The Dream Software
a New Generation of Sourcing Software Tools
Presenter: Irina Shamaeva,
Partner, Chief Sourcer, Brain Gain Recruiting
Founder, People Sourcing Certification Program
http://sourcingcertification.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/irinashamaeva
http://twitter.com/braingain
Blog: http://booleanstrings.com
Outline
• Sourcing Methods Evolution
– The Easy Ways to Source: Job Boards
– Googling
– LinkedIn
• Candidates That Are Not Found
– Distributed Profiles
• The Dream Software Definition
– Cross-Referencing: Challenges
• Major Players: Overview
• LinkedIn’s Talent Pipeline, an Unexpected Competitor
• What’s Next?
Disclaimer
• I am not affiliated with any of the tool
providers, job boards, or with LinkedIn
• Views are my own
The Easy Ways to Source: Job Boards; ATS
• Full information: resumes; contact info
• Structured data: parsed resumes
• Faceted search:
The Hard Way To Source: Googling
• Google searches for web pages based on the basic
web page elements: a title, a URL, images, phrases
• We are looking for professional profiles
• Translating from English to Googlean is hard…
• Also, Google can only access the surface data
LinkedIn, “the” Business Network
• 200MLN profiles
• Structured search
• But my neighbor Ellen, a super SASprogrammer, a Ph.D, is not on LinkedIn
• LinkedIn profiles are not resumes; most have
insufficient data and lack keywords (example
on next slide)
Candidates That Are Not Found
on LinkedIn
• This is the candidate whose resume from
Indeed.com the hiring manager liked the best
Should We Search on Each Site??
Candidates That Are Not Found
• Even if we go to several different sites for
sourcing, we will not find some candidates:
– If different social profiles have different pieces
that, combined, pre-qualify a potential candidate,
then no single search on any of these sources
would select the person
• Example: the GitHub profile shows software
engineering skills but doesn’t have a location;
LinkedIn has the location but no keywords
Candidates Without Ways to Contact
• Additionally, on some sites, a profile may prequalify a potential candidate, but there’s no
contact info and no messaging capacity
• Cross-referencing helps but may be laborintensive
• The ideal candidate
did not respond on Indeed
Distributed Profiles
The Dream Software
The Dream Software would search for distributed
profiles. By a “distributed profile” I mean
professional information about a person
collected from many sources where she has
some presence, such as the evidence of her
skills, experience, location, current employer,
certifications, education, contact info, or any
other info.
– (posted in Nov 2011 on my blog http://booleanstrings.com )
The Pioneers (2011)
2/2013: Major Players: an Overview
• TalentBin
• Dice / theSocialCV
• Entelo
• Gild
• RemarkableHire
Terminology Variations
•
•
•
•
Distributed Profiles - IS
Implicit web resumes - TB
Breadcrumbs - TB
Digital Footprints - TB
– Communication Vectors - TB
• Aggregated social data - Entelo
• Web’s largest talent database – Entelo
– Communication channels - Entelo
The Dream Software,
a Universal Challenge: Ranking
• If we have a large number of distributed
profiles…
• …and can search by locations, skills, and
keywords…
– Great! 
• But how should the search results be ranked?
• More generally, how does the tool provider stand out
from the crowd?
The Ranking Challenge
• Each of these tools has addressed ranking in its own
way
TalentBin
• Has a brand name
• Thoroughly covers software engineering
• Has been expanding to cover: patents;
medical publications; mailing archives
• Large indexed database
• Ranks skills, such as programming languages
– Based on the activity and the “influence” on
professional networks
• Uses a sophisticated skills taxonomy
Look where the candidates actually *are*!
Social Networks
Software Engineering Specific
Other Professional Sources
Design Specific
Patents
Mailing Lists
Journals
Vertical Discipline Sources
Horizontal Professional Sources
We convert digital footprints into profiles
Social
Vertical
Publications
Mailing Lists
TB Ranking: Skills
•
•
•
•
Software engineering focus
Pleasant User Interface
Ranking: “is likely to make a move”
Add-on named Sonar also watches companies
Entelo Ranking:
Recently Updated
TheSocialCV - 2011
• UK-based
• Searching is triggered
by social activity
• Strong “semantic”
component
• Ranking: Active online
Dice Open Web
• Continues theSocialCV lineage
• The User Interface is nicely integrated with
Dice’s
• Needs to expand the target population
coverage (currently 2MLN)
Gild
• Software Engineers only
• Ranking: the code quality
– Gild analyzes publicly available software code
– Then, watches what engineers, who have written
lots of good code, do, and looks for others “like”
them
Remarkable Hire
• Ranking: “Social Evidence”
Dream Software vs. LinkedIn
• A BIG problem:
– LinkedIn is a “walled garden”
• LinkedIn is against its data being used in
volumes
– Even the public profile data
– Quote from a LI manager at a meeting: We do not
want to become Linked-Out
LinkedIn’s Talent Pipeline,
an Unexpected Competitor
• LinkedIn Recruiter has disabled export in Excel…
• However, LinkedIn now offers the Talent Pipeline
– It’s not a CRM or an ATS
– It’s a way to import your data into LinkedIn and be
able to search across your data and the LI data
– Imported data is automatically cross-referenced with
member profiles
– Powerful!
Example: Input & the Result
Now What?
• Make your choices with your eyes open
• Neither LinkedIn Talent Pipeline nor Dream
Software products (nor Job Boards) cover
“everything”
– The Talent Pipeline and the Dream Software cover
different territories, all of them important
– Can be combined if you have the budget
– You can compensate for either by clever crossreferencing if no budget
Learn To Cross-Reference
• Free tools
– Rapportive
– Falcon.io
– (many more)
– (happy
to talk offline)
What’s Next?
• My wishes for the future
– Dream Software slows down on inventing ranking and
instead concentrates on reliable profiles’ merge and the
volume of the data collected
– Dream Software gives us control over the sort order
– Dream software prompts for ways for the user to reach
potential candidates, based on the users’ networks
– Dice prospers as a job board with a Dream add-on
– LinkedIn releases its public data to the public so that the
Dream Software has verified captured LinkedIn data
– LinkedIn allows export, not just import
– LinkedIn fixes bugs
Boolean Strings &
People Sourcing
• Blog http://booleanstrings.com
• Largest Sourcers’ Community:
– "Boolean Strings" Group on LinkedIn
– Boolean Strings Network
• People Sourcing Certifications
– http://sourcingcertification.com
• I am available for sourcing/research
Q&A