end recruitment and engagement platform which spans talent attraction through to post-hire but also serves the needs of an internal workforce in terms of career development and internal opportunities.
It can rightly claim to be one of the leading next-generation recruitment solutions and among its key strengths is the ability to build social networks and talent communities so that recruiters and employers can better engage and communicate with candidates.
Thanks to an extensive set of application programming interfaces (APIs), it also offers a high level of integration, allowing it to interact with a wide range of other platforms and sometimes act as an enhancement to legacy software. It can also usefully be positioned between an organisation’s corporate website and its applicant tracking system (ATS).
Alternatively, TribePad can provide full ATS functionality. Jobs can be posted to social media channels as well as job boards and a corporate site and at the end of the process real-time analytics help recruiters to find out what worked and what didn’t.
It also provides intelligent matching of candidate to positions and this can be applied to internal as well as external candidates.
The product, which also runs in the mobile environment, has 600,000 global users and TribePad does fortnightly roll-outs of software updates. It won Technology Innovation honours in Recruiter’s Awards for Excellence 2012, sponsored by Eploy.
Who came up with the idea and why?
Co-founder Lisa Scales has more than 15 years’ experience of HR and recruitment, having worked in-house for two City law firms and two global recruitment companies. She’s been immersed in the world of social recruitment and associated tools since 2008, and says the company saw an opportunity to “disrupt and fix” a marketplace which has been “broken” for years.
“The idea for TribePad came after working with a client and seeing how they struggled with candidate communications and engagement,” she explains. “They weren’t leveraging the social web for talent attraction, so we took the opportunity to do more for them. We took a risk by suggesting this fundamental change but the timing was right in terms of the explosion of social platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn, so it worked and TribePad was born.”
Co-founder Dean Sadler is an expert at utilising open source technologies to benefit businesses and was the CTO of PlusNet, the now BT-owned internet service provider. Sadler is responsible for all development, infrastructure and technology within TribePad.
What can we expect over the next 12 months?
Enhancements to mobile applications, more semantic search and matching capabilities.
Tell us something recruiters won’t know about you
If she wasn’t in recruitment Scales says she would like to be a professional showjumper. Sadler’s aspirations extend to renting out deck chairs on a beach in the Algarve. Scales says the company buys all of the latest technology, including a large number of mobile phones, and everyone has to keep these in their pockets. “It can take five minutes for us to work out which one is ringing sometimes,” she says.
Roll of Honour
The following deserve recognition as they have stretched the capabilities of the recruitment sector for a number of years, and continue to do so
Bond International
Established in 1973 and listed on the Stock Exchange since 1997, Bond is the biggest provider of specialist staffing software for agencies around the globe, with a growing customer base in the corporate market. Headquartered in West Sussex, it also has offices in the US, Australia, South Africa, Japan and Hong Kong.
Broadbean Technology
Launched by Kelly Robinson, this piece of job posting distribution software is used by around 33,000 users around the world to help them source candidates from all the various online recruitment channels. Headquartered in London, it also has offices in the US and Australia.
Daxtra Technologies
Founded 10 years ago in Edinburgh by Steve Finch, Andrei Mikheev and Sergei Makhmudov, Daxtra has remained at the forefront of CV parsing, search and match, and other technologies which automate key parts of the recruitment process. It serves a global client base with offices in the UK, US and Asia-Pacific.
Eploy
Founders Chris Bogh and Paul Burgess were way ahead of the curve when they developed a web-based recruitment product at the end of the nineties. Then the term was application service provider-based (ASP); now it’s all about the cloud. Built for the internet from the ground up, a key differentiator for Eploy is the high level of customisation it permits.
JobServe
While working as IT contractors, Robbie Cowling and John Witney figured there had to be a better way to find employment in the sector than traditional media. So why not use email? In 1994, the world’s first jobs-by-email service was launched and in the same year JobServe was launched as the first recruitment website. Cowling went on to found the Jobg8 network.
Microdec
Formed back in 1983 by Clive Seagers and Mike Fitzgerald, Microdec quickly became one of the leading recruitment software suppliers in the world and has offices in the UK and Australia. Its highly configurable software is used by some of the biggest global staffing agencies, as well as start-ups and one-man bands.
