CONEXPLUS
– REVIEW
Never
heard of ConexPlus, I am not surprised as it is a fairly new entry into the
crowded Recruiter/Contact Management/CRM category of software products. Make
sure you give this one a look - it definitely offers solutions you may never
have considered. I believe more recruiting and placement companies are using
some type of advanced automation now than ever before and the ones that aren’t
are probably looking around. ACT,
Goldmine, Access...all big losers in our industry in the last several years.
There are so many options. A newcomer has to have something the others don’t
to have any impact in this market, which is why I chose to write about ConexPlus,
as I feel it is an excellent product and although new, will appeal to a lot of
people.
ConexPlus
is a client server application written to help manage your candidate and
customer relationships. In addition to the standard screens for candidates,
clients, and job orders, there are many built-in processes that exist to help
streamline your business. One thing that I really liked was that is has the look
and feel of MS/Outlook, a program I use daily and am very familiar with. It has
the same three-pane interface with a view bar on the left, a folder list in the
middle and the business end at the right. ConexPlus is very easy to navigate and
understand. Another familiar interface item, also like Outlook, is the tree-view
presentation of your data. You have quick access to all your data treed out in
any view you want. Talk about an
easy way to see what you have going on.
The
bar on the left is your list of “views” a very important concept in this
database. Job Orders by Category; Candidates by Job Category; Submissions by
Candidate; Submissions by Job Order; Saved Searches w/Results; Active
Candidates...all one click away. Then, these views can be filtered by various
fields. I especially like the Job Order view that lists job orders in colors
showing their current submission levels. Red is for zero submissions, black is
under the threshold, and blue is at or above the threshold. You set the
threshold. For anyone with consulting employees, there are views for
that as well. Another big plus for me was it’s solid integrated with MS Office
2000’s MS Outlook 2000 and MS Word 2000. Email templates can be setup much
like a document mail merge in MS Word, allowing you the ability to send an
endless steam of emails to your staff, candidates, or hiring managers.
Regarding
candidate data entry I liked the fact that you can attach both original and
formatted resumes to each record, and then email these resumes directly from the
record. You could also designate a candidate as a hiring contact as well,
something that happens to me a lot. Again, if you do any hiring of consultants,
there are also sections for each candidate regarding employment and billing
information.
It
has a calendar and an excellent “task” feature built in. Rather than using
MS Outlook’s tasks, ConexPlus allows a specific task to be a stand-alone task,
or a candidate, job order, company or company contact related task. Opening
these tasks also opens any associated records. A big plus for me, as one who has
employees, is that you can also assign tasks to employees. They are color-coded
as well, as to their urgency. There
is excellent flexibility in setting up your system. First, and of great
importance, is that all of your drop down boxes are totally customizable, from
you skills, to candidate status to job categories. This software is for any
industry. Also, you can assign default values for new job orders, companies, and
candidates, set the captions on the user definable fields, set file locations
for system resumes and email templates, etc., set the search path on the resume
locations. You can put into place
customized procedures that will occur following certain events including what
happens when a job order is closed, a candidate is placed, or a candidate is no
longer available. You can also set codes that denote whether a candidate was
submitted, interviewed or hired. Advanced
searches are allowed on companies, job orders, and candidates. Candidate lists can be saved from an advanced search, and you
can work from a list of candidates removing them from the list as you call them.
Configuration
is probably the most flexible I have seen. This system can be run as a
stand-alone, local, single-PC system (although there will be features you will
never use), a local, networked system (in-house Windows/NT Server and SQL/Server
required), or it can use the ASP model where your application is hosted by
ConexPlus for a monthly fee per user (MS/Office 2000 required-for templates).
For the local configuration, there is a one-time charge ($1,500.00 per user) and
annual maintenance fee (15% of the license fee), very reasonable by today’s
standards. The license fee goes down from there depending on the number of
users. ASP pricing starts at $95.00 per month per user and goes down from there
to $75.00 depending on the user count.
Last,
but not least, is the fact that, Jake Amir, someone who has been successfully
placing both permanent employees and contractors for many years, designed and
oversees the development of this software. This is not some software company
hopping on the recruiter software bandwagon. Jake has run a successful IT
consulting and permanent placement organization here is St. Louis since the
middle eighties. This database grew out of his need for a database that helps
you to manage your desk, utilize your resources and increase your billings, not
simply somewhere to store your names and phone number. I think he has done that.
