Reengineering the Resume

Recruiters have a job to do — quickly find the quality candidates out of allavailable candidates. If a company is well branded the amount of candidatesavailable may be overwhelming. And the traditional candidate-driven resume doesn’tprovide all the information recruiters need in an easy-to-access format.Advances in Internet recruiting technology incorporated in Recruitsoft’sWeb-based hiring management system present the opportunity to update resumeprocessing and mining for the digital age. The time has come to reengineer theresume.

The Challenge
Handling resume volume is a persistent problem for all large corporations.There are now an estimated 20 million resumes on the Internet. Computer giantssuch as Hewlett-Packard may need to handle as many as 2,000 incoming resumeseach and every day. Recruiters need a system that processes the volume, while atthe same time identifies the ACE^TM candidate.

The first technology solution to help recruiters was the resume database.Candidates’ resumes are scanned into the database; recruiters retrieveindividual resumes by searching the entire text of all resumes in the databasefor occurrences of specific words. A search for the keyword “sales”calls up all resumes (whether very few or very many) in the database with thatword appearing anywhere in the document in an effort to isolate all and onlythose candidates with sales experience.

The Failure of Resume Database Technology
Of course the word “sales” could appear on a resume for any numberof reasons. The recruiter still has to read each and every resume and use his orher own judgment to decide if the candidate even makes the shortlist as apotential good match for the job.

The second generation of recruiting technology merely added more simple wordsearch capabilities to the resume database. Resumes pulled out of the resumedatabase are presented to the recruiter in an order based on the number ofoccurrences of a keyword in the resume, the position of the keyword within theresume, and other words appearing in the context.

Searching resume databases for a candidate matching a narrow profile requiresmastering an arcane language of Boolean search syntax. Furthermore, savvy –but often qualified – candidates know how to “keyword pack” whenthey write resumes to fool resume databases into giving their resume a higherscore…and waste valuable recruiter time.

The technology behind resume databases has reached its limit of usefulness,unable to discriminate quality candidates from large volumes of mostly similarlyqualified candidates. And with resume-based systems, candidates who want toexpress interest in a job opening must be resume-ready in order to presentthemselves for consideration by a recruiter.

Recruitsoft’s Solution
Recruitsoft’s Recruiter WebTop™ provides a two-pronged strategy forreengineering the resume: it supplements the resume with skills-based profiling,and it breaks the resume down into its component parts.

• Skills-based profiling gets the information the recruiter requiresdirectly from the candidate (recruiter-driven information). Candidates areautomatically scored and ranked on the basis of their responses.Skills-based pre-screening is so effective that a candidate can make it pastthe first filtering stage without submitting a resume.
• Recruiter WebTop™ does, however, keep the resume as part of the onlineapplication process. The system breaks down the resume into its componentparts: Work History; Skills; Education, and other key sections. Instead ofthe wide scope of a keyword search, recruiters can focus on one field of theresume and find the information they need. Searching by resume field, notkeyword, gives recruiters easier access to information, without the clutterof irrelevant or unqualified candidates.

Recruiter WebTop™ is “recruiter-friendly.” Skills-basedprescreening and the ability to search by resume field significantly reduce therecruiter’s workload. Reengineering the resume with Recruiter WebTop™ helpsmanage the volume of incoming resumes and quickly identify your ACE candidates.

For more information, contact Recruitsoftat 888/836-3669, or info@recruitsoft.com.

Recruitsoftdelivers the most complete online recruiting solutions for leading companiesacross many industries. Among the company’s clients are United Airlines (NYSE:UAL), Bombardier Aerospace and Transportation, MetLife, Cabletron Systems (NYSE:CS), and Sutter Health. The company’s Recruiter WebTopTM application serviceintegrates the entire recruiting supply chain and powers the career Web pages oflarge corporations, leading to faster time-to-hire, lower cost-per-hire, andultimately, increased quality of hires.

Recruitsoftintroduced the pay-per-hire fee structure to the Web-based recruiting industryand is considered to be the best-practice ASP for recruitment managementsolutions, based on its proprietary ACE Recruiting(tm) methodology, designed incollaboration with large corporations to re-engineer and streamline thecorporate recruiting process.

Recruitsoftis the first HMS to integrate all areas of candidate sourcing. These services,accessible via one click, include: job postings on the corporate Website, thecompany Intranet, job boards, advertising in all print media and, importantly,contract-assisted candidate sourcing.