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EnticeLabs provides an innovative platform for companies to get in front of highly sought after passive job candidates. After over a year of development, testing and tweaking the company has launched its services to the masses—and they are seeing very positive results. We caught up with the CEO of EnticeLabs, Ryan Caldwell to discuss his company and his history of starting successful companies.

Silicon Slopes:  Your company has been in “stealth” mode since it was founded in 2007. We are happy to finally discover more about EnticeLabs. Can you tell us what your company does?

Ryan Caldwell: EnticeLabs is the next step in ensuring that today’s companies have the best talent. Hiring the right people—the best people—is at the top of every company’s challenges and expenses. We allow a company to get in front of highly valuable passive job candidates that they previously could not reach at all or had to expend great amounts of money to reach only a small percentage. We have found the need for this is huge, bottom line driven, and not much exists in the marketplace to effectively solve it.

We have companies consistently tell us that they are frustrated with the results they get from job boards like Monster and CareerBuilder. They are further frustrated that outside recruiters can cost a fortune and they feel like there are not really any options beyond that. Companies desperate for the quality talent that make today’s hot companies succeed, and seeing no other options, are trying to create their own methods. We have seen many companies go to extremes to get passive job candidates’ attention, ranging from putting up expensive bill boards all the way to trying to advertise on niche sites directly.

EnticeLabs’ TalentSeekr product, at a low cost and with extreme ease, can get a company’s job opportunities in front of millions of people specifically targeted to match that job’s needs. We put a company in front of the exact job candidates they are looking for. These are qualified passive job candidates that would normally never be aware that company is hiring or really even much about the company at all. With EnticeLabs, companies finally have very inexpensive access to the highly sought after qualified passive job candidates, have lower turn-over, build more value and allow the company to build on its core strengths instead of spending huge amounts of budget and time on the wrong candidates.

Silicon Slopes: Can you tell us about the history of the company and how the idea for EnticeLabs came about?

Ryan Caldwell: The idea for the need to get to qualified passive job candidates has been known for some time. Well-known and influential books like TalentForce talk about the need for an approach and solution like EnticeLabs. Monster and others have made some efforts to address this need. Monster first came out with a product to address this around two years ago, but they have not yet been able to make the product actually fix the problem it was intended to fix. The need for this idea has been clear and validated for years.

EnticeLabs, like Monster, was initially on the wrong path with an attempt to solve a problem in a way that was not sustainable, could not deliver consistent results and was not what the market was willing to buy. With our charge forward and the amount of real data and experience we gained, we were able to quickly see what needed to be changed, and based on this new idea and understanding, now have a product that precisely delivers exactly what is needed by today’s companies. The idea was born and shaped by our current team and their iterative effort to make a product that delivered real value to our customers. It has been an intense and exhilarating ride putting the idea together and we are excited with the final product and how well it works.

Silicon Slopes: What is the strategy behind going after passive candidates? Is it based on the idea that the most talented people already have jobs?

Ryan Caldwell: Passive Job candidates make up over 70% of the labor force and for that reason alone, to not go after them greatly limits the pool you have to draw from, but the main reason that companies want to go after passive job candidates is to get a better quality hire.

At a basic level, job boards are filled with, and headhunters are approached by, largely unhappy, disgruntled and often difficult candidates that are quick to switch from any job. Having to replace a hire only a year or so after they are brought on board is extremely expensive for a company. Because passive candidates are not looking, they only tend to apply for jobs and companies that really are a perfect fit because, since they are for the most part already happy where they are, only a truly better fit could pull them away. 

Active candidates are the opposite. They are either desperate for a job or really unhappy where they are, so they will apply for jobs and companies that they are not really that interested in long term. Sometimes they take jobs under the premise of a long-term commitment, but they are temporary solutions to get out of their current situation until their ideal job comes along. The ‘grass is greener’ mentality of many active candidates plagues HR departments during and after the hire. 

It’s true that some active candidates are great and some passive candidates are not the best, but by far the basics of who the two groups are, and how much larger the passive job candidate pool is, clearly make passive candidates a group that no company can afford not to heavily target. This has become especially true when an easy and inexpensive option now exists.

Silicon Slopes:  Your product has been in beta and available to only select test groups until recently. Can you tell us some of things you discovered during this process? Any major surprises?

