Today, we are excited to announce a public beta for a new Bullhorn service called PowerFill. PowerFill is a network of hundreds of staffing and recruiting firms working together to fill jobs and place candidates. PowerFill network members use our new, rich collaboration tools to securely exchange information about jobs and candidates, messages, contracts and other information.

We created PowerFill to help staffing and recruiting professionals with one of the largest problems they face: low fill rates. A low fill rate not only hurts the top and bottom line of most staffing firms, but it also keeps customer satisfaction low, which forces the end-client to shop their business to multiple agencies.

By collaborating with other firms in the network, PowerFill users can:

• Make more placements to improve their top and bottom line
• Improve customer satisfaction by increasing fill rates and covering more of their business
• Gain efficiency by using sales or recruiting resources from outside of their company. PowerFill lets you focus on what you do best.
• Take control of the customer by filling more of their clients’ orders, allowing for more exclusives and orders.

After completing some extensive research around employer and recruiter networks, we uncovered some important insights: Recruiters like the idea of getting access to additional candidates and other recruiters, but they are concerned about losing job orders or candidates to firms due to unscrupulous behavior. With PowerFill, we have addressed these concerns in a number of ways. To find out more about steps we’ve taken, please refer to the security section of the web site. 

Recruiters also expressed concern that many networks tend to die out due to lack of job orders. Because BH has the largest staffing and recruiting agency user community connected via a common software-as-a-service platform, PowerFill users are afforded access to hundreds of thousands of jobs orders located in the Bullhorn system, assuring there is a multitude of job orders at all times.

As of today, we have launched one PowerFill community in IT staffing. If you’re a recruiter in any other market like accounting, healthcare, legal, or biotech and you like the idea of working with other firms, the public beta is also open to your company. As more members join representing these different industries, the opportunities to collaborate with your peers to make placements will continue to expand.

PowerFill is currently in beta, free to use and completely optional. You can invite other agencies to join or use the collaboration tools for existing partners. Try it out and join hundreds of Bullhorn customers already taking advantage of PowerFill’s business enhancing features today.

To learn more, visit www.powerfill.com

How many times do you log in to multiple job boards per day?  Do you get frustrated that each source has different search technology, screens and navigation? How much time could you save if you didn’t have to review results from every different source you use? 

Let’s face it - finding the best talent for your clients is no simple task. That’s why Bullhorn has been continually working to streamline the candidate searching process.

Today, I’m very excited to deliver a major enhancement that will help you place your candidates faster than ever before…Introducing Bullhorn Universal Search

Bullhorn Universal Search simplifies the sourcing process, allowing you to simultaneously search more than 70 million resumes on over 10,000 free and paid job boards and social networks, including major social media sites, Monster, HotJobs, CareerBuilder, Dice, Craigslist and the open Web.

The Secret Sauce:  Advanced Matching – Saving You Weeks of Time a Year!

While the shear depth of sources in Universal Search helps make finding great candidates easier, advanced matching helps recruiters be more productive by dramatically reducing the number of results needed to review by intelligently predicting which candidates are the best fit for the job. 

For example, I recently ran a search for a java developer in the Boston area across multiple paid and free sources.  I got 123 results, and of those, I felt 30 matched my keywords well enough to warrant a detailed review. Do I have time to review 30 potential candidates?  No, but previously I had to find the time. Wouldn’t it be much better if I only needed to review say, 10, instead of 30? Absolutely!

After using Universal Search’s advanced matching capability, I’m left with the nine best candidate resumes at the top of my list – now that’s more like it. In this example, I saved more than one hour by only having to review nine results instead of 30. Think about how that adds up.  If I run one search every day and get similar results, that’s about six hours a week, three days a month, and 37 days a year of time that I would have spent searching through resumes. How much additional revenue could you produce with 37 more days added to your recruiting calendar?

So how does advanced matching work? 

1. Universal Search looks across the sources you selected and brings back results that match your keywords. 

2. It looks through a database of more than one million historical job placements to find job descriptions just like yours, and then extracts the important attributes shared by the candidates who successfully filled them.

