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ZoomInfo is aiming to compete with LinkedIn by using its massive databases and AI tools to find job candidates for any business’ open positions.
The Vancouver-based tech company’s new software, called TalentOS, was sparked by its sales and marketing database clients using the data to try to find workers — something for which the data was not originally intended.
“We started TalentOS because we had a bunch of recruiting and staffing companies on our sales platform,” said Henry Schuck, founder and CEO of ZoomInfo. “They’d use sales data to find new recruits, and we were seeing recruiting departments of large companies wanting to use the data for recruiting.”
TalentOS has been in development since October 2020. The company has been building its sales teams and customer base steadily ever since with thousands of customers using the platform, said Darrell Grissen, ZoomInfo’s vice president of product management.
“We’re not setting out to displace LinkedIn, but they have shortcomings, and we can complement them,” Grissen said.
Developing AI
TalentOS has tools that “scrape” the open web and store a database of workers and jobs.
Users can access that information and more easily search for workers using many parameters, including job title, location, department, skill sets and more.
One unique feature is the ability to have a “likely to listen” score that considers how long someone has been in that company or that position, the last time they were promoted, or if there was a promotion that the person may have gotten or not.
For instance, if that worker didn’t get a management position that they were applying for, TalentOS would consider that person more likely to listen to job offers from another company.
“Businesses can poach candidates that didn’t get the promotion or were unsettled with a new leader that came in,” Grissen said.
The tool also sends periodic emails to the worker and tracks if the worker’s emails are still active or not, indicating if they’re still at the company, and that data is updated in ZoomInfo’s database. Users can also see an interactive organizational chart of the company with overlaying seniority levels.
Users can create auto-dialing, emailing and soon SMS-text messaging to potential candidates, alerting them of job openings.
TalentOS also has a Chrome extension overlay on top of LinkedIn that “allows us to act on all candidates on Linkedin,” Grissen said.
Part of TalentOS’s growth path involved ZoomInfo buying Comparably, a prominent online recruitment marketing and employer branding platform that lets companies attract and engage top talent. The acquisition in May included 90 employees from Comparably, which was based in California.
The jobs report in May showed over 11.3 million open positions in the U.S., according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, allowing ZoomInfo’s new software to fill a major demand.
“The labor market is still incredibly competitive and tight,” Schuck said. “There’s the most movement of people from job to job.”
Businesses in Clark County are still dealing with the labor shortage. After the pandemic struck, the nation and Clark County experienced a spike in people quitting their careers and seeking other ways of living.
“TalentOS significantly expands our total addressable market,” Schuck said. “We think there’s a huge opportunity here that we’ll continue to invest in.”
