Companies are turning more and more to online job sites—both their own job boards and sites like Monster.com—to save time and money in recruiting. But Orrin Broberg believes that these sites often filter out candidates that might be better fits than many of those that get through.
He also believes that he has a solution. Broberg is the founder and president of Minneapolis-based eContinuum, whose chief hiring software tool, called Overture, integrates talent management practices, including questionnaires used for screening, cognitive and psychological testing, and job simulations. Results are processed immediately for review by recruiters and hiring managers.
In making its assessments, Overture designs “model candidates” for each position, and ranks applicants based on how closely they conform to job-specific criteria, instead of keywords or other electronic search terms. John Doyle, eContinuum’s vice president of marketing, says that while job Web sites and recruiters alone can yield candidates, Overture’s advantage is that it finds “key competencies that make a person successful” in a company.
“You want the right people on the bus and wrong people off it,” Broberg adds. “[Hiring] isn’t a one-size fits-all approach. We have to find the right people from the outset.”
According to “Fueled by Strong Demand,” a report released in April 2005 by Boston-based market-research company Yankee Group, the talent management market will surpass $2.3 billion. EContinuum’s focus in this market is on midsize companies, especially those seeking to fill revenue-critical positions in sales, account management, and customer service.
Broberg, who has worked two decades in employee training, founded Eden Prairie–based Applied Learning Systems (now part of Virginia-based VCampus Corporation) in 1988. He started eContinuum in 2004 to develop and market hiring-software products like Overture.
According to Broberg, Overture can be integrated with any company’s current hiring practices in as little as two weeks; starting costs range from $50,000 to $200,000. One client is Bloomington-based Plato Learning, which underwent a revamp last year as it promoted its online education products. Plato CEO Dave Smith says his company has saved more than $200,000 in recruiter fees since it began using Overture to find sales employees.
Broberg expects eContinuum, which currently has 12 employees, to reach revenues of more than $2 million this year. The company may need to make heavy use of Overture itself.
