REVIEW
- SEARCHSTATION 4.0
Last
January I reviewed the AIRS SearchStation…the subscription service offered by
the AIRS training organization. In that article I mentioned that they were
anticipating major upgrades for the product. I recently started receiving
notifications that the new SearchStation 4.0 was scheduled for release so I
decided to check it out. This is truly a major upgrade including a new interface
and many new features.
You
will see the word ‘new’ here quite a bit in this review of SearchStation.
You know me by now and know I wouldn’t say it if it weren’t true. This is a
major league upgrade for a major league product. The people at AIRS have taken
most, if not all, of their vast store of Internet Recruiting knowledge and put
it at your fingertips. Let me run through a few items of interest for you.
Search
Tools:
Here is where you go to get the resumes, leads, information, etc. Anything and
everything is available in one or more of the following tools:
ResumeSearch
– This was originally called PowerSearch and is their standard interface for
finding resumes for passive candidates on the Internet. Of note is the addition
of the FAST search engine and the ability to include your own NOT words.
Resume
Banks – Superb. Searches many of the free Internet Resume Banks but also
allows you to enter your user name and password for many pay services including
Monster, Headhunter, DICE and many others.
Newsgroups
– Their standard interface to search Newsgroups for resume using keywords and
other criteria.
Communities
– You can search for either resumes or people (leads) in a number of the more
popular Internet communities including Yahoo, Geocities and AOL.
ISP’s
– Search any ISP for resumes or homepages using keywords. Great for location
specific searches.
Source
Companies – Great new feature to X-Ray, Flip or Power Search any commercial
website. Great for searches targeting specific companies.
Colleges/Organizations
– More features to X-Ray, Flip or Power Search these types of websites.
Events
– X-Ray, Flip, and Power search for candidates hidden in conference and event
sites.
Discussion
Groups – Use this new tab to seek out candidates hidden inside technical and
industry-related threads located within thousands of discussion groups. Click on
the Mailing Lists tab quickly search through thousands of active mailing lists.
Peers
– Enter a name, email domain, or company street address and then search the
Internet for related company Web sites, mailing and attendee lists, homepages,
etc.
Most
of these search features allow you to search for either people or resumes on up
to 5 of the more popular Internet search engines.
Finders:
SearchStation has also added a new, specialized group of tools called
Finders…another great idea. More than locating specific people or resumes for
you…the Finder tools locates specific communities, colleges, companies, hubs,
events, ISP’s, and keywords. You then use Finder’s results to conduct more
thorough Internet searches. What good is it to be able to X-Ray or Flip a
client’s competitors site if you do not know who the competitors are?
Tutorials:
Another excellent and welcomed addition. They have a link to Search Strategies
– context sensitive assistance. For example: if you are flipping a college
site for alumni resumes and click on the Search Strategies link you are given a
mini-lesson in searching college alumni sites for resumes. They also have a link
to Step-By-Step. Picks up where Search Strategies leaves off. Again, give you
context sensitive instruction for conducting specialized Internet searches.
Lastly check out Opportunity Maps: an excellent troubleshooter. Explains what to
do in certain ‘dead-end’ situations.
Folders:
Having said all of the above, what really impressed me the most and by far one
of the best new features in my mind was the Folders you store your searches and
candidates in. Upon logging onto 4.0 I noticed the Active Folder – Searches
category. Upon clicking I saw all of the searches that I had ever run using this
program. I could hardly believe how many there were – searches for everything
– already saved. Never again (or rarely) will I have to fill out a search form
from scratch. Using the copy feature I can easily add different skills to proven
search combinations. Also new is the ability for you to save links to candidate
leads or resumes directory to your Resumes folder. Run you searches, save the
links then search them over and over for specific skills. The new My Directory
allows you to create new, customized folders and set a number of user
preferences.
Contact:
Anyone
with any questions regarding the service or pricing should call their toll-free
number at 1-800-466-4010. There are 6 sales reps ready to talk about
SearchStation and give demos. You can also reach Chris Forman, Director of Sales
at the same number, extension 132 or you can email him at cforman@airsmail.com.
Pricing:
The
annual subscription rate is $2,499.00, which I believe is higher than last time
I checked but well worth the extra cost. Additional annual licenses are $1,000
and Alumni receive a 10% discount. Volume discounts are available.
