Whitetruffle, now free for all!

At Whitetruffle, we have big ambitions. We want to connect everybody with the right job opportunity.

The only way we can do this is by being able to allow every company, of any size, to join our platform. This is the way we can make the best matches for every Whitetruffle user, and further enhance our experience for everyone.

When talking to thousands of companies who have used Whitetruffle, we understood very clearly that the success-fee-upon-hire model was a major hurdle for many, preventing some companies from being able to use Whitetruffle.

Today, I’m excited to announce that we’re removing that friction.

Whitetruffle is now totally free for both companies and candidates. (Read our announcement here, watch our video here).

You can easily sign up as a company or candidate here.

For companies who have multiple jobs and want to hire faster, we are offering affordable paid plans with some extra features to help you with your goals. These plans start from $660/month and you can see details here. Some of these features will allow you to choose school, work backgrounds of candidates, and also allow you to reach out to our most popular candidates.

If you’re an existing Whitetruffle customer, you should have already received an email about this change from our business development team with your options. If you haven’t, or if you have any questions, please feel free to email us.

From the day Whitetruffle was born, we wanted to create the best experience for all of our users. While we still have a lot of work ahead of us, the success that we’ve seen with the hundreds of happy hires that happened through Whitetruffle gives me confidence that we’re moving in the right direction.

We are grateful for your support, and hope that you will continue to help us shape our product.

Alex Deve
CEO & Co-Founder

The Art of Persuasion

Many times we’re asked by employers, “How can I better engage the candidate?”, “How can I hook them so they’ll consider us?”. Unfortunately, there’s no shortcut answer. But companies who are getting the attention of our candidates seem to do well when they’re able tell a good story of the big “idea” that the candidate could be part of.

My own experience is no different than what most people get. When an employer or recruiter approaches me, they usually cut and paste from their website and the job posting. The problem? It fails to open my eye to the potential of what this opportunity could be “for me”. So with not much to grasp, I’ll usually ignore or politely decline.

If you’re guilty of this too, don’t waste your time! Take a moment to re-think your approach and read on.

The art of persuasion is about the bigger vision that people like Steve Jobs and Martin Luther King have been able to convey. The good news is, there’s a pattern that you can steal and incorporate in your communication to make it compelling.

Here’s a story structure shape that these great story tellers intuitively used.

Image © Nancy Duarte: How to lure audiences

The pattern follows a method of communicating to your audience on where you are today (“What is”) and contrasting it to the future (“What could be”). It’s important to make the gap as big as possible, so that you can lure the audience away to the future that awaits them.

Isn’t that similar to the needs of talent sourcing? Most candidates you want are passive or don’t even know you, and you need to differentiate.

Image © Nancy Duarte: How to lure audiences

This means you need to tell a good “story” with the grand vision, but make it clear so it ties in to what this could mean for the candidate. Try using the contrast approach and tell the story of your company’s existence from your heart. If your candidate can grasp, resonate, and get excited about your story, it’s going to be so much easier to move them to the next phase.

What’s the back story to the art of persuasion?

A few years ago, I had the privilege of attending a one day workshop at Duarte, a small boutique communication agency in the heart of Silicon Valley that’s led by Nancy Duarte. Tired of many boring presentations that fall flat, she de-constructed the structure of persuasive communication by studying Gustav Freytag’s (German dramatist) dramatic story structure, cinema scripts, and presentations given by Steve Jobs, Ghandi, and Martin Luther King.

Her curiosity and research paid off, and she uncovered the underlying story structure that can move audiences. You can watch an intriguing video of Nancy’s session about how to lure audiences on this video at TedX East here.

Rewind to 2007 when Steve Jobs took stage to debut the iPhone to the world, it wasn’t all about the sleek new design, awesome features, or the R&D. His goal was to sell the “idea” of how the iPhone can change your life, and Nancy found that he used the technique of “what it is” and “what it could be” to draw his audience in, and compel them to feel the same way. The 90 min. speech peaked when he unveiled the actual iPhone and created a STAR moment (=Something To Always Remember), and he finished his story with a quote that led the audience to the new bliss: the promise to carry on Apple’s vision of building revolutionary products.

