profile updated Mar 23, 2008, 10:45 AM
A burning glass focuses the sun's light onto a tiny area, creating heat powerful enough to melt iron. That's an apt name for this company that specializes in using machine intelligence to shed light on assorted pieces of information. More specifically, Burning Glass offers tools for recruiters to automate data extraction from natural language resumes and applications in order to quickly and accurately build candidate databases, then use this data to make matches with a company's hiring needs. Many companies offer tools that do this, though few do it as well as Burning Glass -- one reason, perhaps, why its technology is used by companies as large as Coca-Cola, Wachovia, and NBC.
While text or keyword searching has greatly simplified resume searching, it's still a daunting task, especially if a recruiter must review every resume that comes in response to a job posting. Burning Glass not only automates the processing of these resumes, but its artificial intelligence is sophisticated enough to tell the difference between an employer and a reference and parse the candidate's contact information into proper fields.
Other products do this, of course, so what is it that makes Burning Glass a success? LensMatch, its matching product, uses statistical models to predict a job-seeker's suitability for a particular position. For instance, if a company is looking for an accounting manager, LensMatch might discount accountants who have not had a promotion in a certain number of years based on the knowledge that an accountant can be expected to be promoted every X number of years. Not only does this eliminate the need for a recruiter to pick the right combination of keywords, experience, education, and other filters to sort through resumes, but it can also help find promising talent that standard searching might miss. It does this because the analytics "learn" by analyzing hiring and employment histories, refining the statistical models as needed.
The company was founded by Ted Crooks and Krishna Gopinathan, who now heads Global Analytics. Burning Glass partners with Kenexa and HRSmart to handle the parsing of resumes and provide matching services.News & Updates 
Products & Services
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LensXRay
Resume parsing tool that automates the task of entering data by recruiters or by an applicant. It can take a resume and, in seconds, extract the relevant data and place it into proper fields with a low error rate. Burning Glass has proprietary artificial intelligence that enables it to determine the nature of data in a resume by context and inference. -
LensMatch
An AI-based searching and matching tool that uses statistical modeling and real-world analytics to parse resumes and match job descriptions to candidates. The company says LensMatch is so sophisticated it can actually unearth skills that candidates may not have included on a resume. -
JobMatch
Job matching for candidates using the Burning Glass tools.