Creative circle connects talent and opportunities using Google Enterprise Search

Client

Creative Circle is an innovative staffing company that specializes in connecting advertising, marketing, creative and digital professionals with companies seeking talent. Spread across 22 offices in the United States and Canada, Creative Circle is known for unparalleled insight, speed and accuracy in matching job seekers with employment opportunities.

Business challenge

Creative Circle is built on the ability to quickly and thoroughly search through hundreds of thousands of interview notes, resumes and portfolios to find the most qualified candidates to match with great employment opportunities. In the creative staffing industry, speed is essential; being the first to find a candidate whose skills, competencies, and experience align exactly with the employer’s preferences is the key to success.

Creative Circle began to recognize a trend toward a more virtual workplace; a client in Boston might be in need of a perfectly qualified candidate based in New York who could complete a project remotely. In an industry fueled by speed and accuracy, it is vital for Creative Circle to be the first to respond to a job request, even if the most highly qualified candidate is located across the country. However, their recruiters lacked the ability to complete an all-point search across the network; information was siloed across file servers at the many offices in multiple locations around the country. The documents were embedded in complex, hierarchic layers of shared folders through which recruiters had to painstakingly search, causing loss of productivity and potential loss of business opportunities. According to Howard Jolcuvar, Chief Information Officer at Creative Circle, “We needed a way to break through the steel pipe of our locale.”

Solution

Creative Circle began evaluating search solutions that could break down information silos and give their recruiters the ability to find qualified job-seekers in any city or region. They connected with SADA Systems, a Google Cloud Premier Partner that provided enterprise search expertise and consultancy. “They really took the time to learn our vertical market and provided excellent guidance,” said Jolcuvar.

With the Google Search Appliance, Creative Circle’s IT team could centralize access and provide regionalized and localized document searches without having to revamp their entire information system. “Speed, of course, was also one of our key requirements,” said Jolcuvar, “and with the Google Search Appliance, turn-around time is faster than we’ve ever seen.” The Google Search Appliance was also completely scalable to support Creative Circle’s rapid growth in a cost-effective way; the company continues to open a number of new offices every year. The application also integrated well throughout their network, and the fact that GSA looks and operates much like Google Search that everyone already knows eliminated the need to cross train employees on multiple systems, providing one central access point to information.

As Adam Bleibtreu, Chief Marketing Officer at Creative Circle, explained: “As a company we were looking for a way to mine data from a central resource. Once we were introduced to the capabilities of the Google Search Appliance, it took no time for the application to get adopted.”

Creative Circle leveraged SADA Systems’ expertise and implementation services to install the Google Search Appliance and configure it to integrate seamlessly with existing systems and data. “There was hardly a hiccup in the whole process,” said Bleibtreu.

Results and benefits

The Google Search Appliance has provided Creative Circle with a valuable new tool, allowing efficient nationwide access to client information and opening up new opportunities–both on the recruiting side, for comprehensive resume searches, and on the customer side by providing quick access to client contracts and documents. As a result, Creative Circle now can access and detail search across their national data base of candidates from each of their 22 offices. Bleibtreu explains, “If a client contacts us with a specific creative need and we are unable to fill that request based on our geographic location, we can use the Google Search Appliance to search any other region, which opens up opportunities to find the perfect candidate for any client.

The Google Search Appliance has also saved Creative Circle’s recruiters valuable time and customer acquisition costs. “From an economic perspective, time is a form of currency for us. When a client needs to find a qualified candidate for a position our recruiters need to be able to find and then present candidates as quickly as possible. ” said Bleibtreu. Employees have been shocked by the speed, reach, and ease of use of searching with the appliance.

Embedded into every aspect of Creative Circle’s business practice and culture is the necessity for speed and accuracy in procuring clients and qualified candidates. The Google Search Appliance has helped employees and workflows to move more quickly, motivating their internal team process and, in the words of Jolcuvar, “getting us to places we might have missed.” If a candidate calls the office to request a job and Creative Circle’s agent calls back in 10 minutes with a well-matched position from which they can work remotely, that leads to both recurring business and increased client satisfaction. Jolcuvar shared, “The Google Search Appliance tool has broken down information silos and further differentiated us from other companies by revolutionizing the speed, simplicity, and accuracy in how we find experienced and talented candidates to match our clients’ needs for creative work.”