December 2003 Column
ConexPlus
Anyone
still looking for an excellent ATS, and I know there are many of you still out
there, should take a close look at this product. Developed by recruiters for
recruiters this package has many excellent advanced features many of us can use.
The name may sound familiar as we reviewed this service a couple of years ago
and am happy to provide this updated information for you. In last month's column
I wrote about their new pricing plan, which is one of the most competitive in
the industry.
There
is a familiar look to this product. If you are at all familiar with MS/Outlook,
or most any other Windows program, you will get used to ConexPlus fairly
quickly. It uses expandable "tree view" and tabs in order to allow you
to look at your data from different viewpoints.
I
was allowed access to their network for the purposes of this review, but there
was no test data available so I was unable to run searches for candidates and/or
job orders. Some of the main features you will find include:
*
Integration with MS/Outlook, one of a very few systems that have an integrated
or linked email system. Very handy when locating a history of candidate or
client contact.
*
Mail Merge with MS/Word. Build your client and candidate mailing list and then
send periodic announcements and or bulletins to either with a few mouse
clicks.
*
Ability to search candidates, resumes, job orders, clients and contact...very
easily and efficiently.
*
Integrated task manager to keep track of commitments to clients and/or
candidates.
*
User defined fields for candidates, clients, contacts and job orders
You
can enter an unlimited number of candidates and associate each candidate with a
vocational category. You can also add an unlimited number of database-defined
skills for each candidate. That goes for attachments and notes as well as you
can attach any number of them to each record.
Another
excellent feature is the resume parser. You can easily add a new candidate or
job order to your database by parsing the contact and other information directly
from the resume or job order text into the database. A "must-have"
feature in any database, as far as I am concerned. For each candidate you can
also add reference and referral information, something not seen in a lot of the
competition.
Using
the tree views available you can, with a few mouse clicks, track all the
candidates sent to each job order and tracks the job orders per candidate. You
can view all the employees of a given company, be it client or otherwise. View
all the job orders from a given company and/or manager. All this is without
running any searches but by simply clicking on a different view.
Although
I did not run any reports their reporting appears to include many reports most
managers would kill for. Profitability reports, sales performance, recruiter
performance, candidate source analysis, gross profit/gross margin reports,
real-time sales and recruiting activity and a number of others. These
productivity reports and statistics really tell a recruiter or manager how their
business is running and points specifically to where in the process the flow may
be breaking down, leading to less placements. Find your strengths and weaknesses
in a hurry with these tools.
Using
an excellent auto processing feature, which is customized by each user, you can
pre-define activities and/or events that occur upon the placement of a
candidate, closing of a job order and candidate status changes including
automatically notifying other recruiters and/or management of the changes.
Also,
this product is one of the few that I have reviewed that specifically caters to
the temp/contract industries, for those of you in that line of business. There
are fields for pay rate, bill rate, anniversary and other employee-type
information.
As I
mentioned before, and in last month's column, they now have one of the most
aggressive pricing plans in the business. They charge $995 for 3 hosted, fully
licensed users for one year. Most of the other players I have seen are close to
$100 per user per month. This product comes in a web-based mode, which is the
one I reviewed, but also comes in a local, networked version for those that are
not comfortable with their data out on the Internet.
I
want to thank Fred Sussman, their VP of Sales for his assistance in writing this
article. Anyone with any questions or comments can reach Fred via voice at
314/495-0910 or via email at freds@conexplus.com. You can also visit the
ConexPlus website at www.conexplus.com.
RecruiterWebHosting.Com
If
you don't have your own website yet, or have an email address that ends in @aol.com
or @msn.com or something other than your own personal email address...this is a
site you need to check out. These people have created a service that caters to
our industry and offers websites as simply or as sophisticated as you need for
your organization.
They
take care of everything including DNS administration, database administration,
disaster and recovery procedures, IT outsourcing, server administration, and
third-party program administration. No technical knowledge is required to use
this service.
