Odgers Berndtson, one of the fastest growing executive search firms in the US and the sixth largest in the world, announced the launch of its proprietary intelligence platform, OBDynamics, which uses big-data and machine learning to rapidly and accurately deliver data-informed talent intelligence and recruitment services.
Built on a continually updating data lake of 1.1 billion personal and corporate records, all of which are gathered in accordance with the most stringent international privacy regulations, OBDynamics’ AI-powered platform augments Odgers Berndtson’s traditional offerings, allowing consultants to provide highly detailed talent mapping and analytic services alongside top-end executive and middle market search.
“As the most extensive talent intelligence tool in the search industry, OBDynamics allows us to separate meaning from the vast web of digital noise, and enables our partners to find talent and analyze trends with heretofore unimaginable precision,” said Steve Potter, CEO of Odgers Berndtson US.
“For our clients, OBDynamics breaks down into three primary utilities,” Potter added. “The first is our Talent Intelligence offering, in which we use OBDynamics to build custom analytical maps of things like skills and talent distributions, compensation variation, career progressions, and pipeline analyses.”
“The second is a product we call Talent Streams, which is often used in tandem with our Talent Intelligence service. Essentially, it is a highly customized name-generation product in which we provide tailored shortlists of ready-to-hire mid-level candidates to our clients.
“The third product,” Potter continued, “is something we’re calling Augmented Search Intelligence, and it is baked into every search we do now. Essentially, OBDynamics’ research capabilities help us execute traditional executive searches faster and more accurately than before, generate more diverse fields of candidates, and find the proverbial unicorn candidates that no one else can find.”
For example, the firm recently worked with an international electronics company to find a data scientist who had recent experience as a Silicon Valley-based streaming company, spoke Hindi, had professional and business connections in Western India, was willing to relocate to the company’s offices in Mumbai, and had the mixture of technical and leadership expertise to build and manage a new team from scratch. “Talk about a needle in a haystack,” Potter said. “Before OBDynamics, this search might have taken a year; instead it was completed in six weeks.”
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As cutting-edge tools so often are, OBDynamics’ development was steered by necessity.
“OBDynamics was embryonic when the pandemic hit, and we retooled the program to fight the virus,” said Kennon Kincaid, COO of Odgers Berndtson US. “In New York State, for example, the Governor’s office asked us to help; within 48 hours we had used OBDynamics to identify 220,000 qualified healthcare professionals in New York and New Jersey and contacted them via SMS. Ultimately, 9,000 volunteers were willing to deploy to critical care epicenters, serve in their local communities, or assist with telehealth.”
In the past year, Odgers Berndtson US has also added four other new service offerings: Odgers Interim, a premier interim search business; The Berwick Group, a platform for recruiting middle-market executives; Leadership Assessment Services that help organizations make informed, metrics-based decisions about executive selection, high-potential identification, and succession planning; and OrgShakers, a human capital solutions team that provides organizational and other HR consulting services to clients.
