How Findem is transforming data-led talent acquisition

The combination of economic constraints and AI advances has created an incredible moment for talent transformation. When Findem secured our Series B round of funding at the start of 2023, we committed to investing in our platform. 

A look back on what we delivered shows how Findem is transforming talent acquisition and talent management by aligning our vision to the very real challenges and opportunities in the talent market. We are thankful for our advisors, customers, and co-innovation partners as well as the product and engineering teams that bring this vision to life.

As we begin a new year, I would like to highlight where we are and give you a hint as to what’s in store for the future.

Consolidating the talent tech stack

The vision for the Talent Data Cloud is to create an application layer that supports the entire talent lifecycle, powered by unique 3D data and AI-based automation. 

In 2023, we spent many hours with talent teams, learning how they manage the recruiting workflow across disparate and disjointed talent tools. And listening to what would make their work better. 

Plagued by too many tools, poor integration, and scattered candidate information, we saw companies struggling with bloated tech spend, low adoption, and siloed decision making. When the call came to “do more with less”, talent leaders had difficult decisions to make.

Our goal was to help our customers identify the opportunities in the workflow to automate, innovate, and integrate activities. We worked closely with them to introduce solutions to very real pain points in a coherent, unified way. 

As a result, our co-innovation partners have cut legacy technology tools and adopted Findem’s Talent Data Cloud to transform their talent operations.

Hands-on with the Talent Data Cloud

3D data and responsible AI help automate sourcing

At the foundation of Findem's Talent Data Cloud is 3D data, a highly differentiated data layer that feeds its system of intelligence and consolidated applications. 3D data is people and company data over time. It is based on the idea that every person has a journey and every company has a journey. 

To know whether someone is ready for a role at your company, you need to understand where they are in their career and how it matches to opportunities at your company. For instance, a recruiter could search for a candidate who’s been part of a successful company exit or who drove a company from a negative operating margin to a positive one. 

Findem’s Talent Data Cloud brings AI-based automation to candidate matching, outreach and other recruiting workflows, freeing up talent teams to focus on more strategic work and future innovation.   

Automated functionality currently includes:

• Multi-step candidate engagement and nurture campaigns 
• Inbound application review by matching and prioritizing candidates based on search parameters
• Continuously enriching and updating candidate profile data 
• Discovering overlapping connections within the organization against passive candidates to drive proactive referral introductions
• Surfacing alumni in search results 
• Surfacing past candidates from an ATS with updated, enriched profiles
• Parsing a job description or LinkedIn profile to build an attribute-based search 

How Eikon Builds Talent Pipelines

Generative AI comes to recruiting

When ChatGPT arrived in November 2022, our team started the process of vetting it for integration into the Talent Data Cloud. We quickly identified the limitations of public LLMs for the talent function and addressed them in our development. The 3 most important considerations are: protecting PII and privacy, creating a context for interpreting requests, and reducing the risk of hallucinations.

The Talent Data Cloud enabled us to responsibly and thoughtfully integrate GenAI into talent workflows related to sourcing candidates, research, outreach, and analytics. Built on a foundation of 3D data, Findem has an unmatched talent intelligence of factual people and company data over time. 

Instead of bolting GenAI onto our product, Findem’s integrated approach to generative AI provides the context needed for the LLM to enhance the work of sourcers, recruiters, talent leaders, and hiring managers alike. 

Generative AI Comes to the Talent Data Cloud

Multi-channel sourcing becomes part of our practice

In August, Brett Coin, a 20-year talent industry veteran, joined Findem as our Chief of Talent Transformation. He saw a match between the vision he had for the talent ecosystem and the technology we were developing at Findem. 

He quickly identified a key barrier. The Talent Data Cloud provided a rich talent ecosystem with consolidated applications for multi-channel sourcing, candidate rediscovery, talent CRM, market intelligence and talent analytics. But our users had trouble finding and using these applications. They drifted back to the security of how they have always sourced - a broad match search on social media, and undifferentiated outreach to a mix of qualified candidates that resulted in low response rates and lagging fill times.  

We worked closely with Brett and the customer solutions team to reshape the Findem UI. The result? A new way to match hiring strategy and recruiting effort to market conditions and ROI.

