Category Archives: Uncategorized

The War for Talent’s Secret Weapon: Technology

Posted by on May 4, 2012 No comments

ERE.net posted a blog outlining four strategies to implement as we face the War for Talent. This War for Talent has been blogged about and tweeted about ad nauseum and will continue to gain hype as the days and weeks go by, that is for certain.  Don’t get me wrong, it was a very well written and easy to understand blog with several high level strategies to think about and implement before a company invests in what the author labeled, “new-fangled” technology, and I agree.  A solid foundation of basic recruiting principals should be identified and carried out to all levels of the organization.  But assuming (and you know what they say about assuming)  your organization has an exemplary executive and recruiting staff, your recruitment technology will either help you to triumph over or lose this War for Talent.

As a technology firm that has built our reputation by creating solutions to automate the recruitment, sales, marketing financial & back office processes, we believe  that winning the War for Talent is a combination of  best recruiting practices, strategic business development strategies and of course, technology solutions to support both strategies.
The Cloud has made it possible for a staffing company, or any company for that matter, regardless of size, not only to compete but Win this War for Talent.

Here is our own list of technology strategies to consider once you have re-solidified your value proposition to candidates and clients and thoroughly developed your enterprise business processes so that they encourage efficiency to lower the operating costs of doing business.

1.  Invest in the Cloud.
2.  Consider Internal Collaboration Tools.
3.  Advanced Candidate Search Tools.
4.  Technology Marketing Tools.

1.  Invest in the Cloud. It takes time and money to make the switch, but many times, not a lot.  Find a consultant to advise you or conduct a thorough Technology Inventory Review if you are still on a server based model and plan on crawling not sprinting to the cloud. The benefits far outweigh any of your current fears about privacy & safety and besides, you can back up everything so if you’re an organization that needs safety nets, “it’s all good” as they say.

Staffing firms must at least consider the cloud to stay flexible and accessible to new applications that will empower them with increased efficiency.

2.  Consider Internal Collaboration Tools. TargetRecruit is built on the Salesforce.com platform so in terms of internal collaboration, Salesforce’s highly acclaimed Chatter feature creates a way for your entire organization from recruiting to accounting to collaborate on accounts, documents, business deals in progress and the approval processes that so many organizations have implemented. In addition, it creates a level of accountability that is critical in an organization with so many moving parts.  Now, many companies wish to limit the transparency from business unit to business unit and permissions are in place to limit accessibility.  You must be prepared internally to compete externally.

3.  Advanced Candidate Search Tools for Sourcing. Technology makes it so that searching for candidates has become an artform, not just a job within a recruiting firm.  In layman’s terms,   Boolean searches allow you to combine words and phrases using the words AND, OR, NOT and NEAR (otherwise known as Boolean operators) to limit, widen, or define your search. There are also toolbars that have been created to enhance the search process.  Are you using a Social Media technology tool for sourcing hard to identify candidates?  Is it integrated in your ATS?
Does your database have a search function that automatically matches open job orders to candidates in the system and vice versa?  The technology is available!

4.  Technology Marketing Tools.  The recruiter that gets to the candidate first …wins.  So, marketing open job orders as quickly and efficiently as possible to the pool of qualified candidates in your database or on social media sites is way too important to ignore. Email marketing that gives you the ability to mass email candidates for jobs, and similarly, templates that give you the ability to conduct a business development campaign for clients are a step in the right direction.

Questions for you:  
What cloud based technology decisions have you made to ensure you are an unstoppable force in the industry?

  

Start-Up, Smart-Up: How A Next-Gen ATS takes the lead in Recruitment Technology

Posted by on April 13, 2012 No comments

The very best thing about being in the industry of Recruitment Technology is that it changes about every 5 minutes. It’s a simultaneous change of both cloud computing  technology and quickly finding solutions to the staffing industry’s needs and demands.
It’s a great day when a technology company is highlighted in a respected industry blog or journal written by an industry expert.
We’d  like to share a blog that was written by Andrew Karpie, a senior analyst for Staffing Industry Analysts.  The blog was written just after the Staffing Industry Analysts Executive Forum held in Las Vegas last month.  Read Andrew Karpie’s Blog

Becoming more automated as a staffing firm and selecting the very best Recruitment Technology is getting more challenging but not due to a lack of choices. From sourcing apps to integrated VMS, recruiters needs are continuously growing almost daily.

Luckily, we’ve been able to grow steadily-even rapidly, as a result of implementing technology and recruitment solutions as part of our daily business-as-usual.  By listening to the needs of recruiters, managers and executives, we’ve been able to create solutions for some of the industry’s toughest challenges.  We’d like to know more about your challenges as it relates to recruiting and technology.

Please join in on the conversation:  Creating Solutions for Your Toughest Recruitment Challenges: How an Automated ATS can HELP.
When:  Thursday, April 19th 11:00-12:00 CDT
Click here to register.

  

Overcoming Recruiting Challenges: How an Automated ATS Can Help

Posted by on March 28, 2012 No comments

Staffing firms typically contact TargetRecruit with several specific goals and a list of high level requirements as they evaluate Applicant Tracking Systems. These requirements vary for every staffing company, in fact, no two staffing company’s requirements are exactly alike. The ultimate objective, however, is always the same:

“Increase our staffing company’s sophistication as an enterprise by automating workflows, business processes, and communications to increase placements and bottom line profitability”.

Sound familiar?

For the purposes of this blog, I posed the question to C-levels, recruiting managers, recruiters, sourcing authorities and attendees at the SIA Executive Forum, which TargetRecruit was fortunate to sponsor last week, regarding their current recruitment challenges.

