Those of you that have been reading my Fordyce Letter columns for any length of time know that I have written on more than one occasion about ZoomInfo. Most everyone in our industry knows this service is the “Cadillac” of the “semantic search engine” industry. They have just released a major upgrade to their user interface and I was anxious to have a good look at it.
The flexibility and intuitive nature of the new interface stands out. Personally, I like it a lot more than the previous interface. There is very little training required to become proficient with this service. You can search their database a number of different ways. Actually, there are twenty different data characteristics you can screen for. The two main searches that you might run are for either People or Companies. When People searching, you can search for an individual by name, people with title keywords, people with industry keywords, company size, credentials, date, geography, education, and you can also scrape specific websites for names. When Company searching, you can search by company name, industry, geography, and company size.
As always, I ran some test searches and the results are as follows:
I first ran a general search for an industry I picked at random, Managed Health Care. I got a list of 113 companies. I had many options to screen this list further so I typed in Network Manager in the title field and got a list of 11 managers along with their employers, titles, and telephone numbers ready for my call. I went back to my original list of 113 companies and searched for only those firms in Missouri. I got back a list of two companies headquartered here. You are also given options to either narrow or expand your search. By narrowing my company search to Managed Health Care Providers, I limited my results to 28 companies in that industry. By expanding my search to all Health Care Insurance companies, I got back 207. At any time I could click on any of the company results I had and obtained a list of people that work for that particular company. By clicking on the link to Humana Corp., I got a list of all their key executives, along with titles and telephone numbers. The page also contained a list of Humana competitors, branch office locations and phone numbers, and other company information. By clicking on the Find Employees link, I got a list of 413 people that work for this company that I could further screen by job title, if I chose to.
Another search entailed any companies in the data-base in the St. Louis, Missouri area. Simply done, the search yielded over 18,000 results. If I switched over to a People search, I got back a list of over 78,000 names of people in the database in St. Louis. If I chose the keyword “beer,” my results were limited to 19 companies that either manufactured or distributed beer in the area. Clicking on one of the links for a local beer distributor, I got the information in the database for that company. I was then able to click a link to competitors and got a list of 27 firms across the country.
Continuing on with the People search function, I decided to look at database results for another random pick, Food Distribution industry personnel. I got back over 74,000 results. I decided to narrow my search to Specialty Food Distribution and got back 400 names, then plugged in Missouri and got back 10 names. Going back to my broader search, I clicked on the link to Aramark, one of the employers I noticed. Again, I was presented with their top executives, key competitors, and other company data, as well. Going back to my 74+k person list again and limiting my search results to those with the title of Manager, I was down to 6,700, then down to 350 names if I picked Grocery only, a great starting point for any search assignment.
Getting the idea? This database contains over 34 million names and 3.5 million companies, all with their associated locations, titles, phone numbers, bios (when available), and whatever contact information and other tidbits the ZoomInfo search engine can find. You can search broadly then zoom in on whatever more specific needs you have. Or, expand your searches if you are not getting enough results.
ZoomInfo is not only a database; it is also a project management tool. Using the interface you can create projects and save results, type notes on people and companies. In case you get sidetracked in one of your searches, they also have a new Quick List feature, where you can drag and drop search results you see that might be good for another project down the road. The interface itself is also customizable, allowing you to highlight those features most important to you and the way you work.
Don’t forget about their JobCast add-on service, reviewed previously in this column, that ties everything together for you and simplifies the process of actually following through and contacting the people you find on your searches.
Pricing starts at $12,000 per year for three seats. I want to thank Russ Glass, VP of Products and Kari Hanson, PR Director for their gracious assistance in putting this article together. Any recruiter out there who has the slightest need for passive candidate name generation and/or one of the best competitive intelligence databases I have ever seen should contact ZoomInfo for more information. It has created a website page just for The Fordyce Letter readers and is offering a free trial of the service for the asking. Visit http://www.zoominfo.com/fordyceletter.
Resume Grabber Pro 5.0
I am happy to be able to review this new version of this venerable product for all of you this month. I have written about the products from eGrabber a number of times over the years. There will always be a soft spot in my heart for these people as they were there in the beginning . . . of Internet recruiting, that is. Before passive-candidate search interfaces and exporting programs, those early proponents of Internet recruiting had to deal with the laborious, time-consuming and mind-numbing task of reviewing hundreds of resumes, then cutting and pasting the ones we liked into either Excel or Word. ResumeGrabber was such a boon for us back then . . . and it still is.
This new version is simply packed with new features, making the task of bulk-level sourcing and recruiting so easy. You can now capture data from a number of sources. You can still highlight resume contact information and generate a record or table entry as you always have but now you can also select to capture contact data from entire resume directories on your hard drive, all at once. You can also still capture data from your Outlook or other email program files but you can now capture data from entire Outlook folders, as well. A very nice new feature is the ability to run a Google resume search and then capture entries on the entire page. It works wonders as opposed to opening every link on a page to review, then transferring the ones you like to another program or file. New also is your ability to capture data from national resume services that you belong to. At the time of writing, they have specialized add-ins, available at extra cost, to enable Monster, HotJobs, Dice, and CareerBuilder users to capture search results, but can also customize a solution to utilize whatever service you are using.