Anyone
interested in more information on this product can visit their website at www.conexplus.com,
you can send Jake an email at JakeA@ConexPlus.com,
or you can reach Jake via telephone at (314) 503-5325.
Client
development was the central issue in Steve Finkel's excellent article: Working a
Desk in Turbulent Times, on the cover of the July TFL, so Mark and I both
attended the new AIRS Client Development class in August to see what value AIRS
can bring to the discussion. I'll
start off by saying that Mark and I were skeptical.
After all, AIRS is primarily known as the industry leader in Internet
recruitment training to identify passive candidates, not for the client side of
the business.
AIRS
opened the class with background to acknowledge that the agency world has
changed from a scarcity of candidates to a scarcity of job orders. They align
themselves with Steve Finkel's view, stated in the July TFL issue: "Only in
a state of extreme necessity should a recruiter even consider totally changing
areas of specialization", and essentially poses the question: If you are in
a truly "dead" industry specialization, will you choose to starve, or
will you use new techniques to find clients who need your help and make some
money?
AIRS
rejects the idea that "nobody is hiring" and offers 3 alternatives to
recruiters:
1.
Find better candidates
2.
Develop a new channel for existing candidates
3.
Find a new or adjacent industry sector that is in an active hiring model
Along
with these alternatives, AIRS offers an 8 step roadmap to the job orders that
begins with an honest appraisal of your current clients and candidates to
address the question: Can I make money with these clients and candidates today?
If so, AIRS encourages you to:
On
the second point, AIRS walks you through how to research companies and
industries to identify who is growing and in need of talent.
Mark and I both liked this section of the class. We utilized at least a
couple of useful Internet sites that we were previously unaware of that make
this type of research easy for almost any recruiter to perform.
AIRS
offers two approaches to finding new clients:
1.
Market your best candidates - (nothing new here).
2.
Choose a hot vertical market and establish a brand new practice or sub-practice. While this is not a new idea, AIRS does walk students through
Internet based techniques that quickly identify industry sectors, which are
aggressively hiring.
If
you are open to looking at a new specialization, AIRS demonstrates how to
quickly identify today's hot sectors, become an industry expert, develop an
impressive candidate pipeline, and identify hiring managers by constructing a
virtual org chart. The class then
covers how to build lasting relationships in your new industry sector with the
goal of becoming the recruiter of choice, and how to leverage your early client
successes into a network of new clients in your new industry niche.
I
asked Tim McKegney, AIRS' Director of Sales, if this class signaled that AIRS
was entering into competition with our traditional industry trainers.
Tim's position is that the Client Development class leverages AIRS'
strengths in eLearning and Internet research techniques to meet a need of many
of their agency clients and that AIRS does not intend to compete with our
traditional industry trainers on the many other topics related to running a
profitable desk.
The
class was given by Tracey
McGinnis, an experienced AIRS trainer. Although we couldn’t see her…she
sounded great and you could tell she was an expert in this material. If there
was a negative it was that the class session seemed too long. It lasted close
over four hours. Even with a couple of breaks it was hard to sit still for that
long, especially during a workday afternoon. Maybe a couple of shorter sessions
would be better.
AIRS
puts out very high quality class that will undoubtedly improve as they gain
experience teaching it and refine the material.
The class is available over the web, from your home or office, with full
audio and video support. The cost
is $595 and registration is available at http://www.airsdirectory.com/products/registration/,
or by calling 1-800-466-4010 within 24 hours of the starting time of the class
you want to attend.
Thank
you Peter Weddle for the opportunity to review your book, Postcards from Space,
2001. The cover of the book says it is a primer on Internet Recruiting…a type
of book reviewed many times in this column. I truly appreciate unexpectedly not
getting what I expected. Almost every book we have reviewed for this column in
the beginner or ‘primer’ category offers a lot of specific techniques and
pages and pages of URL’s that are out of date very quickly. Peter leaves that
detail work to others and loads you up with pages and pages of ideas, Internet
Recruiting ideas…good ideas. As a matter of fact, The
Washington Post has described him as
"a man filled with ingenious ideas."
I wish someone would say that about me.
