Today, iCIMS announced the acquisition of Candidate.ID, a leader in recruitment marketing automation. By adding Candidate.ID’s functionality to its Talent Cloud, iCIMS offers a powerful recruitment marketing offering with the ability to effectively engage talent. In addition, this acquisition makes iCIMS better positioned to compete against ATS providers and stand-alone CRM providers. I have been following Candidate.ID for the past few years, and I am excited about this opportunity.
Below are a few of my initial thoughts:
What is Candidate.ID?
Companies are facing pressure to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of talent acquisition efforts. Candidate.ID helps companies solve this challenge by identifying, nurturing, and engaging ready-now talent. It solves what the ATS, LinkedIn, and CRM cannot do – informing recruiters when someone is ready to be hired and engaging that individual in a meaningful way. As a result, recruiters receive notifications when candidates are interested, and their profiles are updated in real-time, reducing time-to-fill, improving candidate engagement, and increasing conversion rates.
One key differentiator is that Candidate.ID focuses on In-Demand talent, helping companies build pipelines for critical roles that are hard to fill, including healthcare professionals, engineers, scientists, and enterprise sales. Its scoring capabilities allow companies to filter candidates by engagement scores and match them against job descriptions.
What Do We Know About This Acquisition?
Before joining iCIMS, Steve Lucas was the CEO of Marketo, a marketing automation provider. Given his background, It is no surprise that he was impressed by Candidate.ID and the potential to enhance Talent Cloud with these capabilities. Here are a few things that we know about the acquisition so far.
- Brand: Immediately following the acquisition, Candidate.ID will be referred to as “Candidate.ID, an iCIMS company.” A brand transition may occur in 2023.
- Flexibility: iCIMS is taking a flexible approach to selling and packaging Candidate.ID. It will be offered to existing customers, sold as a stand-alone, and sold to RPOs.
- Integration: In the near-term, Candidate.ID’s solutions will be integrated into iCIMS CRM and iCIMS ATS. The product integration will continue to roll out in phases across data, user experience, and workflows across the entire Talent Cloud, including unique use cases in the areas of internal mobility.
What is Marketing Automation?
Marketing automation helps companies better engage and nurture talent by automating marketing tasks and letting companies know which candidates are cold, warm, and “ready-now.” It sits at the top of the funnel and manages all interactions with talent, including when they visit a career site, open an email, open a job advertisement, etc. It solves what the ATS, LinkedIn, and CRM cannot do – informing recruiters when someone is ready to be hired and engaging that individual in a meaningful way. Integrating CRM and marketing automation software can increase a company’s recruitment marketing capabilities and improve the experience.
How Does it Help?
Marketing automation helps companies understand the talent they are attracting, manage talent pipelines more effectively, and provide a better experience to both recruiters and candidates. Some of the use cases include:
- Lead Nurturing: As today’s companies face challenges attracting talent and managing applicant volume, they need to nurture their candidate relationships over time. Candidates are not always ready to apply for a job with their first engagement. With marketing automation, companies can check in with candidates, create more meaningful relationships, and track engagement levels to know when candidates are “ready now.”
- Target Audience: With marketing automation, companies can better understand the talent they target and track who is interested and engaged. It uses a multi-channel approach to understand what content individuals are interested in, how they want to receive that content and then serves up relevant information. It provides visibility into the marketing activities so that companies can see what activities are working and what needs to change.
- Analytics: Once a campaign has ended, the system generates analytics showing how successful the campaign was and what may need to change in the future. Analytics provide insights into cold, warm, and ready candidates.
I am excited to share any updates on this acquisition over the next few months and include Candidate.ID in our Recruitment Marketing Index report.