3. Universal Search filters your search results using these success attributes so the ones that are most likely to lead to placement are at the top of your list, effectively filtering out candidates that aren’t a good fit. 

Bullhorn Universal Search is available today. To learn more, read the FAQ, or contact your Bullhorn account representative.

As I’m sure you’re all aware, Apple has finally released the fourth version of the iPhone to an eagerly awaiting public. While this release has been highly anticipated by iPhone and tech fanatics across the world, we have an exciting announcement of our own: the official release of Bullhorn Mobile Sync for iPhone and iPad.

Now, you can manage your business on the go on your iPhone or iPad without worrying about manually updating your Bullhorn account. Bullhorn Mobile Sync adds automated tracking and synchronization to Apple’s email and calendar functions without requiring you to learn new software. You get the best of both worlds - the native iPhone experience you love, plus effortless integration with the power of Bullhorn!

To read the full release, click here.

If you would like to enable Mobile Sync for your iPhone, please review the requirements and then contact your Bullhorn account manager. To find out more about Bullhorn Mobile’s full capabilities, go to www.bullhorn.com/mobility.php

Sometimes I find myself scratching my head when I think about how things work in the industry—low order-to-fill ratios, in particular, is one issue I have yet to figure out. Why do so many job orders go unfilled, some without even a single cycle of recruiting time? As the market crawls out of the recession, job orders are flowing in again. But many firms are short staffed, which means covering every job order is going to be a big  challenge.
With this in mind, I’ve spent a lot of time talking to our clients about how they allocate their time. In particular, how they decide whether or not to work an incoming job order.
Not All Orders Are Created Equal

I hear over and over again that managers use several rules of thumb to prioritize orders. They work those that are from clients that:

• Have a long-standing relationship
• Pay a great rate
• Are relatively easy to recruit for

These criteria shift as the market changes and client relationships evolve. A good fee today could look low in as little as three months. Clients can agree to give you an exclusive on their orders and that would dramatically change their rank in the food chain.
 

Just Use the Force

The challenge here is that the job order prioritization scheme is highly subjective and ultimately locked in people’s heads, like “The Force” in Star Wars. Some account managers try to use a flag on the job order within their ATS to designate that it’s higher priority, but these flags can become chronically abused and thus, ignored. 
Job order prioritization strikes me as too critical to business success to remain so subjective. Consider its impact on critical factors like:

• Client retention: while some firms are incredibly disciplined about saying “no” when they’re too busy to fill an order, most feel they have to tell clients “yes” because clients who hear “no” too frequently eventually stop coming back. But if staff is not prioritizing the jobs of important clients and they go unfilled, they may stop coming back anyway.
• Revenue: prioritizing jobs that have higher probability of success and bigger spreads means more will close and those that do will generate higher margin
• Expenses: given that industry turnover is 30-40%, at any given time, about a third of a firm’s recruiting staff is fumbling around in the dark before they master “the force” and can prioritize themselves the orders that most deserve their attention.

A Possible Solution: Deal Scoring

The solution is to devise a numeric deal score on each order as it’s received. Yes, I was a math major, so of course my solution involves math, but bear with me. The idea here is that you could look at the things like a client’s historical orders-to-fill rate, the fee or spread on the order, the client’s responsiveness to submissions, even the availability of the required skill sets in your candidate pool and give each order a deal score. It could be as simple as giving the deal a number from 1 to 10. Then, recruiters could simply come in each morning, sort the orders by the deal score and get to work on those at the top of the list.

This concept is not new to business.  In fact, here at Bullhorn we use this approach to solve a similar problem. Last year, Karen Maloney and our Marketing team generated well over 10,000 potential sales leads – way too many for the Sales team to follow up with an equal degree of diligence. So leads get scored based on where the prospect is in the buying cycle, the potential size of the opportunity, etc. Sales can then focus effort on those leads most likely to generate revenue. This is a well-established approach that “baked in” to our marketing software. 

