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September 04, 2019 | Tom Ballard

MomSource Network signs-up with Scout to recruit senior, executive-level female talent on a national basis

(EDITOR’S NOTE: Courtney Jones and MomSource Network just celebrated the company’s sixth anniversary last week. There are some exciting developments underway at the Knoxville-based venture.)

By Tom Ballard, Chief Alliance Officer, PYA

MomSource Network has signed-on with Scout to be the latter’s specialized recruiting technology platform for senior and executive-level female talent on a national basis.

For Courtney Jones, Founder of the Knoxville-based company, it’s a great opportunity to further grow her six-year old enterprise that is focused on helping individuals who have exited the workforce for family or other reasons, but are now desirous of reentering employment.

“Scout has a need for what we do, and we have a database of talented people,” Jones says.

That database is a key aspect of the Scout model. Founded in 2013, the same year as MomSource, Scout creates a “win-win” for both large companies seeking to fill positions and search firms that have individuals in their pipeline seeking new opportunities. The preliminary steps in the matchmaking process are undertaken using artificial intelligence and a proprietary algorithm to match positions and potential candidates.

“We are going to work with Scout and its clients to help organizations build diverse, high-performing teams, not just for women but also for military veterans and spouses,” Jones said, ironically when we interviewed her during the recent Bunker Labs’ “Muster Across America” event in Nashville. “We recognize that some of what we’ve learned to support women’s re-entry can also be applied to other groups.”

She explained that MomSource will be working with Scout in two ways. One will be what Jones described as “low touch” – opening the MomSource database of more than 10,000 individuals to Scout’s listing of opportunities.

“What we have learned through our work is how to identify high-potential candidates that can be successful, but might need support returning to the private sector,” she said. The Scout system will allow these candidates to be considered for hundreds of new roles every month.

There will also be what Jones characterized as a “higher touch” initiative where MomSource will partner with Scout and several of its clients on a couple of pilots focused on creating more diverse slates of talent for mid-level roles and supporting re-entry through company-sponsored programs. After all, finding the right talent is just one challenge; there’s also the matter of integration into a new organization and retention.

“We will be creating cohorts of new hires, perhaps across several different companies, to test ways to increase success,” Jones said.

The agreement with Scout was executed in May. MomSource Network is a portfolio company of The JumpFund, and Jones says she was introduced to Scout by one of the Partners in the Chattanooga fund that is “women investing in women.”


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