Spotlight: Using AI to Find the Right Executive Talent
October 28, 2021 – Matt Chambers is the co-founder and CEO of Loxo, a global provider of artificial intelligence recruitment automation software. The company helps 125,000-plus recruiters identify, engage and hire the very best possible candidates for every job while eliminating 80 percent of the work over traditional recruitment methods.
Mr. Chambers recently sat down with Hunt Scanlon to discuss his company’s services and how they can help recruiters find top candidates.
Matt, can you explain Loxo and how it works?
Loxo is a global talent intelligence platform. The company’s AI-driven recruiting CRM and best-in-class ATS offer the most advanced recruiting and sourcing technology in the marketplace. The platform includes a talent graph of over 1.2 billion people, with contact information including verified mobile phone, personal and work emails. The instant AI sourcing, ranking and matching, and multi-channel drip campaign solution makes identifying, engaging and hiring the very best possible talent easier than ever before. More than 4,000 executive search and professional recruitment agencies across the globe are using Loxo to become hiring machines.
For executive search firms, how can this software improve the search process?
We help executive search and professional recruitment agencies by replacing their entire “tech stack,” which is composed of a legacy ATS/CRM and typically three to eight additional bolt-on tools (none of which were natively designed to work together) that are required to be successful and performing at the highest level. Think of a talent intelligence platform how you would compare today’s leading smartphones with their original first generation mobile phone. Smartphones offered such a leap forward in utility that it was obvious to everyone to justify the importance of having a smartphone device over a first generation mobile phone that could only make and receive calls. The same shift is going to happen away from ATS and CRMs towards the talent intelligence platform.
Can you discuss Loxo’s database?
Loxo’s proprietary database of over 1.2 billion people called Loxo Source is one of the most impactful data solutions. Our partners have immediate access to well over 100 data sources all within one system without view restrictions, throttles or the extraordinary ongoing costs of having to pay for subscriptions to other sourcing data providers or Linkedin Recruiter licenses for each and every recruiter. Recruiters are able to find talent that may otherwise not have been accessible. The talent graph includes social network data including publicly available LinkedIn, Github and Facebook data, healthcare, life sciences, insurance, nursing, sales, SaaS, engineering/technology and other industry specific premium, association and government data sets. These are some examples of how Loxo is working hard to future-proof executive search firms and drastically increase both performance and profitability. For its clients, Loxo has generated outstanding results. The platform has led to a 74 percent decrease in cost across the entire lifecycle including cost to source and hire. Sourcing and workflow automation has drastically increased speed and reduced time to hire by around 80 percent. Customer satisfaction surveys have revealed Loxo has earned plaudits for 98 percent of its client base.
How has the pandemic affected the recruiting industry, and how has this made AI tools more essential?
The candidate driven market, mass resignations and shift to remote or hybrid work is making it more challenging than ever to recruit and retain talent. Demand from hiring organizations seeking professional recruitment partners is at an all-time high. However, due to fierce competition and the high stakes involved, professional recruiting organizations are feeling the pressure to deliver exceptional results faster and more cost-effectively without increasing headcount. The only way to do that at this point is through technology. Executive search firms who have competencies with the latest technology and tools are not only increasing performance and profitability, but they are able to win more business through differentiation against competition and deliver an enhanced experience for consultants, clients and candidates.
How has data changed the recruiting sector?
Harnessing data from disconnected disparate data sets in recruitment is always much more complex and expensive than the majority of people ever expect. Due to the challenges and costs involved, up until recently everyone in recruiting has been using the same data sources and relying almost exclusively on LinkedIn. Executive search and recruiting agencies don’t have the level of product expertise or time required to build their own talent intelligence platform. Those who have attempted to build their own software are realizing it’s not possible to keep up with the pace of innovation in the open HR-tech marketplace. So it’s not only the data. Data is only one piece of the giant puzzle. If there is still a desire to create a digital business for the future many larger agencies are building client-facing software, internal tools and custom dashboards on top of the talent intelligence platforms open API. That is where the future of this market is heading. Regardless, professional recruiting organizations who embrace talent intelligence platforms will see accelerated business outcomes, better experiences and much stronger growth by orders of magnitude more than those who remain committed to trying to duct tape a half-dozen bolt-on tools to their traditional ATS/CRM vendors.
Can you provide some recruiting automation tips?
The key thing to understand about recruiting automation is that there’s not a silver bullet that can be obtained through a single step. Gaining breakthrough performance requires the right software solutions, utilized in a specific step-by-step playbook at each phase in the workflow. The area search firms should be focused on the most is to reduce the effort and resources required at the very top and middle end of the search lifecycle, particularly with name generation, sourcing and candidate outreach. Those steps alone can reduce resources, cost and time by 500 percent if you have the proper tools and playbook. We will be publishing our playbook and sharing it publicly for the first time in early 2022.
Has your company been funded by PE outfits?
Loxo is a closely held private company. Up until this point we have chosen not to raise institutional capital despite extraordinary interest. We believe in building a sustainable company that emerges as the undisputed category leader are we’re prepared to do whatever it takes to ensure that happens. Loxo is a profitable company, we’ve grown more than 200 percent year over year for the past several years, so we don’t need capital. Capital is not an impediment to achieving our objectives anymore. We’ve tripled the team size and anticipate being over 100 employees with several global offices in 2022. We are, however, always interested in establishing strategic partnerships with others that have the ability to bring significant added value to customers and all stakeholders.
