Minimizing Your Costs: Using Push Technology to Effectively Source
Your Candidates

Ask most large companies and they well tell you that they presently
use some fee-based resume service such as Monster, Career Builder, or
Hot Jobs. Not only do they post their job openings on these sites,
but they regularly extract resumes to put into their applicant
tracking systems for further review.

There normally is a cost associated with job postings, and this fee
can be reduced substantially when placing a larger number of
requests. The site also charges for access to its resume database,
and in some cases, places a limit on the amount of resumes that can
be extracted in one day, or even a certain period.

The main problem in posting a job on these massive sites is knowing
that a large percentage of your responses are going to be way off
from your acceptance threshold, and that your recruitment staff is
going be saddled with unnecessary time spent looking for those few
needles in the haystack. Think about the metrics and costs associated
with posting a $300 job, reviewing all the responses, and eventually
arriving at a handful of prospective candidates – your process costs
will easily be tenfold or more in man-hours.

The alternative, or as these sites will promote themselves heavily on
this other ability, is that you can look at their ever renewing
database of professional candidates. So you begin a simple search and
then refine it to arrive at a sampling of 20-30 folks, who you now
have to review, and then make a decision whether to accept or reject,
contact now or in the future, and ultimately bring closure to this
search. How long did this exercise take? How often do you repeat it
for each requirement you have?

Is there a best practice metric that says the average cost from
identification of job need to hire should be $XXX, If there is, I
haven't seen one. I have seen time-to-fill statistics in terms of
days, and other similar metrics measured more by time. Not knowing
the actual costs associated with a hire, because it's sometime hard
to determine the actual equation or what resources you will use in
the formula, can eventually take the wind out of a lot of sails.

But what if there was another way. An extremely inexpensive and
efficient system. A way in which metrics could still be used, but not
so much to measure monetary expenditures, but to track best practice
models.

I call this system "push technology". The opposite would be a
scenario whereby you were tasked to go and catch (pull technology)
100 perch. So you set out in your boat with your super-duper fish
finder and eventually (about 100 gallons of gas later), you find
that "perfect" spot and start baiting your hooks with tasty live
worms and put out several rods. A hour or so later, you discover that
your catch is okay, but not nearly what you need to complete your
task, so you call out on your mobile radio to have someone send over
more fishing poles so you can make your goal before nightfall. Those
100 perch will end up costing two to three times per pound than if
you just went to your local market.

To maximize your costs, you need to leverage technology that
specifically targets a candidate based on your specific requirements.
This technology must reach out and communicate this need, effectively
respond to the reply, and then provide some sort of follow-up to
ensure an ongoing relationship.

The answer is no more job postings in the conventional sense. No more
extraction of resumes to be processed either manually or in a limited
fashion by any applicant tracking system. No more wasted time hanging
a shingle out and seeing what traffic comes to your door.

Since 1998 I have used this application in my daily recruiting
practice. I have reviewed it countless times in my newsletter,
demonstrated it both at major conventions, and included it as a
mainstay and top ten tool in all my classes and guidebooks. It
literally transforms me into a superhuman recruiter on a shoestring
budget who can outperform a staff and budget that exceeds his cost a
hundred fold.

The product is made by a Dayton, Ohio firm called Infogist
(www.infogist.com). This flagship application for recruiters is
called Resume infoFinder Platinum. Platinum is an ever evolving tool
that rents for $4200 per year for one user and then $200 more for
each additional user.

In the right hands, regardless of company size or number of
requirements, one licensee could easily maximize this technology and
deliver the results expected by company management.

I encourage you to take it out on a test drive. If you need more
time, beyond the initial free trial usage, please call their big
chief, Ron Crompton, at (800) 547-9117, x202, and tell them that you
read about their product from the Sourcerer's Apprentice, and would
like to get a further extension of time to properly and
comprehensively evaluate this cutting edge tool for Internet
recruiters.

In my next posting, I will detail the various ways I leverage
this application in my daily use. You will learn how to use this
incredible technology, along with pitfalls to avoid, in reaching out
and grabbing all your future hires.