For
as low as $25 per month, they offer their Standard Hosting Package that includes
a Home page, an About Us page, a Contact Us page, a Candidates page, an
Employers page, a Resume Advice page, a Why Choose Us page and a Send Resume
page. More than enough for most recruiting offices I know of. The hosting also
includes up to 25 email accounts for your website and custom content is managed
through an online tool. Logo's can be included as well. You decide what pages
are on your own website.
They
also have a Premium and Gold Package that, for an higher monthly rate, allows
the users the ability to post Jobs (Premium) and Candidates (Gold) on their
website. They also offer assistance
in search engine placement for an additional cost.
That service includes site optimization and monthly reports with current
search engine ranks. There is a one-time setup fee of $295 for any service.
I
have not used this service personally but they seem to offer a solid,
recruiter-oriented service at a reasonable price. Anyone interested in more
information can visit their website at www.RecruiterWebHosting.com or contact
their representative, Andi Loop via email at Andi@RecruiterWebHosting.com or
voice at 877-329-1693.
Press
Release - Rosetta
PEWAUKEE,
WI, November 10th, 2003 - BroadLook Technologies, the developer of the
award-winning sales and business intelligence research application, BroadLook,
today announces the release of ROSETTA, a utility developed to rapidly and
accurately capture single and large sets of contact information.
Rosetta can import captured data into leading Contact Management Systems.
"We
constantly look for ways to help our clients spend more time selling and less
time performing the necessary, but often time-consuming tasks of research and
data entry" states Donato Diorio, CEO of BroadLook Technologies. ROSETTA is an application designed to simplify and streamline
the process of inputting and updating contact records into your contact
management system."
Using
the same patented technology that powers BroadLook's ability to perform website
and deep Internet research, ROSETTA's speed and accuracy is unrivaled in the
marketplace. Says H. Martin
de'Campo, Principal & Founder,
Humanatek BroadLook client and
ROSETTA user, "Rosetta is the
most prolific and effective contact "grabbing" software I've ever
used. Within 72 hours I more than
doubled my business database! Rosetta
is compelling and category killing software without rivals... this thing will
positively impact your bottom line within days!"
For
more information about ROSETTA, please visit www.rosetta.broadlook.com to review
the narrated demo and download a FREE trial copy or call (262) 691-3900.
iHireNetworkAdministrators.com
I
have not personally used this service but received an email announcement. This
site is evidently strictly for network administrators. You can post a job on
this site for 60 days for a very reasonable $100. They also blast any posted job
order to their database of technical candidates offering a technology that
automatically matches job candidates for jobs you post.
Another
point of note. They are one of the few (the only?) services of this nature that
actually guarantees the service. They offer a 7-day, 100% money-back guarantee
if not completely satisfied. For more information see their website at http://www.ihirenetworkadministrators.com.
Free
(Beta Test) Database
Yours
truly is on the tail end of a database development project. I have a simple,
easy to use, networkable (not web-based) database software package that I have
worked on and used myself on and off for a number of years. I am in the final
stages of packaging it up and offering it for sale to the recruiter community.
This system is probably best suited for a smaller office, up to a few users
working in the same location. It has modules for Contacts, Companies, Orders,
Interviews and Placements...that's it. Before releasing this product I would
like to ask for a number of volunteers to test the product, especially those
that are using a contact manager or maybe no database at all, without a lot of
existing data to convert. Anyone interested in more information can contact me
at mark@swatrecruiting.com.
Tip
I
was recently perusing the google.com search engine website and noticed a feature
I hadn't seen before. They have a language translation tool that is very slick.
If you ever have the occasion to review a foreign language resume or other
document and don't know what you are looking at, try this feature at
www.google.com/language_tools?hl=en. You can translate German, French, Italian,
Spanish and Portugese languages to English. They also have another feature that
translates and entire web page by putting in the URL.