Ryan Caldwell: We definitely learned a lot during that phase. For one, since our original product was similar to the product offerings of several competitors, as we fought to get immediate results, we saw very quickly why those products and those companies were unable to be more successful. The whole reason that a typical passive job candidate is so much more valuable than a typical active job candidate is because they are fundamentally different. There truly is a different mentality with the two groups and you cannot put in place a HR strategy to get to passive job candidates that works off the old rules of active job candidates. We learned that, had to make the product and offering match reality, and the results have been coming in strong since. It was truly surprising how different the two camps are. I think that is going to be one of the big shifts in the coming years as companies learn how to benefit from and interact with passive job candidates when decades of the old methods or job boards and classifieds have only allowed them to interact with and court highly active job candidates. 

Silicon Slopes:  It seems like you have a very cool culture at EnticeLabs. Is this playing a big role in your ability to hire talented people?

Ryan Caldwell: Definitely, but I would say the largest thing that keeps talent coming to and retains talent at EnticeLabs is the level of talent that is already here. Talented, creative and driven people like to work with other highly-talented, creative and driven people. They want to work on challenging projects that not only matter, but where they can weekly see the progress. To great employees, that makes all the difference in the world. That is definitely the culture here. Everyone takes great pride in our team and what we are building. There is no question of the difference it will make or the impact it will have, so there is certainly a team feeling of being part of something great.

Silicon Slopes:  What do you see as the biggest road block for the ultimate success of your company?

Ryan Caldwell: Our biggest roadblock overall, I would say, that we overcame was figuring out the right product and the way to deliver and implement that product. Our future is less filled with roadblocks than challenges that limit our possible speed of growth. To get the message out to thousands of companies that this product exists and works is a big task. The rate at which we do that has many factors and there are many methods and costs associated with each method. Of course we want the fastest growth possible, so it is a definite challenge to determine the right mix.

Silicon Slopes:  What inspired you to become an entrepreneur?

Ryan Caldwell: Almost anyone in my life, if given one word to describe me, has used the word “builder”. I love and am obsessed with building— everything and anything really. Since the youngest age, I wanted to build each successive project bigger, better, stronger and more impactful. Businesses are just one of the toughest, most enjoyable and most impactful things to build. In a business you build strategy, products, methods, systems, culture, relationships and most importantly, real sustainable value. I think that is the biggest thing that inspired me to be an entrepreneur; the fact that I could build something important that could last.

For example, watching a company I founded, built and sold while still completing my undergrad was an amazing experience early in my business life. I got to watch that company grow into a multi-million dollar company while I still ran it and then continue on to eventually become a key part of a publicly traded company. That was extremely rewarding. It provided real services better, faster and with greater savings than any competitor. That created value for all and therefore the company lasted. If I am not building something that lasts, my heart just can’t be in it. If a company does not make a net positive impact on all, it cannot exist long term. I take great pride that companies I have founded and helped grow still exist today and are stronger than ever. It is the building and the lasting positive effect that makes me enjoy being an entrepreneur so much.

Silicon Slopes:  You have a history of starting and growing successful companies. Can you share with us some valuable lessons you have learned from these experiences?

Ryan Caldwell: You learn a lot over the years. I have been both very lucky as well as determined and have gratefully had the tough lessons always turn out in the positive. I have definitely realized some of the better ways to do things and graduated from tough situations with the lesson well learned. Here are some of my top lessons:

• Only start and run businesses that you love and businesses you think make a real difference in their market. You need passion to help guarantee a startup’s success, and if you don’t love it and truly believe it matters in a big way, you might not be able to last the required distance.
• Pick your team so very carefully. Know yourself, your partners and team. The makeup of startup people can be varied, but they are typically very driven, talented and opinionated people. A strong team with the right mix can overcome nearly any obstacle while the wrong mix can seem to stumble over the easiest challenge.
• Know what you are in for. Startups are just that, startups. They are tough and grueling, but have huge rewards. It pains me to see an entrepreneur or employee half way down the path to the rewards, but having not properly planned for how tough the road really can be, unable to finish the journey.
• Pick the right early investors. Your early investors can make or break your company, especially the more inexperienced you are.  I learned that early in my career. Even now, the right investors still make a huge difference and enable me to speed up growth and keep focus on the health of the business. I have had great investors at EnticeLabs. Even in the busy and high pressure times, the commitment, insights and dependability of our solid investors has helped us get to our goals faster.

Thanks for the chance to get to share with you and your audience a little about EnticeLabs and what we are doing here!