To Scale or Not To Scale: Why We Needed a Matching Algorithm

on 04 | 23 | 2015

Talk to nearly any recruiter and they’ll tell you that a large part of their successes come from match-making performed in their head. Throughout a recruiter’s career, they can expect to interact with thousands of candidates while simultaneously managing a multitude of clients. From the continual churn alone, effective recruiters will learn to identify key attributes and indicators that best inform client-candidate matching–but it will take the average tenured recruiter at least a year to perfect this craft, and it’s a laborious process for even experienced recruiters.

In our quest for full-stack recruiting, this isn’t good enough. In order to scale, we are utilizing the power of our technology to drive the preliminary matching process. Through Sutro we are collecting data, feeding our scoring algorithms, and then generating suggested matches via our matching algorithms. Sutro is optimizing much of the manual burden (and minimizing recruiter bias) from the process by suggesting matches based on candidate and client attributes, and then presenting them to the recruiters for review. Instead of arduously creating perceived matches, our recruiters are now verifying and approving data-backed matches. So not only can new recruiters catch on quickly, but seasoned ones can work even more efficiently.

Sutro’s matching algorithms allow us to get to a conversation much more quickly around specific candidates who might be the best fit–not just a fit. Expediting this process on the recruiter’s end naturally segues to improved speed and efficiency around closing a search. For example, more than half of the candidates who get hired for a role are identified by a Riviera recruiter in a month or less. By reducing the time upfront making “the find,” we can focus more time advising both the client and candidate during the discovery and validation process that each party goes through. Considering the demand for talented leaders in current market conditions, we’re seeing that the bulk of a project’s timeframe is attributed to the steps in the process beyond identifying a strong candidate. However, through matching, recruiters are empowered to take more of a consultative and advisory role than a search and find role.

Since the adoption of our internally developed technology, we are seeing metrics across the recruiting funnel that indicate early success at a greater scale. Through enhanced sourcing capabilities, we are able to tactically reach more people. With greater reach, better curation abilities through scoring and matching, and more transparency through the sharing of data, we are able to present more qualified candidates than ever before. Even at this scale, we’re maintaining record completion rates–despite a 40% increase in volume of searches over the past 3 years.

Sutro provides firm-wide transparency and interaction of matching between clients and candidates. Eventually, the platform will offer tools that offer similar transparency to clients and candidates. And of course, none of this would be possible without our dedicated team of engineers.

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