Big
Biller
For
this month, I had the pleasure of reviewing the Big Biller applicant tracking
system from Top Echelon. Can I say I was a member of this venerable organization
for many years and my lack of participation at this time is in no way to be
considered a lack of respect and admiration for this top flight recruiter
network. I remember the days when all the resumes came in the mail, and then
they introduced the MS/DOS database and sent us diskettes each week. We could
even upload resumes and resume data sheets to the main system with a built in
FTP program. Then came the first couple of Windows versions, which looked
exactly like the DOS version, only more colorful. This was all leading up to
their current offering, Big Biller.
You
might ask why a review for a software product for a proprietary network.
Answer…Big Biller is no longer just for the Top Echelon members; they are now
offering the system on the open market. A first for them. This is strictly
web-based. Nothing to install on your local system. Home or work…you can
access your data at any time. I spent a couple of days on their system and here
is what I came up with.
You
log onto the main menu and see everything you need to begin your day right in
front of you. From this screen you can Add, Find, Search, View and Email People,
Companies and / or Jobs. Handy to have is the list of the last fifteen records
you looked at.
I
started with the People section of the database and tried my hand at adding a
couple of new candidates. If you want to take advantage of the resume parsing
feature you first browse for the resume on your hard drive, which pops a text
copy of the resume into the new record, then, on clicking the parse feature, the
new record is automatically populated with the contact information for that
candidate as well. It is up to you to complete the rest of the record including,
but not limited to, person type, employment, relocation, education, positions,
compensation, skills…as much or little as you desire.
Please
note I said “people” section and not “candidate” section…I like the
way they have checkboxes on each record to denote the type of person you are
entering. Candidate…Hiring Authority…Recruiter…just check the appropriate
box. Many databases I have reviewed in the past require you to maintain separate
databases for candidate contacts and hiring contacts. This has always been
frustrating for me as on the occasion you have a hiring contact who happens to
be your candidate as well (the audacity), you had to enter a new record for that
contact. Two records for one person (one in the candidate section and one in the
hiring authority section) in the same database? A big no-no in my book. Kind of
defeats the whole purpose of having a relational database.
Another
strong suit is the way they handle the search process. You can enter data until
the cows come home but unless you have a way to get it back out again…you are
wasting your time. As an IT recruiter I am always hung up on how a database
handles a candidate’s “skills”. This typically would be where I denote
COBOL or UNIX or some other skill(s) the candidate has that I am going to search
on at a later date. Enter text searching. A foolproof way to search for anything
and everything. Big Biller allows you to text search your resume, comments,
skills and any other bit of data you have entered. Don’t get me wrong, they
still have fields that you can enter data into and search directly, but why take
the extra time to enter all that in when it is all in the resume already. I
think this is a trend we’ll all see more and more. Less field searching and
more text searching. It works fine for Google, Alta Vista and all the big
Internet search engines and it works for recruiter databases as well.
Clicking
on the Jobs section, I get a listing of all my open job orders. Adding a new
order is easy. Enter the job title, company, contact, some type of job
description and your done. Many fields for skills, industries, educational
requirements, compensation, among others. If this is a new client where you do
not have the company name in the database, it is easy to add on the fly. To add
the job order contact you click on that field and are presented with a list of
contacts in that company. A new contact for that company is very easy to add on
the fly as well. Searching your jobs is fairly straightforward as well. You can
text search all your records or search specific comp, relocation or any other
defined field.
Pulling
everything together is easy as well. Getting search results is just the first
step, you still need to get these people out to client sites, set up interviews
and place them. On each person’s record is an activity button. Using the
built-in email client, this is used to send a candidate’s resume to a client
site, with a notation of the resume being sent automatically copied into the
record. Using the same interface, you can track that submission through the rest
of the placement process by logging interview and placement activity.
Enhanced
communication is one of the keys to this software. You can communicate with who
you need to, when you need to, and keep a record of the entire correspondence.
You can easily pull information directly from the database including both
resumes and job orders, then send it to multiple recipients. You can also create
groups, send emails to search results, and personalize the emails if you wish.
Included is an excellent built-in planner where you can plan, track and view all
activity available for you and other members of your firm.
They
have an excellent and very competitive pricing plan which is $50 for first user
and $10 additional for each additional user, per month. This is one of the
lowest monthly fees I have seen for this type of service. There is no setup fee
and data conversion is a flat fee of $275.00 plus 2 cents per record for each
database converted.
I
wholeheartedly recommend to anyone seeking this type of service to check out the
Big Biller software. My thanks to Mark Demaree, Vice President at Top Echelon
Network, Inc., for his help in writing this review. Anyone with any questions or
comments should contact Todd Bossler via
telephone at (330) 455-1433 or email at tbossler@bigbiller.com.
You can also
visit the Big Biller website at www.bigbiller.com.
Chris
Forman – AIRS CEO
Congratulations
to Christian Forman, new CEO at AIRS, whom I am proud to say I have known for
many years. From their press release:
Wilder,
VT—March 1, 2004 -- AIRS, a global leader in recruitment training, tools and
information, today announced that Chief Operating Officer Christian Forman has
been named CEO, effective March 1, 2004. Forman has been tapped to lead the
company’s worldwide expansion of its new human capital solutions, which
include training and technologies for talent acquisition, hiring, mentorship and
employee transition.
