Art, thanks for coming on
No problem. I’m not used to Skype video etiquette so…
Don’t worry about it Art – you look great. Give the readers of Wise Man Say the lowdown on Bulhorn Reach. In digest form:
Bulhorn Reach is a tool for recruiters to leverage social medias & search engines to find great talent.
Why are you still in BETA? We want to go!
Oh…we’re just getting started. We opened up the BETA a few weeks ago. In terms of the vision for Bulhorn Reach, there is lot left to be done, especially in terms of social media, leveraging those networks. We’re only just scratching the surface. What you see today on Bulhorn Reach is a good tool, but the question is how to help recruiters truly leverage social media? Lot left to be done, so that’s why we are still in BETA. We’re getting a lot of feedback…..
…and that this is?
We’ve heard a mix of responses. A lot of the time, people come back and they really love it. Some other people are saying that they like it, but they really would like to see this feature or that function put into the software.
Here’s what I think. People who aren’t aware of Social Media see Bulhorn Reach is positive, a way into the social web. Those are already embedded into it, think it isn’t social enough.
…….(Art disagrees)……It’s mixed. We get different views from different people, some not always what you expect. Some of the more in tuned recruiters out there, who have socially enabled their business, who have lots of connections on LinkedIn and followers on Twitter, have really taken well to the product. In reality, Bulhorn Reach is only as good as your connections, and how strong that this. For example if you have 100 connections on LinkedIn – who are really good connections of yours that can amplify what you do – then Bulhorn Reach works very well. If you have a disengaged audience or a very small network, then there are limitations to how well it can work for you.
Our question is: how do we help you leverage those connections? How do we spread the message about what you do? Bulhorn Reach can be seen as a marketing tool for the recruiter – a way of bringing recruitment marketing to the 21st century.
Isn’t it fair to say that you’ve got to know where your ambition should stop? Is there is a risk that there is Bulhorn….over reach?
Well, that’s a good question.
For us – Bulhorn – what we do is build software that makes it really easy for recruiters to do their job. We build Application Tracking Systems, Customer Relationship Management systems, we build Salesforce automation tools……now we also have a marketing tool, to help recruiters market who they are and what they are working on really easy. When will we stop? When we hear recruiters say it’s delightful and it accomplished the task! We’re already hearing it and we’ve only been going for 4 months. Each thing that you see today will get a lot better, and each thing that we introduce will be really good. We are not going to distract people with lots of bells and whistles – there are going to be 3 or 4 things that Bulhorn Reach can do and we’re going to do them really well.
Let’s talk about those 3-4 things
OK. So let’s first talk about SEO. Not strictly a user function but something we thought was really important and we built into the product. That came about because we talked to a lot of folks whose websites………(thinks)………you know, they were the trees that fell in the forest. They’ve spend thousands of dollars, but they can’t be found on Google. And they don’t have more budget to pay for SEO expertise. So we thought: Why don’t we build SEO into the what these recruiters do? We can the SEO for them through Bulhorn Reach by aggregating recruiter activity, essentially operating like a link building firm for those recruiters who use our platform.
(we go off on a tangent on long tail SEO. Interesting but not that interesting. Check out the video if you want more details. Around 5.45 min mark )
Tell us about Radar
The signal to noise ratio is very low on the web. There is so much stuff on Twitter feed and LinkedIn Updates…….I don’t know anybody who tracks updates, apart from recruiters, and they have a hard time keeping up. It’s great information – people who update status, update profiles, get recommendations, start connecting with recruiters. That data is signalling that they are a potential mover. So we thought, this is currently being done visually – how can we surface this information to make it easier for the recruiter? How can we build algorithms that help bring up relevant status updates so that recruiters doesn’t have to watch the screen? This is how we came up with Radar. This way, we can present only relevant status updates, from your connections, that may give you a clue that one of your connections is looking for work. Essentially, what we are watching is the people for you and surfacing that relevant information for your attention.
What about Jobs Posting?
