It seems that every new entrant in the recruiting space is talking about one thing: matching.
Matching is what will make us better than the current crop of job boards because you won't get as much garbage in your inbox. Candidates will appreciate matching because they won't be stuck behind hundreds of other people, and if they're highly qualified, their resume will rise to the top. Every VC firm evaluating bets in the human capital space will love the term because they see this as an evolutionary necessity for job boards - and they all have some half-baked vision about funding the category-killing eHarmony of job boards.
The fact is that matching technology already exists - a lot of it just hasn't been applied to the job board industry (i.e. the mass market consumer). Some ATSes already use what's called "concept search" technology from other vendors to group sets of resume keywords together to help you identify similar sets of candidates - this is one of the lighter approaches to matching, as it's keyword driven and based on resumes. ATS vendors also use structured data and workflow approaches (Taleo is the most famous in this area) to create a sort of talent supply chain. Companies like DDI and PreVisor (and scores of others now) use validated competencies to make matches - it's questionable whether this approach could be used as early in the recruiting cycle as a job board site as it's now primarily used after some form of basic match has been made. Still other companies use personality traits or skills test to help make a cultural match or ensure that someone can do what they say they can do.
Over the next 5 years, you will likely see a range of experiments with matching technology, from semantic and concept matching to structured data and personality/competency profiling. The one that will win will not only figure out how to make the match, but also to drive the most relevant candidates at the lowest possible cost, essentially re-inventing the business model of the modern job board (if that's possible).
It's about to get interesting...
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Wow, is that a new buzzword? To your point, we've been talking about it for years over here on the Technology Vendor side. When I read your post I had to check the calendar, I thought I might have slipped into a wormhole and found myself back in 1999.
Posted by: George L. | February 28, 2007 at 06:43 AM
what's old is new again, isn't it?
Posted by: Dave Lefkow | February 28, 2007 at 01:44 PM