If you answered 'Yes' to above question, I am afraid that you are not using newest technology to its full potential. Using Outlook (or Outlook Express) as recruitment software or resume supervision application has several disadvantages, mainly:
You can not share resumes on your desktop with other users and vice-versa. (Unless you have invested in other technologies like Ms Exchange) You can not quest attachments. Most of the resumes you get are received as attachment with the e-mail. So you can not use keyword based search. Only choice to administrate resumes in Outlook is to use folders. You may have folders for short-listed candidates, candidates called for interview, rejected candidates etc. But folders too become unmanageable when you have several vacancies and need to track applicant for each vacancy. You can not keep a history of your interaction with applicant. If you spoke to a candidate today and lets say he was available only after a month, where do you description that information? Using e-mail client as Resume supervision principles is at the most a make-shift arrangement which would soon get out of hands and become unmanageable.
There are several resume supervision software available in the market today. Some of them are desktop based applications that wish you to install them on each and every Pc (just like you do with Outlook) and other are heavier client/server based models which requires huge investment.
Web 2.0 has made it inherent to deliver Software as a assistance and thus some players have started contribution Resume supervision software as a service. In such a setup, you pay a monthly subscription fees and all you need is a web browser to passage the application. However not all Resume supervision SaaS are created equal. Some key features that one should look for are:
Does it provide direct integration with your mail system? Does it have a built-in resume parser to excerpt key data from the resume? Does it offer full text based searching (like Google)? Does it have bulk email/Sms options? Does it provide you factory to import your existing resumes from Outlook/Outlook Express or other sources? Does it provide user interface for manual upload of a resume? Does it hold all file formats i.e doc,txt, html, etc.
These are some of the key things that you should look for in a principles before development a decision. There are other resume supervision systems that offer Outlook plug-in highlight to upload a resume to the system. But I am not a very big fan of such a highlight as it involves manual intervention. If a user does not upload a resume to system, resume is lost forever. So integration with your mail principles is the key.
Using such a principles would also mean that you isolate out your personal/corporate enterprise mail accounts from the ones which you use to receive resumes. Presuppose being that you would need to configure the principles with your user-id and password so that it can directly connect to your mail server and pull out resumes. If you are sharing an email id, then privacy of your business/personal mails may become a concern for you.
There are multiple ways to handle such a situation
Separate your email accounts. Accounts that are receiving resumes should not be used for any other communication. Create dummy email catalogue on hotmail/Gmail and define mail rules in Outlook to send mail containing resumes to this dummy account. Create dummy email catalogue on hotmail/Gmail and just manually send the mail containing resumes to that catalogue and configure your principles to connect to this free catalogue instead of your regular account.
Once you have setup the process, your resume supervision principles would automatically connect to mail server, fetch resumes, parse them and keep them in the database. Then all you have to do is to quest using specific skill, location, keywords, etc.
If you are using a principles that allows online technical screening, it would automatically acquaint applicants about online employment test and would description scores without any manual intervention.
Technology is revolutionizing recruitment process all over world. Are you using right systems to recruit the talent you enterprise deserves?
Mailserver
No comments:
Post a Comment