Bulhorn Reach is designed to enable recruiters leverage social networks more effectively. So we have a single click distribution to the networks you are connected to – LinkedIn, Twitter and so on. This makes it much more efficient for a recruiter to distribute his vacancies. Now we understand that this can be issue, especially with recruiters who don’t understand that there is an implicit agreement within social networks not to overshare. The worst thing is if we get the stage where it becomes spam, and that will lead to people unfollowing you, or hiding your updates or otherwise being annoyed at your activity. We need to educate the recruiters, so we are thinking: How can we help? We are building features that help recruiters watch their twitter following to see who is dropping off, and then we can alert them that they’re overdoing it. But some recruiters, are very good at it. Which brings me onto our next feature, which is designed to promote engagement with the audience
..and that is?
With Articles. To be honest, I think we’ve misnamed this. The whole purpose was engagement, and we wanted to use this piece to help recruiters become thought leaders in the space they are operating in. Who was it that said………..if you post content, 7 should be about the adding value, 1 should be personal and 1 should be promotion?
Sounds like Broganism to me
Right, Chris Brogan. It’s probably one of those things that gets repeated so often that it must now be true. If all you’re doing on your status updates is ‘check out this job’, people will quickly get tired of it, and stop following you. So we created this feature which allows you to share content which is relevant to you audience, but at the same time also lets them know a little bit more about what you do.
I’ll give you an example: lets say you specialise in Product Development. Given that’s your niche, you should be able to surface articles that make you relevant to your audience. And where you share a piece of that content with Bulhorn Reach, you get a branded bar at the top of the screen where it will say ‘this content is shared by X , who also happens to be looking for Y’. It gives people a reason to follow, and also subtly promotes your jobs. However, I do think the title is not well thought out though……‘Articles’….
What’s the deal with Leaderboard?
This is a ranking system …but its a test. We had a theory that recruiters are competitive and we wanted to introduce a little but of gaming mechanics to test the theory. I’ll share the results with you: People. Love. Leaderboard. We have statistics to show that when users hit the board, they use the product more, because they want to show up on the Leaderboard.
Now we are going change a lot of things with this. We are going to do a lot more with the ranking system. There are a lot of different ways to measure or rank a recruiters. There are recruiters who have very deep networks; some have very wide networks; some recruiters have great engagement, always get communication back. Then we get recruiters who just consistently place people and get rave reviews on service. What we want to do is get to the point where we can see the entire picture of the recruiter. At the moment, it’s based on how good you are at using Bulhorn Reach. That’s not very useful. So we are thinking broadly about it and what you are seeing is the 1st phase. Are people really interested? The answer was yes, so we’ve got a lot of work to do.
What else do you need to tell us?
There’s two things going on.
Firstly, incremental improvement – everything is going to get better. We are releasing new features every week, and sometimes new things daily. Check back in a month and it will look very different.
Secondly, in mid May to June, we’re going to put out a big announcement on something we’re working on. We’re really excited about it. Question will be is does the enthusiasm transfer? We think it will.
How long til world conquest?
Well I think if you look at how many recruiters are in the world (Art thinks in Global terms)…..on our ATS we have 21,000 users..,…on Bulhorn Reach many thousands. We could have ….hundreds of thousands of recruiters worldwide using Bulhorn Reach. Ultimately, my goal is build something really great, and revolutionise – not evolutionise – revolutionise the industry. It’s fun to be creating things that people really love and get excited about.
Thanks Art, that’s it.
Great meeting with you. Thanks for doing the interview
Thanks to Art Papas, CEO of Bulhorn, makers of Bulhorn Reach. Find out more on www.bulhorn.com and follow Art on Twitter
(This is a transcript of the Wise Man Show Episode#2 published on April 1st. You watch the full interview here
Wise Man Say helps Recruiters, HR and Job Seekers use Social Media channels hire and get hired. Contact me on 0207 739 9358 or email on hung.lee@wisemansay.co.uk for more information
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