This
product does not necessarily replace their flagship product AIRS I, II, or III
as it is very helpful to know the theory behind the SearchStation. This product
could be a boon for any recruiter wanting to locate active, passive or any other
type of candidate or information on the Internet without having to take the time
and effort to learn a lot of advanced Internet recruiting techniques. A great
buy for the money.
Step 2 – Setting it
Up
Last
month I went into great detail regarding my company’s decision to switch from
our MS/Access database to a new Internet-based database product, Sendouts.com. I
will write a bit now on the progress we have made so far on this project. We
first had to submit our database for review. Thankfully, our database design was
fairly simple and is going to easily convert to an SQL/Server format upon going
live with the software. There has been much discussion with the Sendouts staff
on a wide variety of projects.
Their
staff paid us a visit one afternoon for our group training session. We have a
meeting room with an LCD projector set up so we chose to have our training in
this way as opposed to each of us sitting at individual desks. We first had to
make sure we had Internet Explorer 5.0 installed, as will all users of this
system. You will also require a video resolution of at least 800 x 600 in order
to properly view the application. We then downloaded the Sendouts software along
with the accompanying latest versions of any Windows files we would need.
I
was mistaken in the last article by stating that there is no local software.
There actually is and for a good reason. The Sendouts installation process puts
a copy of both the software and your data onto your hard drive. The only time
you actually use the local software is when you are off-line. And that is where
the beauty lies. Normally, with an Internet-based database, when you are
off-line you are off work. With this feature you can work off-line whenever you
do not have a live connection. At present when you are off-line you are in a
read-only mode. In other words, you need to be connected in order to make
changes or additions. I am told that soon you will be able to make changes
off-line that will sync-up, transparently, with the Internet-based database.
Once
all the software was installed and updated, our training proceeded. We spent
roughly an hour and one-half or so with a Sendouts trainer and also a support
person. We went through each tab in each screen one by one for a very thorough
explanation of how to do this or that. We learned how to search for candidates,
add new candidates and orders, take notes, add contact information, set
security…all you would need to know in order to use this application. As most
of us are fairly computer literate in general I do not foresee any problems in
learning this application in a very short time period.
Once
we completed our training sessions and got the feel for the Sendouts software a
bit we had more work to do. In hindsight, one area that we were somewhat lax in
was allowing any user to enter new records to our SKILLS table in our existing
MS/Access database. For example, we had allowed at least four entries
designating the MS/WindowsNT skill (NT, WinNT, WindowsNT, MS/WindowsNT, etc.).
Using Sendouts we will not be able to enter new skills haphazardly…we will be
forced to pick a skill from their SKILLS database, making it much easier in the
future to obtain proper results on future searches. Our SKILLS table was
compared with the Sendouts SKILLS table and we were presented with three lists.
First was a list of successful matches, where our existing skill matched one of
their existing skills. We had to go through this to make sure that all of the
successful matches were indeed matches. The second list contained the
unsuccessful matches, where our existing skill did not match any of the existing
skills in the Sendouts database. Our group went through each item on this list
as well and had to make one of three choices on each entry. 1 – Make a case to
add the skill to the Sendouts SKILL table. 2 – Turn the unsuccessful match
into a successful one by choosing an existing Sendouts skill to match up with. 3
– Leave the match unsuccessful. The third list was a complete list of the
Sendouts SKILL table consisting of 18 pages of printed material. We all went
through this list thoroughly and found we were able to make numerous suggestions
as to the proper categorization and standardization of this list.
I
have a test station setup on my machine and have run some parallel searches
using my existing database and the new Sendouts product. I am pleased to say
most results are satisfactory and usable.
As
stated in Part I, this product is still in beta version. They are making some
revisions prior to us going live next week sometime. By the time you read the
next article in this series we should all have been using the product live for
at least several weeks. Will keep you posted.
Tip of the month – Communities
Communities
are one of the best places to find passive candidates.
The AIRS Search Guide, which I reviewed in last month’s issue, covers
the 3 largest communities: Tripod, Angelfire and Geocities, but there are others
worth searching as well. Some
examples include:
America
Online, Bolt, Bookplace, Chick Pages, CompuServe, gURLpages, HotBot Homepages,
iVillage, Netcom, Other Internet Providers, Prodigy, R’Home Pages, The
Doghouse Pages, WhoWhere? Pages, and Women.com.
Add these to your browser and happy hunting!
A link to a site with the URLs for these communities is included below:
http://hp-partner.whowhere.com/hp/excite/Online_Communities/