By developing a deal scoring process, you will be able to see if a recruiter spends time on low priority orders and point them in the right direction. Ideally, this will help to drive down recruiter turnover and decrease payroll expense, plus improve retention of key clients and grow revenue.
Has anyone tried to implement something like this?  If so, how well has it worked?

Part One

Introduction: What is inbound marketing?
 
The days of relying solely on trade shows, direct mail, print ads and cold calls are over. As human behavior continues to adapt to the “digital age”, the marketing game is rapidly emerging to allow for something that for decades executives have craved: low cost, high quality business leads and measurable results.
 
Though outbound marketing still remains valuable, the evolution of new media communications and inbound marketing is proving the highest short and long-term return for businesses across all industries worldwide.  Rather than draining your budget on traditional marketing channels with dreams of catching your candidates’ or clients’ eyes, holding their attention and then persuading them to buy, inbound marketing flips traditional outreach upside down. As a staffing or recruiting firm, you want job seekers and hiring managers to come to you.  By developing a strong digital marketing infrastructure, you will consistently show up in the heart of where your audiences are searching and eventually the leads will begin to pour in.  
 
Understanding Inbound Marketing: The Octopus Approach
 
In explaining inbound marketing, let’s explore natural survival instincts that have been in place for centuries. Take the octopus, one of the most fascinating animals of the sea.  As a large creature, it’s not easy for the octopus to attract prey without seeming overbearing. 

Rather than creating a scene by awkwardly chasing after food that is much faster than itself, the octopus understands its surrounding environment and changes color to fit in with algae- a plant that thousands of sea creatures feed off. With very little movement, the octopus waits patiently for hungry creatures to come feeding, and the rest is history. 

Photo: Octopus blending in with surrounding algae

Like the octopus, your ultimate goal should be to position your website or blog among the digital surroundings that your target audiences (job seekers and hiring managers) are feeding off.   Keep in mind, the difference between a well thought out inbound marketing strategy and the above analogy, is that once you do manage to capture the attention of your audience, it’s not wise to attack them. There is nothing more annoying as a customer than to find out that you’ve been tricked and blatantly sold to. Inbound marketing should be permission-based, meaning your audiences choose to come to you and then decide to stay for a while. To do this well you will need to invest some time and resources into studying the behaviors of your audiences, learning how online technology and search engines operate, and understanding the different inbound marketing channels available.
 
This marketing series will explore, piece-by-piece, some of the more vital channels available and how each can be adapted by staffing and recruiting firms to enhance digital inbound leads. The series will cover topics including, audience mapping, search engine optimization, pay-per-click advertising, social media marketing, community building, digital public relations, lead generation, streamlining process through technology and tracking.
 
Stay tuned for part two of our series, “Audience Mapping”.
 

Other great inbound marketing resources:
 
Inbound Marketing VS Outbound Marketing: http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/2989/Inbound-Marketing-vs-Outbound-Marketing.aspx

Lead Generation Is About Being Found
http://www.ducttapemarketing.com/blog/2009/02/24/lead-generation-is-about-being-found/

Wayne Gretzky was an Inbound Marketer
 http://pauldunay.com/wayne-gretzky-was-an-inbound-marketer/

In 1999 we launched Bullhorn, an application exclusively delivered via Software as a Service or SaaS. At the time, people told us that the internet was for buying books and other people’s used stuff, not for enterprise software. I must have heard a thousand times, “large companies will never host their data on the internet”. Today, the market has turned 180 degrees and the world’s largest staffing firms will only consider cloud-based, zero-install solutions. Premised-based applications (i.e., those that involve a server on site or software installed on desktops) have officially been put on the endangered species list.

Since day one, a desire to challenge status quo in the industry with game-changing innovation has fueled Bullhorn’s efforts.  And, today we announced the launch of our latest innovation, the Bullhorn Marketplace- the industry’s first destination for staffing and recruiting software applications and services. Much like the iPhone and Facebook have opened their platforms to the development community with much success, Bullhorn has now opened its application platform to partners, customers and developers. With access to a rich set of APIs, now Bullhorn’s Alliance Partners can bring their products and services, all pre customized with Bullhorn, directly to our fast growing community of over 15,000 staffing and recruiting professionals worldwide.
 

