Discover Your Next Star Candidate: A Beginner’s Guide to Social Search Tools

Social Search Tools are advanced web search tools that scrape the web to find and aggregate information about candidates from various online sources. Some tools are simple browser extensions that activate when a user is on a candidate’s social profile, enabling quick access to candidate contact info which can then be exported to an ATS.

Others are more robust passive candidate sourcing platforms/talent search engines that use machine-learning and automated outreach to produce search results, rank and engage candidates, and typically provide an enhanced profile of candidates that are searched. Both leverage the vast number of social sites and communities on which candidate data is available across the web; hence the name, Social Search.

What do you know about #SocialSearchTools? @TalentTechLabs breaks down the common features and functionalities you need to know to find your next star candidate. Click To Tweet

Below we outline a few common features and functionalities of Social Search Tools. A complete list is available in our full report, Ecosystem Insights: Social Search Tools. 

• Proprietary database of candidates generated via the open web

• The ability to search for candidates within the database and retrieve contact information, work history, and links to relevant social profiles

• Ability to create and view bespoke profiles across social and professional networks like LinkedIn, Facebook, GitHub, StackOverflow, Twitter

• Technologies that leverage the most searched (i.e., effective) keywords to optimize job requisition language

• Collaborative organizational and workflow management tools to help recruiting teams stay on top of candidates with notes, projects, tags, and reminders

The competitive landscape for Social Search Tools includes:

1. the roughly two dozen tools we are tracking in the category

2. social networks from which these firms scrape, collect, and aggregate information

3. traditional job boards

4. clients’ own internal development efforts.

Below, we provide a brief overview of each of these categories of competitors.

Social Search Tools

Social search tools typically fall into one of two camps: browser extensions that recruiters/sourcers use to quickly get candidate contact info and do bulk data transfers, and more holistic passive candidate sourcing platforms/talent search engines. The former are more of a recruiter productivity tool while the latter are primarily designed to be “engines” for sourcing passive candidates.

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Social Networks

Social networks include online communities such as Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, and StackOverflow, and are one of the primary data sources Social Search Tools use to collect information about candidates. Some sites have tried to block Social Search tools from collecting candidate information; Linkedin, for example, has litigated a number of firms that try to scrape its users’ data.

Traditional Job Boards

Social Search Tools serve essentially the same purpose as job boards — get qualified candidates to apply for a job — with the primary difference being that job boards tend to attract active job seekers, while Social Search Tools are focused on engaging passive candidates.

Solutions Built by Clients

The last competitive category is solutions that clients actually build themselves. Since nearly all of the data that Social Search Tools utilize in offering their services is publicly available, some enterprising firms have opted to build their own ad-hoc social search tools internally using in-house developers and data scientists.

Pricing Models

The most common pricing model for Social Search Tools is an annual license per user. The actual cost of the license varies greatly from company to company and based on requested features.

Recruiter productivity tools (browser extensions) are usually priced between $50 – $100 per month, with nearly every vendor offering a free version (with severely limited capabilities).

Sourcing platforms/talent search engines range from ~$2,000 – $10,000 per user per annum depending on the company and included features.

For more information about Social Search Tools, download our newest report Ecosystem Insights: Social Search Tools. These reports define the segment, assess the state of play, describe key features and functionalities of the underlying technology, list key vendors that make up the sub-vertical, as well as alternative solutions, highlight trends in the segment, provide market intelligence on the key players, and provide best practices for firms interested in pursuing such solutions.