Yatedo, the “Google of recruitment”

Yatedo is a platform that aims to be the “Google of recruitment”!

Established for several years in France, it now wants to expand to the North American market, and its representatives came to visit us in Montréal. It was my pleasure to talk with Makram Torkhani,General Manager and Eric Tondo, VP Sales and Marketing, to find out more.

Can you tell us how this project came about?

The concept for the company was born out of the imagination and complementarity of two young computer and programming engineers, both of whom were convinced of the increasing digitization of the global economy. In 2007 they started from the observation that searching for people on the web is a complex and time-consuming operation. They then decided to focus their end-of-study project on a search engine dedicated to people that would allow for the management of both their online visibility and reputation.

Years 2007–2009 were spent formalizing the project, which presented a technological challenge. The matter hinged on finding solutions to the following problems: what to do with these masses of personal information and how to structure them to make them useful in terms of recruitment. In 2009, the two designers launched the first version of their Yatedo search engine, which attracted the interest of nearly 1 million Internet users.
 

Today, Yatedo is the “Google of recruitment”

With more than €5 million in leverage since its creation, Yatedo supported its development strategy with a strong investment in R & D—notably by investing nearly one million euros a year in in-house technology development. These developments led to the launch of its “Yatedo Talent” solution, the only mature Artificial Intelligence solution on the market for sourcing candidates.

How does it work, exactly?

Yatedo focuses its research on the skills of candidates in order to provide an answer to: “how to find the right person for my position?”, and does so across more than 800,000 million profiles. The algorithm we developed is based on ultra-objective and measurable criteria, and knows how to find skills or the potential of a candidate that aren’t detectable in a standard CV. This constitutes an undeniable asset in the context of talent shortage and hypercompetitive recruiting, not to mention its ability to detect talents that are “ready to move” or “high potential”.

We has designed an algorithmic modelling system able to understand the query made by the user in natural language. Thanks to semantic technology, “bots” have the ability to understand not only words, but also their contextual meaning and provide a precise answer rather than a list of pages that respond to them. Yatedo’s engineers have developed a proprietary technology that is designed to search for people and that offers users the ability to read, understand, analyze and structure data from across the web.

          1. The bots scan the web
          2. The bots analyze and select public results
          3. The bots compile relevant information and churn it out in the form of a nominative digital map.

With 120 customers and over 400 users, Yatedo continues to be a key player in the field of AI in France, providing a boost to skills-based employment and bridging the gap between supply and talent.
In 2018, over 50 new customers adopted Yatedo’s AI solution for their recruitment needs, 30% of which belong to the CAC40 (Vinci, Renault, Bouygues, Orange, Liquid Air, Valeo...)
 

We’ve seen a lot of platforms cease their activities, especially in view of the Linkedin API link interruption. How do you fare in this regard?

Yatedo is a candidate search engine whose mode of operation is not dependent on LinkedIn. Do we ask ourselves this question in the case of Google? No… Yatedo allows us to take into account several subjective criteria in the recruitment of a candidate (turnover, self-taught, high potential, ready to move, …) through algorithms. If these predictive indicators are not included in the CVs, the Yatedo solution will search them on the Internet to make them available to the recruiter, enabling him/her to select candidates based on innovative criteria. Indeed, Yatedo aggregates all the public information and groups it per person on a digital business card. The platforms that aren’t pursuing their activities don’t have the same DNA as Yatedo and they could never have existed without LinkedIn. This is absolutely not the case for Yatedo.

The Yatedo Talent solution integrates perfectly with the recruiter’s environment and talent acquisition ecosystem.

The Yatedo Talent solution positions itself upstream of the application management tools or solutions, in particular by managing the transition from “Interesting” to “Interested” status. As soon as the candidate is interested in engaging in an application process, the profile can be dealt with directly using the application management solutions developed by Yatedo. For all these reasons, the Yatedo Talent solution integrates perfectly into the talent acquisition ecosystem by offering an innovative and mature solution for the management of sourcing activities.

 

With all the laws that are being put in place regarding data protection, in what ways are the candidates protected.

Yatedo scrupulously respects the regulations in force, GDPR in this case. The indexing performed by the search engine only relates to public content shared by the user on the web and to professional content, ie, that are relevant in the recruitment context (experience, training and skills). In addition, and with a view to increasing the contacted user’s protection, Yatedo does not share its contact information. Our contact tool, YatedoMail, does not carry any private data, which ensures confidentiality for the Net user’s information; moreover, it allows him to decide on an opt-in basis to engage or not in a conversation with the recruiter.

Do you link up to ATSs?

Yes, we make it possible to export in PDF format in Drag & Drop mode to enable direct integration of the interested profile pools in the ATS. We have API/web services that allow us to connect the ATS with the candidate search solution on Yatedo.

Is the Boolean Search doomed to disappear? Do you think we’ll stop teaching it?

We can see three types of users: the “Novices” who discover the sourcing solutions, the “Professionals” who are familiar with sourcing strategy implementation—and consequently the use of solutions—, and finally, the “Experts” who today focus solely on sourcing strategies to fill open positions/opportunities.

We are under the opinion that, for the first two categories, mastering Boolean searches should not constitute a barrier to the use of sourcing solutions. In this context, search using keywords and filters to refine the search allows for optimized use and enables the recruiter to focus on analyzing and evaluating the identified profiles. It is Yatedo’s ambition to democratize strategies by allowing as many people as possible to launch searches. Each type of user must be able to find an answer to his/her challenges in our solution. And yes, we believe that teaching of Boolean Search does not constitute an adapted answer to the issue of democratization. By the way, who still makes Boolean queries to shop on the internet?
 

Thanks to Eric and Makram for visiting us ;)