TalentAdore humanises the job hunt

A job search has a typical order of events. After finding a suitable vacancy, you spend hours tweaking your resume and sculpting a cover letter just so, in order to maximise your impact. Then, once it is polished and ready, you finally submit it in a giddy mix of nervousness, excitement and hope.

Impatiently, you wait for a response. And wait. And then, quite often… nothing.

“Recruiting is full of crazy customs and takes hours of your time,” states Joni Latvala, CTO of TalentAdore. “It’s pretty inefficient and we want to fix that.”

Thanks to this Finnish solution, if 100 people apply for a job, 99 will no longer be left in the dark when that one person is successful.

“The key feature we have is that, as a candidate, you can get feedback about what is good in your application, or the areas you need to develop in order to be relevant in this job in future,” Latvala says. “There will also be automatic status updates in the next version of our product, so you will always know how the recruitment process is going.”

Employing the human touch

TalentAdore’s solution relies on neural network technology-based algorithms that generate clear and fully personalised feedback.

“We are making recruitment more human by using natural language processing,” explains company CEO Saku Valkama. “That’s why we say we are bringing the human touch back into recruitment.”

Whilst TalentAdore’s appeal is obvious for candidates, the service also brings significant value to the other side of the fence.

“We believe that if we serve the needs of the candidate, then that’s the best way to serve the needs of the employers,” Valkama continues. “Candidates are customers – if you don’t treat them well they stop buying your products.”

What’s more, these alienated applicants could very well then also spread the negative word of their experience to others.

“Many companies today put customers at the centre of their business, saying, ‘the customer is king’,” Valkama continues. “But, if candidates are also customers, why do they treat them this way?”

Well, perhaps the chief culprit is lack of time. Thus, TalentAdore’s patented technology drastically reduces how long it takes employers to process significant numbers of applications – from hours to minutes.

Change of heart

After closing a 700 000-euro funding round in the spring, the company is now readying itself for its next great push.

“We now have the service available in Finnish and English,” Valkama says. “But, if we can make an algorithm for these languages, we can make it in others as well. We are aiming for really strong, rapid growth and going where the need is greatest.”

Talking with the TalentAdore duo, it is abundantly clear how passionate they are about trying to make a difference. It could even be said that they wear their heart on their sleeve at times.

However, upon closer inspection, TalentAdore’s logo actually reveals its true location: a heart is symbolically connected to the company name.

“When we call customer service somewhere and their answer is ‘I don’t know, I’m just working here’, this kind of treatment means that the employee doesn’t have their heart in the game,” Valkama observes. “But, every person can find their dream job.”

With this in mind, it’s fair to say then that TalentAdore’s heart is definitely in the right place.