Forman
joined AIRS in 1999, and has served as COO since 2002. According to outgoing CEO
Michael Foster, “Chris has been instrumental in helping AIRS navigate the
worst downturn in staffing history, and is responsible in large part for
strengthening and repositioning the company for rapid growth in the next
cycle.” Outgoing CEO Foster is leaving AIRS to focus on his responsibilities
as a founding director of the Human Capital Institute, a new professional
organization and think-tank for global talent leadership.
As
Chief Operating Officer, Forman led product development of AIRS Oxygen,
Atmosphere and Horizon technologies, as well as introducing new training and
services. Oxygen, launched in late 2003, is a turn-key sourcing platform that
helps recruiters post jobs, search resume banks and the Web, make contact with
candidates and build talent pools. Atmosphere is AIRS Web-based mentorship and
collaborative learning platform, slated for introduction in Q2, 2004. Horizon is
a comprehensive career portal that allows employers to provide displaced workers
with high value, step-by-step job search training, tools and assistance via the
Web.
“Chris
is an energetic and visionary leader, and AIRS is very fortunate to have him at
the helm as we bring exciting new products into an improving marketplace.”
says Foster, “I’m confident that as CEO, Chris will successfully grow AIRS
brand, scale the company into new markets and provide even more exciting and
useful solutions for our clients.”
Again…congratulations
to Chris.
Passive-Candidates.com
I
came across this site at some point and wanted to make all aware. Anyone into
passive candidate recruiting could probably make some use of this free service. www.Passive-Candidates.com
is a Internet search engine that catalogs resume pages. They are a “page
exchange” site, meaning that in order to get a batch of resumes, the site asks
you to “feed” one of your resume pages to it.
Just copy the url of any web-based resume you locate into the interface
and once the software confirms you have put a resume in, you get back results
(resumes) of other passive candidate in the database, per your search requests.
For best results, have several resume pages ready to feed the site, as it
sometimes disqualifies pages that you may enter (usually because the database
already contains the page). Anyone interested in checking this out can visit
their website at http://www.Passive-Candidates.com.
Anyone
involved in the once dead but reviving telecom industry should check out this
site catering to that specialty. Although I have not used this service
personally they claim to be the #1 Telecom job site on the Internet.
They claim to have a database of over 125,000,
telecommunications-specific, job-seeking candidates. Sounds like a good start to
any telecom search. Anyone with any interest in this type of service can visit
their website at www.telecomcareers.com. The email I received also noted
a free month if you sign up for two.
eCruiter
Connection
Looks
like an excellent portal to the myriad of goods and services provided to the
recruiting community. They offer a centralized listing that includes links to
job and career sites, contact managers, ATS systems, resume parsing systems,
payroll funding, data mining, recruiter websites, training, third-party
screeners, testing and background checking, HR benefits and other categories as
well. Anyone in the market for these types of products should use this site as a
starting point. Visit their listings at www.ecruiterconnection.com.
You
wouldn’t know it by the website name but here is another site dedicated to the
burgeoning and ever-growing health care recruiting marketplace. They cater to
physicians, physician’s assistants, nurses, pharmacists and executives of all
industries. You can post unlimited jobs and candidates (to split with other
recruiting firms). The introductory price of $49.00 per months seems like a
reasonable pricing plan. Anyone involved in this recruiting specialty should
visit their website at www.careersintellect.com.
TIP
This
month’s tip is graciously provided by David Carpe, the host of both
PassingNotes.com and of a fairly new Yahoo Group catering to competitive
intelligence. David is a true expert dedicated to human capital research and
talks about “Google by Mail".
”I've
been bothered immensely by the challenge of storing specific searches of
interest on various search engines, either forced to bookmark searches (tedious
for organization), record queries (also tedious) and so spent a great deal of
time looking over 'web search by email'.
For those who don't follow this, the basic idea behind hosts of such services
(queries all run through volunteer servers), the idea was to deliver internet
search to disparate geographies plagued by low quality internet access, zero
browser access, and minimal access to email - so the summary goal: allow only
email users to view search results via email without requiring a browser, or
allow users to minimize required browser time (e.g. go to a specific site,
versus searching and then viewing multiple results, etc.)
I’ve tested many of these, very many. if you'd like to research your own,
check out any search engine and search for 'web search by email' (goes by
multiple terms, from accmail to emailsearch etc.)
So far, the simplest and most effective one I’ve found is for Google Search by
Email hosted by a co called 'capeclear' - to run a search, you simply put in
your query in the subject line just as you would within a search bar (replete
with all forms of syntax, etc) and send an email to:
google@capeclear.com
The server will respond within a couple of minutes with summary search results
and links. In this way, you can quickly archive the email, import to a folder
(for any research, contact or organization) and easily retrieve and modify the
subject line (e.g. modify, edit and forward back to the server again and again
and again)
Certainly an interesting workaround to archiving results, though not for
everybody.”
Many
thanks to David for his permission to reprint this tip. Anyone interested in the
new fields of Human Capital Research or Competitive Intelligence should sign up
for his free mailing list via Yahoo Groups. Anyone can join by sending email to passingnotes-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
and request list membership. I signed up a while back and get excellent,
relevant information emailed to me each week. Once a member, you can also go
onto the Yahoo Groups website, enter the members area for this group and post
you own questions or even answer someone else’s.