Guide to Recruitment Software
RECRUITERS CAN FEEL OVERWHELMED BY THE SHEER NUMBERS OF PEOPLE ON THEIR DATABASES. NOW, HELP IS AT HAND WITH SOFTWARE DEVELOPERS OFFERING INTELLIGENT SEARCH TECHNOLOGY THAT MAKES IT EASIER TO HOME IN ON SUITABLE CANDIDATES, WRITES SUE WEEKES Software developers explaining why a new product has been launched often refer to the ‘problem statement’. When it comes to search and match software in the recruitment world, this problem statement is: ‘lots of candidates, not enough time’. This may be an over-simplification of the difficulty addressed by some of the sophisticated semantic and contextual search technology that has evolved over the years, but it cuts straight to one of the biggest challenges facing agency and in-house recruiters today. The global recession that began back in 2008 brought a reduction in headcount in agencies and resourcing departments and a proliferation of candidates as unemployment rose. The combined effect has been hugely swollen candidate databases which have become unmanageable for many organisations. Moreover, the default reaction by many recruiters when it comes to filling a new position has been to go out to a job board, LinkedIn or some other channel and so further expand the database. Several recruitment software developers have risen to this challenge, offering clients an alternative to keyword searching by providing technology that intelligently matches a candidate and their skills and experience to a particular position. In 2011, Monster launched its SeeMore product, powered by the 6Sense semantic search technology. And last year, Evenbase, owner of
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A RECRUITER SUPPLEMENT
SEPTEMBER 2013
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Making volume manageable brands such as Jobsite and Broadbean, announced Jobtology, a semantic search capability. Both draw from a huge knowledge base that helps to distinguish the meaning behind a search. So if you use the term Java to find a software programmer, it knows you aren’t interested in the coffee or the island of the same name. Meanwhile, Bond International has taken a different approach by partnering with Autonomy, now owned by HP, to build contextual searching into its Adapt Insight module, enabling it to understand any form of unstructured data and the context within which it’s been written or created. The aim of these and similar products is to help recruiters find the most suitable candidate for the job far more quickly and easily than with traditional search methods. “We believe search and match is one of the most important functions of a recruitment database,” says Toby Conibear, European business development director at Bond International. “Populating fields and records to create structured data for searching is time-consuming, so it can be hard work to gain a “We want the use of SeeMore software to be immediate and integrated, without recruiters having to change the way they work” James Brian Monster
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29/08/2013 11:30