Backup…Peter
Weddle is sort of a competitor of ours as he also writes a column about Internet
Recruiting for CareerJournal.com. This book is a collection of essays that
formed the basis for the columns. Per their write-up “These columns probe the
strategies, concepts, techniques and culture of online recruiting and provide a
candid, unbiased assessment of what works and what doesn't.”
Since this was not the type of book that you sit down and write, being
compiled over a period of time, you notice repeated themes…you can tell what
is important to him.
He
advocates striking a balance between large pay services and smaller, niche
services. He says to use, but not abuse, these large Internet sites like
Monster, Headhunter, Dice…never rely on them and if you do use them to combine
quick action with a professional approach and image.
He
advocates making the best use of your company website as a recruiting tool. Give
people the information they need to choose to work with you. Sell yourself, not
as a used car salesperson, but as a polished, e-savvy professional.
He
advocates better communication. He says to respond to all who respond to you. I
really thought about this one. I probably delete 15 resumes to every one that I
keep and contact. Replying to them all would be very time consuming. Conversely,
I waste a lot of time fielding telephone calls from people who sent me their
resume, and are wanting me to talk with them about a resume I already deleted. I
hate that. I am wondering now if I sent a simple “no thanks” note to
everyone if that would head off a lot of those calls.
He
advocates that any Internet Recruiter be expert in both Internet technology and
recruiting. Don’t ban your employees from using the Internet to network and
recruit people in favor of an in-house specialist. Conversely, don’t bring in
an Internet Recruiting expert that is strong in Internet knowledge but weak in
recruiting experience. You need both and I couldn’t agree more.
He
advocates having a good web image. Don’t send a one line, mass mailed, email
stating: Send Your Resume. Polish it up a bit by customizing your email to your
target and get those candidates you competition doesn’t.
He
advocates a lot more as well. As I said before…a lot of good ideas in this
book…but you’ll have to buy it to learn more.
It
is easy reading that takes a night or so. I’d tell you how many pages it has
but it doesn’t have page numbers (about a half inch), or a table of contents
or index. You just start reading and stop whenever you stop. This book normally
costs $24.95 but Peter has graciously offered a $5.00 savings (20% discount) to
the Fordyce readers. To order, visit his on online order form at: http://www.weddles.com/bookorder.htm
and simply fill in $19.95 (rather than $24.95) on the order form and mention
Mark Berger in the Comments section. Anyone with any questions can reach Peter
via email at pdw@weddles.com.
INTERNATIONAL
RECRUITERS - WORLDATONCE.COM
I
saw an ad for this company in some PC magazine and just thought I would mention
them, as they seemed like a good resource for any recruiters with an
international desk. They claim to be the first online service where one can
perform an international company search without having to jump from one specific
country directory to the next.
From
their ad: ”We
are here to provide the customer with the most up-to-date and easy-to-operate
service to meet their needs and to help them foster business-to-business
relationships. At www.WorldAtOnce.com the world, and information on over
40 million of its companies from over 200 countries, is truly at your
fingertips.”
They
offer subscriptions plans ranging from 200 records per month for $14.50 per
month to 3000 records per month for $45.50 per month. There are additional
charges if you exceed your allotment. I have not tried this service myself but
offer it as a potential resource for international recruiters. Check them out at
www.worldatonce.com.
DIRECTORYSERVICE.COM
Need
a quick look up for phone number. Try this site. Type in the name, city and
state and get back the number you are looking for. They also offer a reverse
lookup feature whereby you can type in a telephone number and get back the owner
of that number. Looks like a good service but I put in my number and did not get
my name back…just to let you know. Maybe you will have better luck. Check them
out at: http://www.directoryserviceinc.com.
They claim to be the web's most comprehensive database of addresses and
phone numbers.
TIP
Here
is the resume-searching string I use whenever I go directly to the search
engines (this one in particular is for AltaVista) to look for resumes…
(title:cv
OR url:cv OR title:"curriculum vitae" OR url:"curriculum
vitae" OR title:homepage OR url:homepage OR url:resume* OR title:resume*)
Go
to the Advance Search page at http://www.altavista.com/sites/search/adv,
copy and paste the above text into the “Boolean Query” box, hit the search
button and you get over 3.2 million resumes, some right in your backyard I’ll
bet. Add skills and narrow it down to your target group.
Until next month.