Need an IT job? Check out Canada’s MatchGuide
If you’re looking for a rewarding IT job — nay, an IT career — a new Canadian technology might be able to help. MatchGuide is an online matchmaking service designed to hook up employees with potential employers. We chat with Derek Bullen, entrepreneur and inventor of the MatchGuide technology.
In this “5 Questions” blog post, a regular feature at Sync, we chat with Derek Bullen from S.I. Systems about their unique matchmaking service for the IT industry.
Sync: What is MatchGuide, exactly?
Derek Bullen: To find people and employers who ‘click’, we developed MatchGuide, which is modeled after online dating services but designed for the IT sector. It screens and matches candidates with new employment opportunities in order to find the right person for the right job.
We developed MatchGuide from the ground up in order to create a system that allows us to manage the complete staffing lifecycle. It seamlessly flows candidates and clients from the initial online application to the available position of employment. We believe it makes the process frictionless for both the client and candidate. It is the brainchild of our business – it runs, prioritizes and reports on every aspect of our company and we are fully integrated with it.
We have developed MatchGuide over the past eight years for all aspects of recruiting, sourcing and matching of IT professionals with opportunities we receive from our clients in the market. The first version cost us $1M to develop. We hit a wall with redevelopment costs in 2007 and created a software development office in Chennai, India to create the second version in 2008. We now employ 18 IT professionals in our office in India and six in Canada to maintain and develop the core system.
Sync: How is this different than online job sites like Monster, Workopolis, Working, etc.
Bullen: Monster and Workopolis are job boards. A job board is only the front end of the entire process, someone still has to screen and qualify the talent, create a shortlist, negotiate the terms, create the contract, administer the contract and bill the client for services.
MatchGuide goes beyond simply collecting resumes – it actually screens and matches the right candidates to the right job. One example of the breadth of MatchGuide as opposed to a job board is in the area of screening and qualifying talent. A job board can get you many candidates to consider, MatchGuide can quickly tell you with proven certainty which ones will work out.
Our 99.8% success rate in selecting the right candidate gives us a strong business advantage. This certainty allows us to remove all risk in the hiring process by giving our clients a 30-day money-back guarantee on contractors and a six-month money-back guarantee on all permanent placements. None of our competitors match this or even come close.
A high success rate also saves the client and the candidate so much time when they are matched together properly the first time.
Sync: Can you please walk us through how the process works?
Bullen: It starts with the website – this is where IT contractors can view open positions and register themselves as candidates into the MatchGuide system. After a candidate has registered, we conduct an interview and do reference checks in order to qualify them and to determine what types of employers and opportunities they will click with.
Then there are a series of steps in which candidate information is processed, analyzed and stored. Candidate information then flows into our client and talent databases, and then into the deal flow, which automatically notifies candidates in our database of new job opportunities. Eventually when there is a match, information ends in portfolio management of our employed IT contractors and integrates seamlessly all of the accounting, timesheet, payroll and reporting for contractors.
For the S.i. Systems team, MatchGuide is essentially a dashboard showing the flow of presales activities into deal flow through to new sales for the month and into the portfolios of candidates each Account Executive has on assignment. We can see and manage the whole process at a high level. Each piece of information on the dashboard has a drilldown to more detail so we can see our effectiveness in placements, product streams, margins, clients and contractors.
Sync: Can you please give us an example of a success story with someone who used the service?
Bullen: While we find full-time placements for individuals within corporations, a large part of what we do is help IT contractors find work and help them manage their businesses. We just did a survey of 380 of IT contractors we found work for to find out why they chose S.i. Systems. We thought it would be the number of opportunities we have, and our client roster. What we found was that 37% of contractors chose to work with S.i. Systems because of our automated payroll and timesheet systems so they don’t have to worry about invoicing employers or getting paid on time – our system handles it all. The ease of use, guaranteed payment, and online accessibility to enter time makes it easy for them to run their businesses.
On the client side, we have a client in one of our branches that is a provider of proprietary hardware with embedded software. They told us they were having difficulty finding embedded software developers for high-end telecom-type hardware. We did not have a strong talent inventory in this area nine months ago. So we posted the first opportunities of this type on our website and immediately started to get new applications into our database of this type of talent. We are quickly able to create and assess a new talent stream and today firmware and embedded software developers account for 15% of new sales in that branch.
We get over 40,000 unique visits to our website www.sisystems.com each month and it attracts whatever our clients are requesting.
Sync: Finally, how much does it cost? If it’s free, what’s S.i. System’s business model?
