Recruiters: Here Are Tools to Untangle Job Candidates’ Web Presence

With dedication and the right search tools, a recruiter can find out almost anything about any candidate. But who’s got that kind of time? Searching the Web for every tweet, post and professional attribution a candidate has ever authored is labor intensive and can quickly become overwhelming if you are comparing a dozen similar prospects.

One candidate may be a prolific blogger, while another tweets constantly, and a third is active in several professional associations. How do you compare them all when the data is in different forms and in a hundred locations?

Dice.com, TalentBin and Entelo aim to provide an answer. These companies have all built talent-specific search tools and databases that offer recruiters a one-stop destination to review a candidate’s Web presence so they can compare them, make their top choices and in many cases call or email them directly.

TalentBin: A talent search engine, TalentBin scours professional networking sites and social media to build composite resumes of tech professionals with scoring components based on activity. By including details about a person’s level of engagement on sites like StackOverflow, Quora and Github, along with non-social sites, including the U.S. patent database and academic journals, recruiters can get a sense of candidates’ expertise in a particular field, beyond just what they say on their resumes. The site has more than 500 million tech professional profiles, and is growing daily.

“We consume all of the information programmatically and put it together in a unified profile that gives recruiters an information advantage,” said Pete Kazanjy, TalentBin founder.

Dice.com’s Open Web: In January, 2013, Dice.com unveiled the beta version of Open Web, a new recruiting search and database. The tool collects data about tech candidates from across the Web, including 50 different social networking sites like StackOverflow, Quora, and Github to create an aggregated profile of a candidate’s experience, contributions, location and interests.

“OpenWeb pulls publicly available information into a super profile that recruiters can search,” said Scot Melland, CEO of Dice Holdings Inc. in New York. “It provides a much more complete view of a candidate than any single source.”

Along with a glimpse into a candidate’s professional life and outside interests, most of the 2 million profiles on OpenWeb include contact information.

Entelo: Launched in October 2012, Entelo taps dozens of online data sources to compile professional profiles of millions of active and passive candidates. The site tracks the activity and status of candidates through contributions to sites like Github and StackOverflow, as well as location information through updates on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Sarah Fister Gale is a freelance writer based in the Chicago area. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com. Follow Workforce on Twitter at @workforcenews.