Broadlook
Pulse – Desktop News Service
Those regular
readers know the Broadlook name well by now. I have written about many of their
products over the years and will continue to do so as long as they keep coming
out with products that are of interest to our community. Pulse is their latest offering and in my opinion, one of
their easiest to use. Pulse is a very simple download and installation that once
installed, sits in your system tray and monitors news sources for items of
interest to you based on parameters that you are able to choose.
In the future,
with Pulse, instead of manually searching news services, Google, etc. for items
of interest to you pertaining to your clients, source companies, executives,
etc., you simply plug in a few keywords with AND’s and OR’s and sit back and
let Pulse feed this information directly to your desktop. Pulse would be good
for those recruiters interested in competitive intelligence, product releases,
sales data, legal information, regional news topics, among many others, but can
also be handy for sports feeds including headlines as well. You can also plug in
the name of your own company and monitor any news on yourself. Since this
product only delivers the news you are interested in…the news you request, it
cuts out a lot of deleting news alerts you may be receiving now.
Pulse monitors
literally thousands of national, regional and global news sources to deliver you
continuous news update of interest. The request criteria is completely flexible
and relevant only to your needs. The program has a “Keep Me Informed”
feature that notifies you when news of interest to you is available. You can
also export your results to Excel if you wish. The program itself is extremely
simple. Your searches and keywords are on one side and your results on the
right. If you run a business where up to date information is critical to your
success, take a look at this new product from Broadlook Technologies.
I want to thank Andy
Theimer, Creative Director at Broadlook Technologies for his help with this
article. Broadlook is offering Fordyce Letter
readers a free 14-day trial. You can sign up at www.broadlook.com/offers/fordyce/.
Anyone with any
interest in finding out more about Pulse without taking the trial can visit the
Broadlook Technologies website at www.broadlook.com
or can reach Andy directly via email at atheimer@broadlook.com
or via voice at 262-754-8080 x210.
ClearanceJobs.com
ClearanceJobs.com
is a specialty career hub catering to those candidates with US Government
security clearances. In this day and age of 9/11 the USA and the associated
government contractors have stepped up the need for individuals with these
credentials. May I add that I have used this service personally, as part of my
day job, have always thought highly of it, and can attest to it’s
effectiveness.
For employers and
recruiters, the site provides resumes from skilled candidate pre-screened as to
their level of clearance. All candidates on this service have either active or
current clearances ranging from Confidential to Top Secret with SCI and/or
Polygraphs. Customers can also post jobs using an intuitive wizard. Their
“resume retrievers” can automatically search for and deliver the qualified
candidates to you. You can bookmark candidates that may be a fit for future
recruiting assignments. Their applicant management system allows you to recruit
the candidates, keep notes, log activity, view reports and also keeps a log of
all open and closed jobs posted. Detailed reports summarize all the activity in
your account. They offer forums enabling you to make contact and seek advice
from other recruiters when desired. They also have an excellent customer service
department very responsive to your issues and needs.
ClearanceJobs.com
offers its customer’s extremely detailed screening as it relates to the
exacting clearance needs your customers. You can screen for clearances including
Confidential, Secret, Top Secret (TS), Top Secret with Sensitive
Compartmentalized Information (TS/SCI), Top Secret with Single Scope Background
Investigation (TS/SSBI), Department of Energy (DOE), and National Security
Agency (NSA). Using the advanced search feature you can also add screening
criteria for Counterintelligence and Lifestyle Polygraphs, or both. Each
resume viewed provides clearance status, clearance level, clearance expiration
date, and clearance notes where the job seeker can enter free-form text.
I ran some
general searches and wanted to report on the results. My first was a broad
search including any clearance in any location and got back over 28,000 results,
the entire contents of the database I imagine, however, this does not include
the almost 5000 “private” job seekers, who can apply for jobs but whose
resumes do not show up in searches. I then tried TS/SCI cleared candidates
residing in the Washington DC (including Virginia and Maryland) area and got
back over 3100 results, very impressive for this hard to find clearance. I then
added a Counterintelligence Polygraph requirement, which is common for TS/SCI
candidates and got back over 1300 candidates, again very impressive. Adding to
that search once again and adding an Imagery (satellite image analysis)
background requirement, I got back 81 candidates…a great starting point for
any search.
Searching for a
design/manufacturing client might require only a secret clearance (higher
clearances are many times for intelligence related positions). I plugged in the
keyword “Radar” and searched nationwide for a candidate with a secret
clearance but no requirement for a polygraph (typically another intelligence
related requirement) and got back 490 results. If I limited my search to those
candidates currently living in Texas, my results were pared down to a more
manageable 37 candidates. Should be a couple candidates for any search in that
group.
In general, the
search interface in very easy to use and results are returned very quickly. In
addition to the search fields mentioned above, you can also use the advance
search feature to further pare down you results using criteria for Date
Received, Zip Code Radius, Candidate Desired Location, Candidate Current
Location, Desired Salary, Career Level, Employment Type, Education, and are also
able to select the Sort Order. An
available list of about 40 preset searches provide users with “point and
click” immediate results for popular candidates like network administrators,
software developers, project mangers, and more.
Pricing can be
had for an individual posting for $275 and 3 months of resume database access is
listed on their website at $1125. See their pricing schedule for posting
enhancement costs and other advertising related costs.
If your
recruiting business in any way requires you to recruit cleared individuals, this
site is certainly worth a look. I would encourage anyone with any interest in
this type of service to visit the ClearanceJobs.com website at www.clearancejobs.com
for more information. I want to thank Evan
Lesser, Director at ClearanceJobs.com (a Dice Company) for his assistance with
this article. Evan can be reached via email at evan@clearancejobs.com
or via voice at (678) 356-5045.
