Empty Space

Jason Kerr explains how companies need to fight back against the vast, emptiness that jobseekers often fall into.

“With the current recession, candidate volume is massive and demands a huge change in approach”
-Jason Kerr, QuietAgent

It’s called ‘The Black Hole’. At least, that is what jobseekers call it. It’s what happens when a jobseeker arrives at your company’s employment website, applies for a job, gets a pithy ‘thank you for applying’ email, and then nothing. Nothing for days, nothing for weeks, nothing at all.

Most companies don’t realize the negative message this sends to the jobseeker, who is also a prospective customer, or even an existing one. One major bank recently discovered that two-thirds of its applicants were account holders at the bank, so imagine the damage that can be done to a business’ brand, its relationship with its customers, and its future revenue, by perpetuating The Black Hole.

The current economy is only increasing the recruitment black hole. More and more candidates are applying for fewer jobs, increasing the pool of unqualified applicants. In normal times, companies have trouble coping with the volumes of applicants, but with the current recession, amid record layoffs, candidate volume is massive and demands a huge change in approach.

To combat the brand damage caused by the recruitment black hole, one hundred of America’s leading companies have come together to form AllianceQ, powered by online recruitment company QuietAgent, Inc. AllianceQ enables the member companies to provide jobseekers with the opportunity to be matched to more appropriate positions with other employers. By providing ‘continuing care’ for candidates, AllianceQ members ensure that the candidates’ opinions of the company remain favorable, a huge benefit to future recruitment efforts as well as providing a positive experience for current and prospective customers.

In addition to the brand protection benefits, the Members of AllianceQ get dramatic recruitment benefits. Utilizing unique matching technology from QuietAgent, members are able to source candidates from each other, lowering costs substantially. Most importantly, the candidates are precisely matched to the members’ job openings based on skills and career ambitions. This matching is done in an automated fashion, which hugely increases recruiter capacity and simultaneously reduces time-to-fill and overall recruiting cost.

In the current economic environment, the increase in unqualified applicants is causing other problems for corporate recruiting departments. Costs of ATS systems, data storage and compliance are increasing, and the capacity of the recruiters to fill urgent positions is decreasing due the additional volume, and QuietAgent’s Q-Filter technology offers companies a solution to address these problems. By reducing the candidate flow to only the best matched candidates, Q-Filter significantly increases the performance of an ATS system, reduces ATS hosting and data storage costs, can reduce privacy and data compliance issues, and significantly frees up to recruiter time, in some cases, by more than 80 percent.

Q-Filter enables recruitment to be a ‘laser’, not a shotgun. Employers can search to find jobseekers who are well qualified, and who want to do the job. Utilizing advanced matching technology from QuietAgent, both employers and jobseekers do less work for a more relevant result in less time. Auto-Search agents continually look for your definition of the best candidates and can automatically ‘invite’ them to apply to the jobs in your ATS. Your ATS now contains only those candidates who are qualified and interested.

A recent Deloitte study Aligned at the Top finds that, although HR leaders and executives view people as a critical issue, there continues to be a disconnect between the strategic needs of the business and HR’s ability to deliver.  The survey results suggest that there is still a gap between the senior business executive’s view and the perceived capabilities and programs being promoted by HR. At the moment, most HR functions appear to have the administrative side pretty well covered. But the survey shows the strategic people agenda is not being addressed by HR. QuietAgent provides recruiting departments with the ability to use advanced technology to shift focus and increase ability to deliver the strategic human capital objectives of the business.

Jason Kerr is the founder and CEO of QuietAgent. His vision is to ‘empower everyone with an equal chance to recruit and be recruited’. As a serial technology entrepreneur, his past 18 years have been spent challenging the status quo and directing his team’s energy towards developing new business models that can be delivered through technology.