Here is a list of top challenges:

1. How to increase the database of candidates in general.
2. Candidate searching in specific markets.
3. Reduction in time to fill a position (Search to placement).
4. External competition for candidates.
5. Quality of Hire.
6. Communications with passive candidates.

This is not an exhaustive list, but represents the top responses.
In an effort to describe how an ATS can assist with these recruiting challenges, we’ve listed the ways that a comprehensive ATS can help drive and manage your toughest recruitment challenges.

1. Challenge: How to Increase Database of Candidates.
Solution: Candidate Portals & Job Board Integration

Believe it or not, many staffing companies still do not have an adequate Candidate Portal that enables candidates to easily submit their resumes via the staffing company’s website. This is a costly mistake. An ATS such as TargetRecruit makes it easy for staffing companies to create a Candidate Portal and start receiving resumes, CVs, cover letters and other documents directly from the website and automatically create candidate profiles without manual data entry into the ATS.

If you do not currently have an ATS that enables you to efficiently post open job orders from your system or database to multiple job boards, you are probably wasting a good chunk of time that could be better spent on more lucrative activity. With TargetRecruit, it is possible to post new and exciting job opportunities to your favorite and most effective job boards from within the system with the click of a button.

2. Challenge: Effective Candidate Search in specific markets.
Solution: Effective Candidate Search Functionality

We have several clients that recruit for local talent and several clients that recruit for global talent. The process, however, can be equally as challenging. If your search functionality is not powerful, streamlined and accurate, searching and finding local or global candidates can be limiting. Boolean searching and creative search processes are constantly changing to source hidden and passive candidates. Also, you must consider a customizable solution that gives you the ability to create enhanced search filters.

3. Challenge: Reduction in Search to placement time.
Solution: Full System Automation

Shorten your search to placement with a fully automated system including streamlined search functionality (mentioned above), job board integration (mentioned above), and streamlined communications. An ATS that provides all three is ideal and recommended.

4. Challenge: External competition for candidates.
Solution: Timing seems to be everything, right? Faster (quality) candidate acquisition.

When you are fully automated and running on all cylinders, the search to placement time is reduced and the ability to win placements faster is a logical outcome. It is now possible (and imperative) to integrate “one-click functionality” that will replace ancient, arduous and time consuming tasks like scheduling interviews, notifying active and passive candidates of newly acquired open jobs and job applicant submission to hiring managers.

5. Challenge: Quality of Hire.
Solution: Automatic Skill Set and Specific Job Criteria Matching

A system with the ability to automatically match key skill sets of candidates to specific job criteria  to open job orders is a tremendous technological advantage to any recruiting organization. This is similar to having an automatic co-pilot doing a big chunk of the work for recruiters. This does not, however, take the place out of quality conversations that recruiters and employers have when qualifying intangible qualifications, but certainly aids in the efficiencies of hiring a better qualified candidate.

6. Challenge: Finding and contacting passive candidates.
Solution: Email templates and social media integration

Keeping in touch with passive candidates is a huge challenge in today’s market place. Log on to any recruitment blog and there is a post regarding passive candidate strategy several times a day. Effective tracking of communications with customized email templates and social media outreach is key. Does your ATS have this capability and how do you measure its efficacy?

We’d like to know your challenges so that we can continue to provide technological tools to enhance and automate the search to placement process and solve your most problematic recruitment issues.

Please join us for a live webinar:
Creating Solutions for Your Toughest Recruitment Challenges
Thursday, April 19th 2012 11:00 am -12:00 pm CDT

Click here to Register

Message us direct @Target_Recruit or email us at info@targetrecruit.net with your challenges in advance so that we may address on the webinar.

  

Whom will Oracle acquire next?

Posted by on September 14, 2010 No comments

Oracle is going big on its acquiring plans, and a few big companies are in league. Here are some few companies going around the buzz for the acquiring plans made by Oracle.

1.) Informatica

Informatica is a company which many presume Oracle will like to acquire soon, as Informatica prides itself on “Enabling organizations to gain a competitive advantage in today’s global information economy by empowering them to access integrate and trust all their information assets”.

Informatica helps companies to consolidate and strengthen up their data and is well-known for its Extraction, Transformation, and Loading (ETL) tools.

An acquisition of Informatica could fill a very important niche in Oracle’s product line, thereby enabling Oracle to consolidate its position in data warehousing and analytics segment, which is one of the hottest growth areas in the database market today.

2.) Salesforce.com

Salesforce.com is a leading CRM company and a leading Cloud platform provider which Oracle is likely to acquire very soon. Salesforce.com being led by Marc Benioff is also an Oracle alumni with a great track record who has played a pivotal role in promoting a major architectural shift, and business model shift, in the IT industry, from “SaaS computing and Cloud computing”.

Currently valued at about $15 billion Salesforce.com the acquisition by Oracle can likely drive the price up to at least $18 billion. It’s hard to see how Oracle could make the financials of this deal work. This deal would also likely generate more regulatory scrutiny than a deal for Informatica, but I think this would also get approved under the same theory that led to approval of the acquisitions of Siebel and PeopleSoft.

Salesforce.com, Netsuite and Success Factors are the application companies that have been targeted by Oracle. What do they each have in common? Each is a SaaS application company.

Salesforce.com is a SaaS CRM company (with a growing Cloud platform (PaaS) business), whereas Netsuite is a SaaS ERP suite (with a growing PaaS business).  Success Factors is a SaaS human resources business. Acquiring any of these companies by Oracle is likely to help accelerate Oracle’s entry into the SaaS business aggressively.

Industry leaders are also predicting that Oracle has also plans of acquiring other companied predominantly in the SaaS and PaaS Segment like VMware, TIBCO, Success Factors, and Taleo the plans of which Oracle is currently not willing to disclose.