I'm a big fan
of advanced (Boolean) search strings to target candidates with just
the right skill sets and locations, and doing so for free. However,
I'm the first to admit that if you need to search for numerous candidate
profiles, then running these strings on a regular basis, saving
the resumes to your computer, and finally getting them into your
resume management database systems for subsequent applicant tracking
is time-consuming. It might well be worth paying a little to reduce
those burdens.
With the latest
crop of Web-enabled products from Internet recruiting software vendors,
all of these steps can be largely automated. The main problems ride
on a continuum of cost vs. performance:
Anything that
resides on your company's network will require systems integration,
customization, and other unforeseen expenses. Anything that is completely
Web-enabled puts the programming and hardware burden on the vendor,
but you usually compromise in terms of performance. Hybrid solutions
have pluses and minuses of both extremes (where typically one or
more layers of the application are installed at your end to improve
performance, but it appears to the user as if it's all on the Web,
because they access all the features from their Web browser).
Earlier this
year, the Electronic Recruiting Exchange published a comprehensive
study
reviewing 38 software packages and application service providers
(ASPs) that provide applicant tracking capabilities to large and
small companies. Depending on the particular company's needs, at
least one of those systems will suffice, but we're talking anywhere
from four to six figures to purchase and implement these products.
The steps leading
up to that—primarily, sourcing the resumes in the first place—also
have a cadre of vendors eager for your business. If your company
is large enough or you handle a large volume of resumes, it's worth
taking a second look at these vendors. They've come a long way in
the last six months, and some new folks on the scene have leapfrogged
the veterans technologically.
There are also
service bureaus like NetRecruiter.net
and Recruiters-Aid.com
that will do the searching for you and deliver resumes. Some of
these bureaus, as well as career portals like CareerPath.com
and WorkSeek.com,
guarantee that they'll deliver a minimum number of candidates within
a given time period of high enough quality/relevance that you'll
want to interview or you don't pay any fee. As with any agreement,
read the fine print (e.g., how do they verify the candidates behind
the qualified resumes are really in the market, vs. just some great
resume that hasn't been circulated in over six months?), but this
may provide an extra comfort level to those recruiters who have
no trouble getting lots of resumes, but do have trouble getting
resumes that are qualified for the positions they are trying to
fill.
In this article,
however, I'll look at a few categories of the free and low-cost
tools that can save you time in the area of candidate sourcing.
If you have success with these, you'll have some metrics to use
as ammunition with those who approve expenditures at your firm to
take it to the next step and implement one or more of the higher-end
solutions referenced above.
1. Resume
and news spiders: BullsEye from Intelliseek.com,
Copernic2000 from Copernic.com,
and WebFerret from FerretSoft.com
are probably the three best known spider products in a crowded category.
Fundamentally,
these work the same way as if you did Boolean searches yourself,
but they have built-in filters to make sure your results only include
resumes, or just news about a particular competitor company or industry
niche, or whatever. Ferret's Power User Pack is a free suite of
eight Internet search utilities from ZDNet: WebFerret, EmailFerret,
FileFerret, InfoFerret, IRCFerret, NewsFerret, PhoneFerret and AuctionFerret.
They search for general news, Web pages, newsgroups, files, phone
numbers, email addresses, online auctions, and chat groups. Results
are displayed in sortable lists in a clean, clear interface. The
Pro version includes more search engines and data sources, but the
free version is fairly robust. BullsEye has a full-functioning,
30-day free trial of its new Bulls Eye Pro version 2.5 release (make
sure you download BullsEye Pro 2 and not the regular BullsEye product).
Copernic's permanently free download is not nearly as full-functioning
as the paid version.
BullsEye supports
the most, with over 800 search engines organized in over 120 categories.
The advanced search features let you hone in on what you need, duplicates
are automatically removed, and results can be saved as reports.
If you select 'Jobs' from the program's left-hand 'Search' menu,
searching for resumes is a pre-set query-you just need to add keywords-though
if you click the Customize button, you'll see only about 10 sites
are simultaneously searched. If you select 'News' from the 'Search'
menu instead, and build a specific, resume-related Boolean search
string in their Query Wizard, you'll be tapping many more data sources
and, as a result, generate many more resumes.
2. E-newsletter
management software: To understand the use for products like
eGroups.com,
Listbot.com,
etc., a little background first: E-newsletters are a great target
marketing tactic. Think about your favorite business or personal
hobby site on which you've registered as a member. You get an email
from them regularly reminding you of the new resources on their
site, special deals, etc. In fact, all leading community sites (as
well as those aspiring to be portals) use weekly or monthly emails
as reminders of all the great things on their sites, as well as
news blurbs with other relevant links. That's what maintains top-of-mind
awareness among likely customers for these sites and leads to sales.
Why not adapt
this for recruiting? After all, recruiters are really salespeople
whose product they're selling to potential customers (i.e., workers)
is their company, and whose competitors are other companies. So
you need to market your product like a brand. E-newsletters are
an effective, no-cost way to do that. As for newsletter content,
you can get timely news on what's happening in any industry from
sites like Individual.com, via any of the spider news tools described
in section #1 above, or directly from people you've placed/hired
in the candidate niche(s) that your newsletter targets.
Prepare the
content in the same format as popular e-newsletters (for each item,
a headline, short blurb, and link to original source online for
more details) and you can use any of these email newsletter management
systems to send it with a mouse click to as many candidate email
addresses as you have. Note that only one or two blurbs should discuss
jobs at your company: remember, you want the majority of content
to be editorially-objective, useful information to both active and
passive job seekers. Otherwise, most recipients will want to unsubscribe
from your newsletter. What eGroups.com, Listbot.com and the like
do is maintain your registrant email database, allow new automatic
signups and unsubscriptions, send out the newsletters you write,
etc. Unlike Listbot, even if your member list gets huge, eGroups
is still free.
3. Multi-Database
Resume Extractors: Though they're in a higher price category
than the products above, specific resume-sourcing tools are big
time-savers. In fact, two that I like—Resume infoFinder Gold
from InfoGist.com
and Skillbot from Skillbot.com
- offer full-featured trials with no obligation (14 days for Infogist,
30 days for Skillbot). Using Infogist's as the example, here's how
they work:
Resume infoFinder
Gold simultaneously searches dozens of resume databases to find
candidates meeting your search criteria. (Over 40 of the sites available
are free databases, but you can add your password for any accounts
you have with paid databases, such as Monster.com, etc., to include
those in the search results, or eliminate any third-party resume
databases you don't want searched.)
Beyond that,
here's where this class of product stands out: As the resume results
load, they're sorted automatically based on your search criteria.
Then you can export whichever resumes you want (all those over a
certain score, just the ones you've viewed, etc.) in whatever format
you want (ASCII text files to any folder on your computer or local
network drive, email attachments to any internal or external recipients
desired, etc.) so the resumes are ready for database storage or
to be acted upon by the appropriate individuals. For best results,
I recommend you start the search before you go out for lunch, a
long meeting, or—ideally—at the end of the workday. When
you return, all data sources have been mined and your results are
already sorted.
