Case study

How Dealroom helps The Big Search speed up candidate sourcing and enjoy stellar growth as a tech-focused recruiting platform.

“The live Dealroom API integration empowers our researchers and reduces the time it takes to run our research process. Combined with our own platform, we’ve reduced the time it takes to map perfect candidates from a few days to mere seconds.”

Petar Simjanoski

Petar Simjanoski

CPO, The Big Search

A tech-first talent consultancy

The Big Search is a tech-first talent consultancy with global reach, specialising in fast-growing technology companies.

  • Challenges

    • Connecting fast-moving tech companies and VC funds with quality talent faster than ever before
    • Lack of transparency within the recruiting industry
    • Innovating in an industry that no one has truly innovated in
  • Solutions

    • Access to Dealroom’s best-in-class market data to support research activities
    • Integrate with Dealroom’s API for seamless data access in real time
    • Use tech solutions, including Dealroom, to power candidate sourcing and leave no stone unturned
  • Results

    • Reduce the time it takes to source perfect candidates from a few days to mere seconds
    • Disrupt the sector through best-in-class technology solutions
    • Enjoy massive growth as a tech-first talent sourcing platform

See how Dealroom can help your organisation

Create your free account to access the largest database of startups & scale-ups

Challenges

Innovating the outdated recruitment model

When you’re sourcing talent for the tech space, you have to be tech-focused yourself if you’re going to play in the same sandbox as your clients. “From day one, we knew that technology would be a driving force. We knew that our competitive edge would be in technology,” says Petar Simjanoski, CPO at The Big Search. The company helps fast-moving technology companies and VC funds hire digital talent and scale-up teams through a range of service offerings – all powered by tech that promises to source talent much faster.

As a global talent-sourcing service, The Big Search operates in an industry that’s behind the curve on innovation. “Executive search is very old school and not disrupted by technology,” says Senior Consultant Elena Obukhova.

 

“It has always been PowerPoint presentations and pdfs sent to clients. We’ve completely changed that.”

“Now if the client wakes up at midnight and something worries them, they can log into our full-collaboration platform and get an overview of what the market looks like, what the talent landscape looks like, and get live updates to see what’s going on. This transparency has been lacking in this industry so far.”

Solution

Data integration to power searches and add transparency

Pulling away from old recruiting models, The Big Search does not rely on a black book of candidates that are recycled from one search to another. Every search is a new search, and no stone is left unturned. Data quality is fundamental to this process, and that’s why the company integrates with Dealroom API.

“Say we want to see everyone who works in a London SAAS company, with a specific seniority, who previously held an engineering role but has now moved into product. To get this information, we go to Dealroom, get 400,000 companies back, cross match that data with our own databases, and get the search result back in just a few seconds” Petar explains.

“If you queried on LinkedIn, you’d have to search millions of strings and you can never search company data. We’ve reduced the time it takes to map perfect candidates from a few days to mere seconds using this integration.”

Intriguingly, The Big Search also uses Dealroom to change clients’ mindsets. “People think there’s a shortage of talent, but the challenge is more about managing expectations,” says Elena. “Yes, it’s competitive, but if the client is notready to hire a person from Budapest and relocate them to London because of old cultural dogma, that’s a bigger challenge.”

For this data-driven company, the solution is obvious. “We’re good at defining roles and calling clients out on their biases, but we back this up by giving them avery thorough view of the market they’re competing in. Dealroom API helps us make sense of the market, so we can zoom out before we zoom in to align our clients’ expectations with market realities. We want to empower our clients to make the right decision and hold them accountable for it.”

“Right now, we’re implementing Dealroom in our candidate profiles,” Petar adds. “So, whenever a client hovers over the company, a Dealroom window pops up with more information about the company, funding and key events that happened during the candidate’s tenure. It all helps with calibrating requirements to the bigger picture in the market.”

Results

Tremendous growth as a tech-first talent sourcing platform

The Big Search’s tech-first business model has helped the company scale from 40 to 115 people in just one year. “It has been really cool for us to go through this growth,” Elena says. “As a recruitment company, we were testing our own hypothesis. We’ve learned a lot about managing the scaling process, and that helps us understand our clients better.”

When asked about the company’s future plans, Elena does not hesitate, “Full market domination!” she laughs. “We definitely want to be a global firm; that’s why we launched a presence in the US last year. We want to ensure the talent flow between Europe, emerging markets, Asia and the US, so we need to make sure that side of the planet is covered. Internally, we’re planning on doubling in size every year for the next five years.”

Market conditions are certainly supporting these aspirations. “Just a couple of years ago, Series A funding for a US startup would be maximum $5 million. Now it’s $15-20 million – and Europe is following the trend. There’s definitely capital to be deployed and that means companies are looking to hire the best talent,” says Elena.“

There are also a lot of opportunities in industries that haven’t been affected by tech yet. While we focus on tech recruitment, we actually mean financial servicesworking with tech, healthcare working with tech, and all those other functions where innovation matters. Speed of hiring will be key here because these companies want to be the first to bring their product to market. They need to scalefast and they need to do it in stealth mode – they can’t tell anyone becausethe competition will know.”

“This will be our playground going forward – helping companies to achieve their targets so much faster and treat talent as their competitive advantage. And powering it all with world-class tech.”