Instead of displaying all of your search results in a consolidated view, we created a tabbed view. Now, talent teams can work from left to right, focusing first on warm leads from the ATS or CRM – the people more likely to respond to outreach and be open to an offer. The cold leads coming from outbound sourcing are the last resort. 

Companies are using Findem’s Talent Data Cloud to source talent from their entire ecosystem of hiring channels, including both current and past applicants, referrals, alumni, internal employees, external sources, and many others. With this all-encompassing reach, Findem now impacts 100% of hires, and will continue to do so when growth returns.

Beyond Sourcing - A Multi-channel Approach to Hiring

AI-first automation arrives with the first Copilot for sourcing

Throughout the year, we surfaced the idea of AI-first automation. Most leaders we spoke to agreed. Talent team tech stacks had been left behind in the wave of digitization. With constraints to do more with less, and innovations in AI, they have a unique opportunity to leapfrog past digitization to AI-based automations. This ability to optimize and automate work will be the next wave of business transformation. 

We closed out this year by bringing hyper-automation to sourcing with the launch of our first Copilot. Findem’s AI-powered Copilot for multi-channel sourcing learns to perform repetitive and mundane tasks with speed and precision, enabling talent teams to operate with greater efficiency. 

Findem’s Copilot for multi-channel sourcing adds a new level of automation and personalization to the Talent Data Cloud. The AI learns from feedback and self corrects to constantly improve the quality of candidates, outreach response, and diversity in the funnel. Because the Copilot uses Findem’s 3D data to find and verify high-quality talent across a multi-channel ecosystem, talent teams can be confident in the shortlists it produces.   

The Copilot can be configured to search in-network hiring channels such as inbound applicants, ATS candidates, internal employees, CRM candidates, employee referrals, and alumni, as well as traditional outbound sources. All sourcing is done through a simple interface. 

With more time to qualify and engage with high-priority candidates, talent teams can focus on delivering the value of HR to the business. 

Coming soon: Findem’s Copilot for Sourcing

Awards and recognition for Findem’s Talent Data Cloud

As we unveiled these innovations and enhancements to the Talent Data Cloud, Findem began to receive industry recognition from thought leaders at Gartner, Brandon Hall Group, and more. 

• Early in 2023, Findem was recognized in Gartner’s Hype Cycle for Talent Acquisition Technologies, 2023. 
• Then Findem was named a Cool Vendor in the 2023 Gartner Cool Vendors™ in Talent Acquisition for Driving Speed and Quality in Hiring report.
• Findem received a coveted Brandon Hall Group Gold award for excellence in the Best Advance in Unique Talent Acquisition Technology category.
• We were named among the “best AI tools for recruiting” by Roger Fingas at Android Authority. 

The recognition that matters most: customers

We recognize that many of our customers and many in talent teams were hurting this year. Rising interest rates, hiring freezes, and recruiting layoffs took their toll. That is why we are forever grateful for the trust and confidence our customers placed in us. We believe this is in part because we truly listened to your needs and focused on delivering solutions for our times.  

Findem grew annual recurring revenue (ARR) 3x over the previous fiscal year and expects to finish the financial year with 4x ARR growth. We added 37% more clients to our roster, including notable enterprise wins such as PayPal and Nutanix. Since launching the Talent Data Cloud, Findem’s enterprise customer base has increased 430%, and more global customers are switching to Findem.  

Perhaps the most important measure for my team is that Findem’s platform usage hit an all-time high. As companies consolidated their tech stack and turned to Findem for multi-channel talent sourcing, we saw significantly more searches, candidate outreach, and responses, with an uptick of approximately 275% vs. the same time last year. Platform analytics usage is following the same upwards trend.

Users are logging in at least once per day as Findem has become a foundational part of their tech stack. 

How Boulevard Creates a Culture of Collaboration

Realizing a vision for talent acquisition transformation

Findem’s vision for the industry’s future includes more consolidation, more automation of workflows, and more impact on the business. We aim to work with talent teams that embrace AI-first transformation and innovation so they can realize their full potential of efficiency and value-creating outcomes that drive business success.

With the Talent Data Cloud, we’ve delivered a single platform for recruiters, talent leaders, and hiring managers to enable meaningful collaboration and build confidence. Overall, the goal is to improve decision making and deliver more value to the business. We look forward to changing more hearts and minds in 2024 by delivering the talent data platform of the future.