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Web 2.0 - Monday, May 21, 2007

TalentSpring Seed Funded For Recruiting Reputation Tool

We all know how absurd the recruitment and interviewing process can be. In particular, nobody trusts reference checks but everyone does the to CYA. So we welcome Talent Spring, a new startup launched by a Microsoft programmer that seeks to shake the trees here by verify who peers would work with and who freaks them out. The company wants to create the employment version of a FICO score.

TalentSpring uses a ranking system to rate resumes so that the cream of the crop rises to the top of TalentSpring and resumes with low marks fall..

Resumes are ranked by others who have submitted their resume. Upon signing up and submitting your resume, to have your details included on TalentSpring you must score 12 sets of other candidates in your own professional area (eg software developer, accounting, etc.)

Employers will pay an annual subscription fee of $5,895 for unlimited access to the site or pay $195 to fill just one position.

TalentSpring says it has raised $600K of a $1.4M financing round, and says it has enough money in the bank to last through 2008. The company has been in stealth mode for a while and was known as NimbleBee.

So what is to prevent a malcontent to go in and rate great candidates poorly and vice versa? "Erroneous votes will be detected and discarded using our advanced mathematics," says Talent Spring. If you develop an unusually large pattern of incorrect votes your account will show a voting score of "F".

The a:c's take on TalentSpring is that they stand a great chance of success. LinkedIn has come out of nowhere and from conversations that we have had with many companies, people trust the quality of its job search much better than larger job databases. Moreover, the LinkedIn proved that people will go to great lengths to keep their resume up to data and to get references to support them. For sure, TalentSpring has a long road ahead to get LinkedIn's momentum but the road has been walked before.

Read - Startup puts resumes side by side (Seattle PI)
Read - TalentSpring Aims To Disrupt Resume Marketplace (techcrunch)
View - TalentSpring site