Bullen: Interesting, we don’t sell MatchGuide, as it is our internal edge. When we developed MatchGuide we were local to Calgary only and were at $8M in sales. Since the development of MatchGuide we have grown from $8M to $180M in sales and are now a national company and one of the largest professional services firms in Canada.
Our model is to win more business than our competitors. Our sales are based on the value of the contracts S.i. Systems secures, or how many matches we make, and we work on a commission basis. With MatchGuide we are winning half of the new business we are proposing in all our markets. The advantage to the client is a savings in time, and a risk free frictionless staffing experience. We may set up a distinct company in the future to develop MatchGuide as a thin client service for other staffing firms and start a new business line.
Filed Under: Computing > For Women > Tech Trends > Uncategorized > Wireless
Tags: bullen, canada, dating, derek, employment, guide, it, job, match, matchguide, matchmaking, s.i. systems
Good concept, except your link or website from the article is down.
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Hi Greg,
You’re right. I’ll follow up to see why the site is down.
Maybe it’s from all the Sync traffic bombarding their server
Marc
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Just for the record… I have been using S.I. System for the last 6+ months. I have over 15 years of experience in IT. It’s ironic how this match-making system (MatchGuide) could not find a match for me.
I have other friends who have extensive experience in IT and have tried S.I. Systems. Guess what they’ve had the same experience. Early this year S.I. Systems I was surprised to see my friends profile, skill matrix and experience being used as an example for one of their recruitment campaigns. So I sent him an e-mail asking him what was the deal? It turned out that they were using his confidential information without his consent. What does this tell you? I am telling you don’t get your hopes up with this recruiting company. It’s just one of many with which you likely to be disappointed.
If you are an employer, just imagine how many great, talented people your organization has missed as a result of such system.
However no one should take my word for it, try it yourself, I am not out there to influence anyone’s opinion. I hope you experience it yourself and when you find out you can speak for yourself and perhaps respond to this comment if it remains until then.
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Hi Mark,
Derek is unavailable for the next couple of weeks, but I want to be sure to respond to your comment in a timely manner.
I’m sorry to hear that you didn’t have a great experience with us. We are always trying to learn and improve so your input is very much appreciated. We have had countless success stories with MatchGuide, so I’d be interested in understanding where things didn’t work out in your experience so we can get better.
I’d like to look into this, so if you wouldn’t mind dropping me a line at jennifer.foster@sisystems.com, we can find out more and I can correspond with you directly!
Jennifer Foster
Vice President Operations East, S.i. Systems
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Hi Jennifer,
My previous comment is my opinion of the business model and the MatchGuide system that was hyped up in the interview and is not intended to launch an investigation in what went wrong in my case or the other cases I mentioned. What had been done in my case is over, and I am not going to revisit it just because I raised a disagreement on the effectiveness of the so-called MatchGuide system. S.I. Systems should instead look at credibility of their word against their own system.
When was last time you conducted a survey of how ALL your “candidate” clients felt about the system? Can you provide data to support the claims made of the success of your MatchGuide system? Marc Saltzman asked a similar question but was poorly answered by Derek Bullen. In Derek answer, the survey conducted covered only the candidates that were successfully placed by S.I. System and the survey results do not give any measure of the match success of the MatchGuide system. The survey tells me that only 37% of your contractors are happy with the automated payroll and timesheet systems. On the “employer” client side, the case for a success story is poor as well. The “employer” could’ve attained the same level of success if they used S.I. Systems competitors.
MatchGuide, in my opinion, does not offer the prospecting “candidate” any measurable value and S.I. Systems is not any better than the job boards out there. In fact the candidate may have better success with online job boards such as Workopolis and Monster which are used by employers and recruiters such as S.I. Systems alike. Perhaps the word “Match” in the MatchGuide should replaced with the word “Selection” and then I will withdraw my criticism.
I also find it really ironic that S.I. Systems off-shored the development of its MatchGuide system to India, i.e. not using the Canadian talent in their database!!!
Finally, I think this problem is not unique to S.I. Systems but it’s common among the vast majority of IT recruiters, with the exception of a few who are very hard to find.
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Thank you so much for your feedback, Mark. Your input is greatly appreciated. Jennifer
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I do not believe that ‘Matchguide’ gives SI Systems much edge. The recruiters mostly use the job boards for candidates like the other agencies. There is nothing wrong with that just wanted to clear that up as a consultant most of the time I am contacted by them i get that response that i was received off the job board.
I wish SI Systems retained it’s people better, they seem to have high turnover.
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hi
im 29 from iran and i have mcts certificate.
how can i work in canada? please help me
thanks
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