It was about 20 years ago when Mark Knowlton, founder of recruiting software company TechScreen, realized the perils of screening job candidates for technology companies without knowing the technology.
"I was at a now-defunct company called The Clarity Group," said Knowlton, who at the time was recommending applicants for tech positions. "The CEO of the company did an interview of the candidate -- his resume looked solid -- and the interview lasted two minutes."
Afterward, the CEO came out and mockingly told Knowlton, "If I do one more interview like that, I'm going to shoot you in the head."
"That was my epiphany," he said: He needed to “immerse” himself in the technology of the company. He studied, went to conferences, read white papers, and talked with friends who are developers. This kind of preparedness got him a career that includes recruiting for big innovators such as MathWorks, PegaSystems and Akamai.
Now, he sees his subscription software service startup, TechScreen, as a way to allow other recruiters to fortify their own knowledge of all kinds of fast-changing tech, so they can screen candidates without spending time on all the homework.
"If you think about the recruiting process, no one gets hired until a hiring manager makes a decision. Right now, the manager is really motivated by reading a static document... the resume," said Knowlton. "Deciding who gets phone-screened and who gets interviewed is driven by their impression of a piece of paper." But, he said, the recruiter is in the middle. "They're obviously not engineers and they're not tech people, but they're asked to interface with technical people and engineers and make recommendations. ... They are out of their element."
Essentially taking the process he used when recruiting and putting it into a software form with libraries of technology-related questions, answers and scores, he founded TechScreen in 2015. He took the effort full-time this year, when sales were enough to allow him to quit his day job, he said. So far, the Mansfield, Mass.-based company has under ten employees and has been self-funded, with no investors. TechScreen is instead expanding through partnerships and license sales, said Knowlton.
“It helps us spot people who are misrepresenting themselves on their resume. You can tell right away if a candidate is legitimate,” said Mike Press, vice president of recruiting and operations for The Judge Group, of the software. One of TechScreen's clients, The Judge Group is a professional staffing services firm headquartered in Wayne, Pennsylvania, with offices throughout the U.S., Canada, India and China. So far, the company holds 11 subscription licenses for TechScreen's software, said Press.
The software, which Judge's recruiters use while on the phone with potential job candidates, especially helps with new staffers who have less knowledge of a particular technology, Press said.
But just as important as ruling out candidates with "paper tiger resumes," said Knowlton, is the ability of the software to help find job-matches from people whose resumes obscure their abilities.
"What we try to do, is say, 'Look, don't worry as much about the details of the resume, let's have a conversation and figure out if this person is worth further consideration,'" he said. "When someone can take a complex subject, explain it to someone who's eight years old and have it make sense, that person just doesn't understand that information, they own it."
As for TechScreen's future plans, Knowlton isn't shy about talking exit strategy.
"This company was made to get bought," he said, predicting that an applicant staffing software system vendor or staffing company would be a likely buyer.
