Products

Introducing the Research Zone

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“Develop a technology which will automate the identification of senior level passive candidates based on Retained Executive Search techniques.”

That was the mission which, 4 years ago, we set for the FILEFINDER development team. The background to this was a world in which, even then, information on organizations and the people responsible for running them was increasingly available through the Internet – if you knew where to look.  The question we asked was  - why should a search firm limit itself to the 1,000 or 10,000 or 100,000 or 1,000,000 or however many candidates it may have inside its internal database, when information on hundreds of millions of global business people may be found online? 

The immediate response to this type of question is “yes, but executive candidates don’t register for jobs online”.  Maybe that’s changing, but it many cases it remains true.  That’s why our technology wasn’t designed to merely search jobsites.  Today, the websites of most organizations will feature biographies of the senior executive teams.  Social Networks boast databases of “millions” and claim to include members in senior roles at global companies.  Most newspapers publish content online – providing a huge global database of profiles, interviews and press releases.  Google alone searches 4,500 different news sources, ranging from The Washington Post (USA), to Xinhau (China) and Frontline (India).  What about information held in blogs?  Telephone lists?  Organization charts? The web provides a huge volume of information to researchers.

The concept behind the Research Zone was to search all of it.

"As a small, growing executive search business we were keen to align ourselves with a robust and user friendly database.  All our Consultants are seasoned headhunters and have been exposed to a variety of recruitment software packages over the years.  We unanimously believe that FILEFINDER is the best recruitment software on the market.  When we upgraded to FILEFINDER 9, included in the package was the new Research Zone module. This extremely powerful recruitment tool is designed around the requirements of a search consultant and has had a significant impact on our candidate identification processes.  This, combined with other intelligent search functions has made Research Zone invaluable to our business."                                    OneBrightDay

And it’s now available as an integral part of FILEFINDER 9. 

FILEFINDER suite is Dillistone Systems’ software system designed for executive search - it is a combination of a database, a CRM system and a project management tool designed specifically to match the way executive recruiters work. 

The Research Zone is a new module within the system. It works by combining retained search concepts with web searching technologies.  It asks the Researcher to think creatively about who he or she wants – the target companies, the job roles – and then automates the process of finding it.

So, what can it do?

Let’s take some scenarios. Let’s assume that the Researcher has identified a list of 20 target companies. Within these companies, she/he needs to identify senior executives with responsibility for Human Resources.

The Researcher starts with the list of companies and clicks the Research Zone button.  Then selects the search – in this case, its a Social Network, and the relevant job function.  From this, The Research Zone builds an Internet search which searches the selected social network for relevant individuals at each company.  In this example, the system – in seconds – returns some 29 VP or Director level executives with HR responsibilities at Abbott Laboratories.  A similar search at Amgen returns 49 individuals.  The list is global, and many examples feature full biographies and detailed employment histories.

The Research Zone for FILEFINDER 9 not only enables us to do a more defined search, it enables us to do a more accurate search making our search and selection processes a lot quicker. It also means that we don’t miss out on good candidates e.g. an account manager with soft fruit experience who has worked in agriculture would be more likely to come up on the Research Zone search than any other way.                                    RedFox

Perhaps we are looking for a more specific search.  Chief Executives at those specific firms.  We know that CEO’s at global businesses tend not to be on Social Networks, but they do tend to be profiled on corporate homepages.  This time, therefore, we will ask the system to search via Corporate Websites for biographies.  In a couple of seconds, we see that the CEO of Amgen is Kevin Sharer – we also have a biography.  The next firm on our list is Abbott;  the CEO here is Miles D. White.  Again, this is identified in some 2 seconds.

Let’s look for someone more junior.  Researchers at Healthcare firms are always in demand.  2-3 seconds later and we have a list of online resumes for people who meet that criterion.

Finally, another example... maybe we are tracking alumni, resignations and appointments at key companies... again, the Research Zone can be used to identify developments of this type – run the search and, 2 seconds later, our researcher has a list of news stories covering appointments and resignations, along with alumni, at the company of interest.

"We find the FILEFINDER Research Zone to be an invaluable tool when we require up-to-date and rapid information when we are searching for potential candidates, researching companies and providing us and our clients with specific market and sector news.  The Research Zone has enabled our research function to become more efficient by quickly coming up with the right information within increasingly tighter timescales.  This is another reason why FILEFINDER should be every executive search firms one and only port of call."     Rochfort Executive Search & Selection

All of the searches we’ve outlined so far are based on identifying candidates through lists of Target companies.  What if we have the candidates, and need to research them?  Again, the Research Zone can be used for this. 

Let’s go back to Kevin Sharer at Amgen. Clicking on the “Profile Search” brings up numerous interviews, biographies and articles – again, in seconds.  One is particularly interesting – the Business Week biography details his annual compensation, stock options and board directorships.

What else can the tool be used for?  Well, it is highly flexible – Clients can teach it new searches – and so the options are virtually limitless.  Some examples we’ve toyed with include a search which brings back a map and list of addresses / telephone numbers for all US offices of a targeted organisation;  one that searches the South China Morning Post for details of business investments in China;  and another that searches through blogs for references to certain organisations or executives.

“We find the Research Zone to be a really useful and powerful tool. We generally have the Research Zone open all day and are constantly pulling people over to expand our database.”               Resolution Partners (Australia)

The Research Zone is an integral part of FILEFINDER 9.  This means that the results of the searches come up inside FILEFINDER – in the internal browser.  Users can then – subject to the copyright rules associated with some sites – simply drag and drop relevant information into the system.

It is not available separately and can not be linked into other database systems.  The good news is, therefore, that for companies already using FILEFINDER, they will get this functionality free of charge when they upgrade to FILEFINDER 9; furthermore, for clients with support contract, the software upgrade is free of charge – clients will pay only for the time taken to do the work.  For those companies not currently using a FILEFINDER product – well, we’d welcome the chance to talk to you about how the product can help your business  revolutionise the

“The Research Zone has broadened my networking ability.” TwickenHam

way it undertakes research.