Dear Nicky,
Did I hear correctly that NPAworldwide is replacing Matchmaker? What else can you tell me?
Curious in Curtis
Dear Curious,
Yes, you heard correctly! In late September, NPAworldwide announced our new technology partnership with Oorwin Labs, based in San Francisco, California. They are developing a new recruitment marketplace that will replace Matchmaker. Members will also have access to the Oorwin ATS as part of this partnership. In case you missed it the first time, below is the full update from September.
Nicky
send letters to: nanderson@npaworldwide.com
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September 29, 2021
It is time to update you on the outcomes of several years’ worth of work, planning, and review by NPAworldwide staff, Board leadership, and the relatively newly assembled Technology Committee.
Matchmaker
While the Matchmaker tool has served us well for many years now, its future viability and its regular use by members are both less than certain. We continue to add features and keep Matchmaker as current as possible. The cost of continued feature development is beginning to grow. Keeping our Matchmaker “marketplace” - the name we use for all the sharing tools we have been examining – will become a burden and even after the invested expense, we will still have a dated solution.
What is Next?
With the help of the Board and much time invested by the Technology Committee, we moved off a solution proposed by Hello Gustav in 2019. Gustav’s venture-backed leadership had concerns about distracting their development team from the core focus of the start-up by spending time on a custom marketplace for NPAworldwide. We were very close to an agreement but our project does not fit with their plans. Good to learn that before entering an agreement. Gustav has much work to do to reach a sustainable point of breakeven and our marketplace project could have distracted Gustav from that primary goal.
We quickly began an examination of dozens of options in late 2020 and carefully arrived at a shortlist including an NPAworldwide member-created tool, a newly launched marketplace for employers, candidates, and recruiters called Recruiting Hub, and several ATS-based tools. After careful consideration, the Technology Committee saw the greatest value in a newly-organized ATS/CRM provider called Oorwin. The Oorwin tool is AI-driven, highly customizable, affordable, and will serve as the backbone of our marketplace while offering easy integration with a reliable and affordable ATS/CRM tool for members in need of this capability.
About Oorwin
Oorwin is a combination ATS/CRM tool with about 600 contracted clients and growing. Their AI-powered tool has received strongly positive reviews by users and industry experts alike. The team supporting our project is amazing and progressive in their view of our options and offers more ideas and input than any provider we have used in the last 15 years of software development. We are getting outstanding attention to detail on the Statement of Work process that is currently underway.
We will be able to compete with our US-based competitive network, Top Echelon. For the first time, we will have both a marketplace and a coordinated ATS tool in Oorwin which is a draw to new members. This is a big deal for new firms joining NPAworldwide in North America. Sarah Freiburger, our Director of Membership, has done great work selling our benefits, but for firms seeking an ATS and a network, they often opt for TE due to software considerations. The Oorwin ATS/CRM will be at a price advantage to TE’s solution also. This should make even existing users consider NPAworldwide as an option.
Timing
It is always dangerous to establish specific timelines with technology projects. We are working quickly and expect to have a solution ready to go in the next 6 to 9 months. We will start previewing the solution in the first quarter of 2022.
About Your Technology Committee
We are so appreciative of this group of volunteer members. They have done more than can be expressed to move us forward. They helped extract us from our Gustav dead-end, they offer ideas on a path forward, they helped engage and demo options from around the world, they evaluated, debated, and helped us set a direction for our path forward. They have been and continue to be in meetings to evaluate directions and options. It is countless hours of volunteer time. Thank them when you have a moment.
The members of the Technology Committee are:
- Jon Davis
- Laura LaBine
- Marcus Ronaldi
- Tim Lane
- James Harman
- Staff Members: Chris Paull and Dave Nerz
In addition to this group, we bring in other members anytime we require specialty feedback from a group to be served by the marketplace being developed.
Summary
It has been underway for years and we expect to start showing you evidence of this work in the months ahead. While a change of any kind is difficult for those it impacts, we expect to make this change from Matchmaker to a new marketplace one that will save you time and make you money. We appreciate your continued use of Matchmaker and will keep you informed of our progress on this project.