Usable software built for you, not for us

Not too long ago we sat through an exhaustive demo from one of the leading applicant tracking systems in use today, or at least one of the best selling ones. This system offered a huge number of features and correspondingly huge number of screens and options which to become familiar with.  If you are lucky enough to be in a company where you can spare the costs, training time, and ongoing efforts to run such systems we salute you! But if your company wants to focus energy on the candidates themselves with a simpler solution we want to help make that happen.  In the hobby of astronomy the most often asked question is "what telescope should I buy?" There are dozens of advanced telescopes with as many features as professional observatories offer, hundred lb tripods, GPS, built in computers, the list goes on and on. The answer to the best telescope you can buy and a maxim for many things, the one you will use the most which is unsurprisingly often the simplest.

  

Computers vs. Cancer

Bright Candidate is excited to announce a new aspect to our service that will work to bring critical skills to the fight against cancer.

Using the Bright Candidate matching platform professionals can now be matched to research, volunteer, or commercial roles within cutting edge foundations, grant programs, and companies in need of skills to develop treatments and unravel cures for cancer. 

Qualified research programs including public and privately funded grant, charity, or foundation based efforts (and certain non-for profits) will have unlimited access to interested professionals at no cost. 

Qualified commercial or for profit companies will be offered reduced pricing or special subscriptions. 

In 2011 Professor David Patterson outlined the advantages that people typically outside of medical and research fields can offer. This contributed to advances in bioinformatics and the application of new data technologies to the fight.  It's not just engineers that we think can help, it takes a wide variety of professionals to keep programs successfully afloat. We believe that many more people want to become involved in the fight of our time, and that virtually none of us are, or will remain, untouched by cancer.     

We invite you to join us by selecting "Join The Fight" in your profile indicating your interest in helping to make a difference inside one of these terrific organizations.

Researchers and companies on the front lines, please fill out an employer interest form and we will get you started matching against a smart and motivated talent pool looking for exactly your type of opportunity.

I'm a Veteran that won't take Veterans Day off, and here is why.

 

Don't misinterpret this until you read through, I respect, admire, and thank all my fellow veterans for their service.  As a veteran I was taught to give my enemy no rest, no relief, to outlast them,  and through every action no matter how small insure it's purpose served to insure victory.  We are still in a fight, a fight that is in every sense of the word is "war".  People are losing their lives, families are being attacked,  our treasure and national assets are being expended. 

Cancer shows up to battle every day, an unrelenting and mysterious foe that strikes silently at everything we hold dear.  If I have a few hrs or a day to spend doing anything that can help win the fight I must do it.  Stamina, even though I am not a doctor or scientist I can launch email campaigns to corporate partners, work on our service offering which matches R&D efforts to talent, read a paper on bioinformatics, or just reflect on the struggles of those directly affected and reach out to them.  Studies have shown disproportional numbers of veterans from conflicts in SE and SW Asia suffering from cancer but this affects everyone.

We will win. 

How your resume is being exploited by recruiters and job sites

One of our guiding principles here at Bright Candidate has been safeguarding candidate resumes and their personal information, in security circles this is known as PII or personally identifiable information. It seems that only from the widely accepted security point of view should it be illegal or unethical to possess or disseminate this information; in the recruiting world it's a common business practice.  Not only does the practice of buying, selling, or sharing this data open the door to identity theft, stolen valor, and host of impersonation schemes, it also ROBS the owners of their information's value so that others can profit.

Having a new business that guarantees privacy has me wondering how many of these new sites are able to list thousands of candidate resumes so quickly, but the answer is obvious after being in this industry for a few months. They are buying resumes, which means someone is selling them.  I urge you to NEVER make available a resume or your personal data without totally understanding the terms of service and what you agree too.  With many corporate job sites also being handled by rented systems diverting data could be another reason why your spam box might be filling up.

Any recruiter hitting you up isn't bound to care for your information either,  in fact large sites like topechelon.com offer split placements where recruiters upload any resumes they can get their hands on making it available to everyone, for their own gain of course. They might not have gotten you the job but they got your data which is the real value in these schemes.

Your information is big business, outside of BrightCandidate.com I've not seen anyone else safeguarding and making the candidates partners in that business.  Imagine a world where you were not harassed endlessly by recruiters, where you broadcast your skills when you are ready and have companies apply to you through one channel, AND you are paid for offering this convenience to everyone involved. That's why we built this.

www.brightcandidate.com

How does Bright Candidate help Employers?

Many people in the skilled trades side of things know little about how companies recruit, hire, and retain talent. And until you start your own business and begin to think about how to grow your company from startup to small business, it may be hard to appreciate just how monumental this task is.

One of the first challenges is candidate sourcing, or simply finding qualified people for the openings you have. In many cases, there are only a handful of candidates in the market who tightly match the qualifications of your opening, in the right location, and at the right time. So, it truly is time to apply the old adage of "needle in a haystack." These people aren't going to just magically pop up, you must actually go find them. Social networks like LinkedIn have become a great resource for this, but still lack a couple key ingredients, timing and fit. You may be able to find the right people, but how do you know if they currently have any interest in your company, or opportunity? The short answer is you really don't.

And even if you were able to interview every single one of these tight matches, many will still not work out due to many other factors: compensation, not the right fit for the team/company, competing offers, you name it. That's why a recruiters job involves a LOT of pre-screening. The better a recruiter is able to assess fit and other intangibles, as well as discuss compensation upfront without turning off the candidate, the more time and money they can save their company in the form of wasted interviews and potentially bad hires.

