If you’ve delved deeper into sourcing than a LinkedIn search (and since you’re here, that’s probably a good guess), you’ve probably heard of using the US patent database to search for talent. That process, especially for perhaps a one-off search, wasn’t the easiest thing to pull off.
This month, TalentBin launched an easier way to search the patent database and find candidates that are, oftentimes, difficult to locate in more common databases. This is an addition to the growing list of services the talent search engine covers.
Oh, and I should also mention that they also just launched a snazzy new iPhone app as well. But more about patent talent search.
An easier patent talent search
US patent records are a part of the public record and are available to anyone. You can search records with either the built-in search or using tools like Google’s dedicated patent search. If you use the patent office’s advanced search, you’ll get something that looks like this:
That gives me a headache. That’s beside the point though. After all, if mining the patent database for talent is something you have to do to find the people you need, you’ll deal with the headache in order to make it happen. But, if you only need to do occasional searches or maybe you just want a simplified, people focused search instead, TalentBin might be a better answer. Something that looks a bit more like this might make some sourcers and recruiters much happier:
Peter Kazanjy, founder of TalentBin said via e-mail, “This is extremely powerful because this brings the ‘implicit professional profile’ approach that TalentBin has been doing, to date, with software engineers and designers, to a much larger swath of the recruiting world. Like electrical engineering, aerospace, petroleum, pharm, biotech, defense, and so on.”
And as he mentions, “These sort of folks have even worse LinkedIn presences than the disciplines we’ve been covering to date.”
Indeed, some of these folks might have no (or, very little) web presence to go off of. So, being an expert cyberslueth to track down contact info still has its advantages but using TalentBin can be one less step in that daunting prospect.
Lookup for iPhone: people search on the go
In addition to the patent database search news, TalentBin also released an iPhone application called Lookup. I can’t use it yet (I suppose I could use it on my iPad, but I could also use the regular TalentBin site in that case) due to the fact that my phone is an Android but I won’t knock it for that. But, if you use the app and search for me, you’ll see that handsome fellow on the left along with my consolidated profile information collected from TalentBin’s search of the web.
I can imagine it being useful (a review mentioned no way to e-mail or favorite a search, though). I imagine it would be helpful in face-to-face meetings or maybe before an interview to learn more about a candidate coming in.
Like a lot of people, I’m not particularly sold on mobile search capabilities ever being a huge consideration for sourcers and recruiters but as an add-on to an already robust product? Sure, why not.