What this means for our Customers

The number of technologies and online services that enhance productivity in the staffing industry has exploded - from job boards to communications tools, back office services to assessments and social networks. Recruiters and sales people are no longer judged on their ability to work a phone. The myriad of applications they use every waking hour on their PCs and mobile devices enhances their edge in the market.  Likewise, the integration between the back and front office is no longer a demand from executive teams, but an absolute necessity.

By opening up our platform to our partners, customers and the broader development community, we are breaking all of the chains that held true innovation back for decades. Now, a small, emerging vendor has the same opportunity that the large vendors have to integrate with our platform. And, we’ve made the evaluation, selection and deployment of these integrated offerings as easy as a few clicks.

• Wondering how to connect Bullhorn with your Accounting System?
• Want to tie your phone system to your client and candidate database?
• Want to eliminate cumbersome data entry from your work with VMS systems?
• Want to quickly automate and record phone screens for a list of qualified candidates?
• Our partners in the Bullhorn Marketplace have answered these questions and many others, while eliminated all of the pain typically associated with integration. No friction, no technical discussions of how, or how much to integrate - customers just pick a solution and get back to running their businesses.
   

From SaaS, to PaaS

The Bullhorn Marketplace is yet another evolutionary step as we emerge from SaaS (Software as a Service), to PaaS (Platform as a Service). And the value that this step presents to our customers and partners is 100% unmatched within our industry. By taking down the technical barriers between our customers and the products and services they use, Bullhorn has dramatically improved the experience for everyone involved: Bullhorn, its partners and of course, our customers.

So, I encourage you to check out the Bullhorn Marketplace and give our partners’ integrated offerings a try. If you don’t see one of your partners there, please point them in our direction. We’d love to have them join our team and I’m sure they’d love to gain access to our growing network of over 15,000 staffing and recruiting professionals.

As one of the newest members of the Bullhorn team, I’m excited to introduce myself to the Bullhorn customer community. I recently relocated from California to take on the role of Director of Product Marketing here where I’m responsible for developing and implementing go-to product market strategies and programs.  One of the things I’m focused on in my initial days is developing an understanding of the Bullhorn user community.  In a recent post, I blogged about what I call the Bullhorn Effect, or the impact of Bullhorn’s capabilities.

Today, I’m looking to hear from active Bullhorn users on which Bullhorn features produce the highest level of impact in your job.    And if you are willing to provide input on the following over the next two weeks, I’ll send one of you a $25 Starbucks gift card.

- What feature or features help you to make an impact, by increasing fill ratios, sourcing better candidates, etc.?
- What features can’t you imagine living without, and which save you tons of time each day?
- What is the impact of those features and how have they enabled you to become a higher impact recruiter and/or add business value for your clients/candidates?

Please use the comments space below to respond to these three bullets or if you prefer, feel free to drop me a note by email at jwall at bullhorn dot com.

As I mentioned, I’m going to send a $25 Starbucks gift card to one of the people who comments on the blog. The winner will be selected at random.

Update to post on March 4,2010

Wow, I’ve heard from a lot of you, but only by email.  So thanks for that, and feel free to keep it coming if you are just reading this post for the first time.   I wanted to call one thing out, as I’ve gotten a lot input, but also a ton of feature requests.  Bullhorn has a great community oriented web application for feature requests called Bullhorn Brainstorm.  You can access it by clicking on “Bullhorn Brainstorm” from the Support menu inside of Bullhorn.  Its a way for all the Bullhorn users out there to provide input and vote on the feature they want to see.  So if you have a feature you are looking for, please feel free to let me know, but I will ask you to search for it in Brainstorm, and if its there, vote for it, if its not there, then please enter it.    Brainstorm helps everyone because it provides a way for us to track and organize all our feature requests, it also makes it easy for us to prioritize based on customer input, as well as let people see the status of their specific request.

Thanks for reading.  I’m looking forward to hearing from you.

Jonathan Wall
Director of Product Marketing

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