Another newer feature I noticed is the Grid. Used to be, you parsed a resume and the contact information was ported into Outlook or another email program, Excel, or some other destination. Now, with the Grid, you get to look at and evaluate your data prior to porting it into a destination product. I think this is very important because it gives you a chance to make an informed decision as to what does and does not go into your database or other recruiting program. The old adage “junk in, junk out” applies here. When you parse data on a wholesale level into your database you do end up saving time on the front end. Lots of new records appear in your database. However, you end up wasting a lot of time on the backend when unqualified candidates that do not meet your needs start showing up in your database search results. The Grid is a “holding pen” of sorts. Once evaluated, these records can be selected and exported into a number of destination programs. Aside from contact information, the Grid contains resume information, candidate years of experience, can contain skills if set up properly, resume URL or location, candidate status, and other pertinent data. You can also save your search results in the Grid and go back to a previous search for further review at any time, offline.
I put this new product through the paces, testing all of the resume sources. I started with an easy one. I selected an Outlook email in my inbox, one I knew had a resume attached. Hit the Grab button and seconds later had the contact information in the grid.
I then selected a resume folder I had on my hard drive. This folder had over 1,200 word docs in it. All resumes. I selected the folder (not the resumes), and then hit the grab button. In minutes I had, in the Grid, contact information parsed for all the resumes in that folder.
The next test was a Google resume search. I ran a resume search on Google using a fairly simple search string. I selected the resumes on the first page of results then hit the Grab button. ResumeGrabber then parsed all the resumes on that page into the Grid. The beauty of using ResumeGrabber to evaluate Google results is that you do not have to go through the monotonous task of opening each resume for viewing. RG does that for you. Behind the scenes it opens each page, then parses the results into the Grid from there. You then only have to click on each Grid result to view the captured data, including the resume. You have the options to see the original resume page if you like, add personalized comments, reject a result (removes that resume from the Grid), click Never Show (removes that resume from future searches), transfer (transfers result to destination of your choice), view the next resume, or select the resume (for bulk transfers). You also have several views you can choose. The snippet view shows highlights including keyword matches, or you can choose text view or original view (which shows the original page that Google located).
Finally, I tested the product with a job board I belong to. I logged in, ran a search, got 40 results, hit the Grab button and watched RG open the results one by one and put them in the Grid. From there I could easily review all 40 results by clicking on the entry in the Grid, without having to open each page individually and clicking the Back button on my browser 40 times.
Once you have your search results in the Grid you have the ability to filter the resumes further through the search bar on the Grid. For example, if you started with 100 resumes, you can easily reduce it to 50 and then 25 . . . etc., by putting in keywords (ranging from skill sets to location or even company names). With each key-word, only resumes containing the keywords would remain, enabling you to quickly narrow the search down to a couple of star candidates. Also, the grid behaves like an Internet browser. If the recruiter wishes to go through the search results, he/she can simply click on the “back” and “forward” button.
Another handy feature is the ability to email either the candidate or the hiring manager directly from the ResumeGrabber grid. ResumeGrabber syncs with most email clients to allow recruiters to email their candidates with personalized pre-prepared templates direct from the Grid. This can be done on an individual basis or to all contacts on the grid. ResumeGrabber also allows recruiters to send emails to hiring managers with the resumes of the recommended candidates attached; key contact information of the candidates are also extracted and placed in the email body for the convenience of the hiring managers.
Pricing: The price for one license is $549.95; bulk pricing is negotiable. For the add-in, the available ones go for $350; other customized sites are subject to time needed to complete them.
In closing, even for those recruiters who have an ATS product or service that offers single or even bulk parsing, or those recruiters who use Google or one of the national boards to assist with their recruiting, this product is one to look at. It makes the frustrating and time-consuming task of reviewing dozens or even hundreds of resumes quick and easy, making your Internet recruiting experience more enjoyable and productive.
I want to thank Eugene Chean and Chandra Bodapati, CEO of eGrabber for their help with this article. Anyone with any interest in learning more about this great resource can find out more by visiting their website at www.egrabber.com/resumegrabberpro.
TIP
Passive Candidates from Active
Candidate Boards
I know many of you are using the major resume/job posting boards for candidates. Although it is not paying off as much as it once was, I think it remains a legitimate part of the candidate sourcing process for most of us. Here is one way to extract passive candidates from these services. Use the keyword “references.” Many candidates list references down at the bottom of their resume. Often these are managers or co-workers having the same basic skill set of the active candidate in question. To find passive candidates with Java skills simply type into the search box: java references.
You will get resumes of active candidates with java on the resume but you will also get those resumes that have a list of references at the bottom of the document. Call these people to pitch your opportunity. This is not foolproof, as many candidates also have the phrase “references on request” or something similar and you will pick up those resumes as well, but you may as well make the best use of these pricey services and get as much out of them as you can.
Mark E. Berger, C.P.C., AIRS CIR has been in recruiting since 1979. He is currently a partner in Ramsey Fox, Inc., an IT services firm and its predecessor, M.E. Berger & Associates since 1986. He has been heavily involved in Internet recruiting and is an expert on recruiting and sourcing products, services available on the Internet and how these products add to the bottom line. Mark’s interests include successfully integrating both computer and Internet recruiting technology into a traditional recruiting environment. He has taken AIRS I and II training and has obtained the AIRS CIR designation. Mark is also on the board of directors for the Missouri Association of Personnel Services. He can be reached at mark@ramseyfox.com. His website is: www.swatrecruiting.com. We recommend you visit it to see archives of his articles and information offerings exclusively for recruiters.