It’s time to re-visit your elevator pitch and ensure that your grand vision is incorporated into the communication that you have with your candidates.

Whether it’s your company profile, or your first message to the candidate, take a step back and check to see if it sounds like a good story. Why does your business exist and what’s the big picture?

At Whitetruffle, we help companies source candidates faster, so that you can build your teams faster. Our message could end there… but our big vision is that by doing so, we enable more innovations to come to life faster. And we’re all very proud to be part of it 🙂

– Masami, Whitetruffle Marketing

Whitetruffle: A Recruiter’s Delicacy

With the continued rise in innovation within the technology sector, many companies have been dedicating their efforts to hiring quality individuals for their teams. Let me introduce you to Whitetru…

Thanks Orrick! If you need to hire tech talent, follow the link and read on for a discount code…

Top 5 Reasons Companies Choose Whitetruffle

Yesterday we posted the top 5 reasons job seekers choose Whitetruffle. Today, we want to highlight why over 900 companies have chosen Whitetruffle to source the talent they need.

1. It’s a time saver! Searching, messaging, and followup using traditional sourcing tool can eat up a lot of your day. Whitetruffle sends curated recommendations tailored to your company’s needs.

“I enjoy the anonymous matching until mutual interest is expressed. Taking time to speak with unqualified applicants can take up a lot of bandwidth.”

2. Whitetruffle combines low pressure with great service.

“The fact that you’re basically a recruiter without dealing with the hard sell. That’s what turns me off of recruiters most. Also, great customer service and competitive pricing.”

3. Ease of use. In addition to cutting out the time needed for searching, reviewing candidates is quick and easy.

“It’s quick and easy to use. It’s not expensive and provides a lot of candidates. The profiles are well organized and easy to view significant things I’m looking for.”

4. We source people you won’t find anywhere else – including passive candidates and people willing to relocate.

“It seems to get at candidates that don’t come in from other channels – potentially passive candidates.”

5. We’ve made the recruiting process easier, better, and far more painless. 76% of companies we surveyed were impressed by the flow of candidates they were receiving and rated it better than other services they had tried.

“Love you guys! Thanks for such a great service.”

Does your company have a

Great piece by Thomas Friedman

At Whitetruffle, we’re big fans of Thomas Friedman. We read his books, and usually read his column in the New York Times.

In one of his recent posts, Thomas talk about Coursera, a new initiative by Andrew Ng, from Stanford, describing it as:

allowing students from all over the world to not only hear his lectures, but to do homework assignments, be graded, receive a certificate for completing the course and use that to get a better job or gain admission to a better school.

It is very clear that university knowledge is becoming more and more commoditized with more and more people having access to the best courses. We actually foresee this trend to continue and accelerate.

We also believe that there are many signals, other than academic achievements, that can describe a person and their abilities. That data exists in social media, in online, communities, in different profiles…

We’re working hard at Whitetruffle to try to bring all these signals together, to help our algorithm do a better job and present both companies and candidates with the ideal match. There is still a long way to go, but this is why today we integrate with Facebook, Linkedin, GitHub, Codility among others… And many more to come!

New emails, finally!

Emails are very important to the Whitetruffle experience. That’s how we alert you when there is a match and/or an introduction. It’s actually at the heart of our service.

Yet, our emails were… hmmm… not that good. We were so focused in building our algorithm, that we never really spent the time to fix them. The format was quite ugly, and it was very difficult to interact directly from them.

Well, we finally improved them! And now, they are absolutely gorgeous and super useful.

No need to speak too much about them: you will tell the difference very quickly! We’re really proud of this improvement. It’s one of the most important features of Whitetruffle.