RESUMate
Pro by RESUMate
I have written
about this database product once before but since it remains an extremely easy
to use product that most of us can easily afford, I wanted to offer an updated
review, mentioning some of their newer enhancements. ATS software in general
remains fairly complex with a long learning curve. One trait that draws me to
this one is its simplicity. One candidate…one screen. Simply put, RESUMate
parses contact and other information from resumes and stores that information in
the database. A simple solution that many recruiters are looking for.
There are many
new features for the 2005 upgrade including Outlook integration, which creates a
log of all email messages exchanged with a person or company; an expanded
“Easy Search” function that simplified most searches (search terms are
highlighted as well); a Global Editing function that enables editing multiple
records in a single action; more information for Company records showing job
orders, contact and presented candidates for a given Company; and more
information for each Contact record showing all job orders with this contact,
all presented candidates, and active submittals to this Contact.
Aside
from parsing the usual contact information, which I tested a number of times
with excellent accuracy, it can also parse out user-defined keywords and then
highlight them in the new record. Text resumes (attachments are linked) are part
of each record. Some of the data fields are customizable, enabling you to enter
the information important to your business. Unlimited space for notes, logs,
references, etc. Six date fields note past and future contacts, which feed into
a built-in calendar. Once the record is created, you can search any field in the
candidate record. You can send emails and open web pages directly from the
candidate record. It also has a dialing feature where it will dial the telephone
for you if you have the correct hardware setup.
The
RESUMate Pro version reviewed retails for $795 but I noticed on their website
they are offering this product for $595 for new customers. There are also
additional charges of $195 for additional network users, a $200 add-on, RESUMate
Manager (a reporting program for the Pro version only), and $200 for Import
Express (a bulk resume uploader). They also have a RESUMate Lite version that
retails for $295 but creates a database of resumes only, without the client and
job order integration.
Most
recruiters I know, including myself, do not use their software systems to their
full potential. For those that don't need all the bells and whistles, nor the
price tag associated with options and features you don't want or would never
use, RESUMate would suffice for any resume-driven recruiter looking for a simple
solution for a very reasonable price. I want to thank Charlie Schaldenbrand for
his help in writing this article. Anyone interested in more information about
RESUMate can visit their website at www.resumate.com
or contact Charlie direct via email at charlie@resumate.com or voice at 800-530-9310
x208.
TalentHook
Enhancements
Talenthook, a
premier passive candidate resume searching software package has announced some
major upgrades to their software. Talenthook allows its users to search hundreds
of Internet resume sites simultaneously. I have been a Talenthook user for many
years and can personally attest to the ease of use and effectiveness of this
software. The following is a press release and is taken directly from their
email.
Las
Vegas based Software Company launches major enhancements
revolutionizing
Internet recruiting practices.
Resource
Edge, LLC. introduces the biggest enhancement to their TalentHook software ever:
Advanced Searching. CEO,
Phil Gonzalez states, "We looked at the common frustrations of recruiters
in the industry and worked to come up with solutions."
This
release marks the next generation in searching for the popular recruiting tool,
which was originally developed in 1999.
Major changes include the ability to add Boolean operators such as
"or" and "not" into searches in addition to being able to
search a radius around a particular zip code.
These enhancements will enable users to perform powerful targeted resume
searches within a few seconds as opposed to spending hours searching the entire
worldwide web for candidates.
New resources have been added, speed and accuracy has been refined, and
that is only the beginning.
Long
time customer Chris Miller, CEO of CAMiller Corp adds, "(This) will allow
my company to greatly improve productivity and take on more search
assignments."
For
existing customers, there are no fees for the enhancements, no new software to
buy or download. Once released, users will automatically receive the update the
first time they launch TalentHook.
For existing customers, there are no fees for the enhancements, no new
software to buy or download.
Training materials will be sent when the new version goes live.
Any customers that need additional training are encouraged to contact training@talenthook.com
to setup an appointment.
Head
Engineer, Benjamin Grosse spent months developing and perfecting the new
features. "As
an engineer, something that always excites me is taking a terrific product and
making it better. That's exactly what we've done to TalentHook with the
implementation of this advanced search technology.
Since the beginning, TalentHook has been a tool that saves our users lots
of time...but now that they can move beyond basic search into the realm of
advanced search and logic, TalentHook's practical value has taken an enormous
leap forward."
Additional,
major enhancements are expected to be announced later this year.
Gonzalez adds, "Although, I can't go into detail about our future
plans, suffice to say that our next move will definitely shake things up for the
competition."
If
you would like more information about obtaining new or additional TalentHook
licenses, please contact sales@talenthook.com.
TIP
Reverse
Phone Number Lookups
Do you ever have
a number on your caller ID and want to know who belongs to that number? Try one
of the Internet reverse phone number lookup services. These services offer you a
text box to type in a telephone number then see whom it belongs to. These are
not foolproof at all and are not very good with cell numbers. Most services
offer a free lookup and if that fails, for a fee, they offer a more
comprehensive search. Having said that, I have successfully located the owners
of a number of phone numbers using these web sites. If you go into Google and
type in “reverse phone number lookup” you get a number of hits including:
http://www.reversephonedirectory.com/
http://www.whitepages.com/phone-lookup
http://www.infospace.com/info/reverse.htm
There are many
others to choose from as well. Try one next time you see an unknown number and
want to know who is calling.