Phil Noelting, CEO of Qwalify - Building Culturally-Fit Talent Pipelines

Back in 2013, I attended Geoff Webb's TRUToronto unconference and there I met a nice young guy named Phil Noelting, the CEO of @Qwalify. He gave me his card and we talked briefly about him being a guest on The Recruiting Animal Show and, now, many months later, the deed has been done.

I think it was a good show but I must admit that most of the time was spent with me trying to pull some basic info out of Phil about what his company does. Here's how I see it now.

Qwalify builds talent pipelines. They get your target personnel to answer questions about your company's products, services and values and this creates a recruiting database of pre-screened potential candidates with whom you can communicate by email.

The key is that with this survey info, you can create a database of people who like what you do and think like you -- and that means they are going to fit in.

How do they get people to answer questions? They ask them to in ads and at booths at trade shows. (And I think by other means as well).

Marty Snyder, CEO of PCRecruiter was along for the ride and he asked Phil a very interesting question about the legitimacy of having people answer questions without telling them that they are, in a sense, filling out a job application.

Another question we tried to answer: Is recruiting broken? Qwalify says yes but most of us said no.

So, have a listen and tell me in the comment section, if I could have delivered the information more clearly and more quickly.

My introduction was about the lesson in personal branding I learned from Stacy Donovan Zapar.

And I must admit that I had sound problems again. Today I had to call in on Skype (with a headset) and I couldn't tell if I was loud or soft and I kept getting different feedback from Jerry and the people listening on their computers. So, sorry about that.

LISTEN HERE

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Comment by Tom Bolt on May 2, 2014 at 9:08am: I hope Qwalify or something like it finally gains critical mass and we can update the archaic way we are handling recruiting. Sorry I had to bail out on the show, but all I heard while I was listening was a politician-like pitch that didn't answer key questions. It is an uphill battle for a company like that when so many others are looking for the same secret sauce. If Phil is going to be the second coming of Mark Zuckerberg he needs to learn what is broken and fix that, not offer a blanket excuse that it is broken. His example of a retail operation indicates success on a limited scale, but how does that solution scale up to other businesses and large corporations? To change things radically there needs to be a universal paradigm shift from the old way to the better way. What is that? He didn't seem to want to go there.

The online dating idea for employers/candidates barely works for online dating. Automation that takes the personal aspect out of anything related to people will fall short of success.

Comment by Recruiting Animal on May 2, 2014 at 10:03am: Tom, thanks for the feedback. I like Phil, and maybe we're a tough audience but I think that he could have told us what he does more simply and then spent more time giving us detailed stories of how it worked. But that's true of almost every guest. Mind you, he did give us more examples than the retail one, perhaps after you left. Regards