Bright Candidate helps companies by lightening the load on recruiting teams by sourcing and pre-screening candidates. 

That's great, you say. But a lot of companies claim to do sourcing and pre-screening, what makes you special?

1. Our candidate-centric model makes us different, for starters. Our market research (and personal experience) tells us that most recruiting sites and services are designed for recruiters, not candidates. And it shows. That's why our process starts with the candidate. We get the complete picture, and evaluate matches from there. Our unique Engagement process takes the guesswork out of that initial conversation.
2. Our matching solution is comprehensive. Our proprietary matching engine crunches the numbers and computes a score based on a variety of factors, not just keywords and skills. Its also not completely reliant on software to make all the decisions. We augment our matching solution with our own senior industry experts. What better way to screen a software developer than to ask a senior one who has hired and evaluated hundreds over their career?
3. We make this sustainable. With a pricing model that ties our success to yours, and costs no more than what a typical employee referral bonus program would. This is a solution that you can rely on for the long term.

Need to turbo-charge your recruiting capabilities? Give us a try for free.

https://www.brightcandidate.com/about/employers

How Bright Candidate Works

It's been a little over two months since our soft launch back in January.

A new logo, a face lift for our homepage, and a new set of features enhancing candidate signup and our company matching and targeting process have been keeping us busy.

We've signed up over 300 candidates during this short time using purely organic reach (social media, networking, and word of mouth). Those candidates are spread mostly over Software Engineering, Cyber Security, and IT Support disciplines, but also include Project Management, Marketing and Finance.

Probably our most exciting new feature is our Automated Job Search, which automatically scours the Internet for current jobs matching your profile. The goal is to identify a short list of companies and then, after some input from you, we can reach out to our network of recruiters and hiring managers directly at those companies with an anonymous preview of your resume.

We have already received positive feedback on this feature from our candidates and will continue to improve the accuracy of the search as well as the reach of our employer network.

How does it work?

 

The most common question I get from interested candidates is "how does this thing work?" So I wanted to take the chance to break this down step-by-step.

1. Candidates signup and create an online (secure, anonymous) resume.
2. Our Talent Advocates review and work directly with you to insure quality presentation and completeness.
3. We perform an automated job search using your resume as search criteria, identifying a short list of companies who are currently hiring.
4. We present this list to you, giving you an opportunity to prioritize and trim it.
5. We anonymously present your resume to hiring managers and recruiters at those companies.
6. If there's interest, you'll be Engaged through our platform and go through their internal hiring process.
7. If an official offer is tendered, that will also happen through our platform where your sign-on bonus is documented and guaranteed by us after 90 days of employment.

This is our "candidate-centric" concept for what the ultimate job search experience should be. We hope that not only will our candidates get a fair shot at maximizing their value in the marketplace but also get some valuable feedback on their resume about how to best present themselves to prospective employers.

As always, our door is open. Please reach out directly with any questions or Signup today.

Bright Candidate is now online!

Bright Candidate, the self-recruiting website, has officially launched online services today. 

Is it time for candidates to earn the fees that recruiters and job sites have turned into a 10 Billion dollar industry as middlemen?

Skilled worker scarcity in the economy that includes IT, healthcare, and extends into the skilled trades has been propelling third party recruiting fees into rare air, often as high as 30% of a candidate’s first year salary.  That’s not surprising to HR directors as internal efforts are largely using the same methods and services to find candidates, and facing the same downsides.

BOSTON, Mass. – Jan 13, 2016

While online job services, social media, and thousands of headhunters vie to package and sell the profiles/credentials of their users or access to them, Bright Candidate offers candidates and employers a win/win scenario.  Saving employers as much as 75% off the current market contingent fees by paying candidates 1-9% of their first years salary as a “bonus” for recruiting themselves, Bright Candidate is striking a chord with workers growing tired of being productized.  

So is it time to pay candidates?  “Paying someone that successfully lands your job via Bright Candidate can be less expensive than internal hiring efforts and is definitely much less than the “tax” paid to cover the low conversion rates and high level of efforts from outsourced hiring”, explains April Newmoyer, Head of Customer care.  The candidate fee can also serve as the hiring bonus employers would like to pay but often have to forgo due to the current cost realities.

“We set out to do two things for people, pay job candidates twice what any other service or recruiter offers as a referral, and cost employers half what any other service or recruiter is charging them, and we solidly deliver that.” says Co-Founder and CEO Chris Wyse. But can they compete against mega-sites like LinkedIn and popular aggregators, some which also pay out referral fees?

“The challenge from subscription based services or aggregators is their lower cost looks attractive but hides the much higher levels of effort to eventually screen and land an employee”, explained the CEO,  “there is also very little in the way of discovering cross compatibility with just resumes and keywords.  We offer a technology solution with custom matching to find not only right skill sets but the right cultural fit”.

Costs benefits are not the only Bright Candidate advantages, “We help candidates get matched for free with employers until a mutual interest sparks a conversation”, explains Co-Founder and CTO Jason Newmoyer. Bright Candidate features an Engagement model similar to the first rounds of interviewing where there is room to negotiate and discover if the opportunity is right from both sides before moving on with the employer’s hiring practices.

If you are considering a change or looking for talent, the Bright Candidate platform is built to age off inactive resumes and job-reqs, as well as make privacy concerns a feature with one of the most comprehensive privacy policies in the staffing industry. But don’t confuse Bright Candidate with a recruiter, they are a job matching platform for those that want to recruit themselves!