Success breeds success when hiring is done right and right now

Time can be a competitive weapon for growing companies in a complicated age when job seeking is performed electronically.

According to many corporate hiring managers, the primary reason for their company to employ recruiters is to “have them read through my incoming resumes.” Professional recruiters often object to this undervalued characterization as well. Multiple industry surveys tell us that recruiters themselves say that they are spending 65 percent to 75 percent of their time doing “inbox recruiting” which means they are mostly just scanning those incoming resumes. Those same recruiters felt the need to spend the majority of their time building relationships and networks, proactively seeking out fresh talent.

Years ago, job seekers read their local newspaper to learn about job openings. Resumes were mailed or faxed to hiring companies and accumulated in large piles on the desks (and floors!) of corporate recruiters. Fast-forward to the advent of the Internet, which created an abundance of riches for both job seekers and corporate recruiters. Unfortunately the excess of resumes on the desks and floors of the recruiters still remained – instead of being received via mail they were now being e-mailed (many times by the thousands) to hiring companies. A common lament of human resource professionals is that candidates no longer even read the ad, they simply click and send.

There is a problem with the signal-to-noise ratio that makes it difficult to pinpoint those few qualified candidates from within the jungle of applicants coming in the door. Making things worse, this process needs to take place in a compressed timeframe because good candidates are often being pursued by various other companies.

Weeding through the morass of applicants is increasingly difficult yet the cost of making a bad hire never diminishes. It’s difficult, it’s time consuming, and it’s of paramount importance for companies that wish to prosper. The financial impact continues to resonate throughout an organization as they re-recruit, re-hire, re-onboard and re-train.

Developing an ability to cull through submitted resumes efficiently and rapidly will become an even more competitive weapon for companies as the workforce ages and fewer qualified people are available. The baby boom began in 1946 and continued through 1964. During those 19 years, 76 million people were born. The sheer magnitude of the number of births during this period has had a major impact on many aspects of our economy over the last 50 years. It also has largely determined the size and age composition of the labor force for the past 30 years. As the age of the labor force increases, a greater number of people will leave the labor force due to death, disability, or retirement. It has been stated by many pundits that by the year 2010 there will be 10 million more jobs than candidates.

Getting to the top candidates instantly and putting them into a frictionless process towards interview are two equally important components in the war for talent. And it’s been nearly impossible for corporations to accomplish both – until the introduction of Talentology’s PeopleFilter - Enterprise Edition?, a system built by recruiters for recruiters that can both pinpoint and process qualified candidates, maximizing the insight and minimizing the logistics.

Vision and Experience

The developers of PeopleFilter? have walked a mile in the shoes of their customers. Founded in 2000, Talentology? is located in Rolling Meadows, Illinois. Talentology’s co-founders originally met at an Internet start-up in 1999 named MyPoints.com?. At this pre-IPO company, the team went through significant hiring challenges together trying to manage the incredible growth. Unanimously, they felt that existing technology was not helping and in fact was compromising their ability to hire effectively. This experience served as the genesis of the PeopleFilter - Enterprise Edition product.

PeopleFilter is a web-hosted service. It is a highly configurable and cost effective Applicant Tracking Solution that manages every step in the recruitment process, including application “pipelining,” opportunity profiling, applicant scoring, process management, email campaign management and sourcing analytics. PeopleFilter offers employers a better way to source, evaluate and manage talent while dramatically reducing talent acquisition costs.

The foundation of the PeopleFilter - Enterprise Edition is a matching and ranking search technology that uses a skills-based approach to solving the issue of resume overload while eliminating the risk of overlooking qualified applicants. As a result, PeopleFilter - Enterprise Edition delivers the right candidate for the right job at the right price in a more predictable way.

The PeopleFilter - Enterprise Edition addresses the requirements for the mid and upper mid market sized organizations across all industries. Current customers include U.S. Cellular?, American Girl?, Career Education Corporation, Empire Today?, Hitachi, Ltd. and Banco Popular?.

Measurable Improvements

Because PeopleFilter represented a radical departure from a formerly manual process to a fully integrated and automated hiring model, U.S. Cellular initially adopted PeopleFilter strictly to improve the hiring in a single call center. This initiative proved to be useful as a pilot program, allowing U.S. Cellular to determine the value of the technology before committing large amounts of capital and resources to a full-scale organizational rollout.

In their own analysis U.S. Cellular has stated that their previous ability to attract, qualify and hire a class of 30-45 associates within a 4-6 week timeframe was a struggle. Yet, when the full process solution was first introduced to manage the hiring process for a new call center opening in Bolingbrook, Illinois, the increase in results were immediately apparent.

The two-person recruiting team was charged with hiring double the normal amount of people (60 full time associates every 6 weeks), with an end goal of hiring 450 associates. The challenge was made even more complex because recruiting efforts could not begin too early while the call center was in the middle of its build-out. Therefore, although the first training class of 120 associates needed to begin for a March 21st class, recruiting could not start the hiring process until mid-January 2005.

By having the PeopleFilter - Enterprise Edition in place, U.S. Cellular was able to schedule over 600 people for interviews in a 40-day time period. Leveraging PeopleFilter’s ability to pinpoint the quality candidates they utilized the system’s Automated Interview Scheduler to minimize the logistics of such a heavy interview schedule. Qualified candidates virtually streamed in the door for interviews they set up themselves and U.S. Cellular effectively hired over 144 associates for an initial class requirement of 120. In addition, a qualified pipeline of over 200 candidates who have passed the screening and assessment requirement is prepared for the next class of 60 new associates.

Bottom Line Results

U.S. Cellular’s implementation of PeopleFilter - Enterprise Edition gained the company recognition as a finalist in the 2005 Call Center Excellence Awards in the category of Best Use of Technology. It’s important to note that the company is deriving additional results beyond simply putting people into the seats and winning recognition for the way they do it. They are the nation’s sixth largest wireless service carrier, servicing 25 states. J.D. Powers & Associates identifies the North Central Region of the U.S. as the most competitive region in the country with more wireless providers than any other. J.D. Powers has recently ranked U.S. Cellular as having the best customer service ratings in this region. Quality hiring made this possible.

For the first time corporations have the capability to deal with the problems stemming from electronic resume submissions and this allows for a greater capacity to make thoughtful hiring decisions in a compressed timeframe.

Companies that desire to succeed, prosper, grow, or even dominate within their markets need to first win the competitive battle for market talent. PeopleFilter-Enterprise Edition helps their customers win that battle.