Hire Strategies Blog

B2B Marketing vs. Recruitment Marketing

I wrote a post earlier this week Corporate Recruiters help Agencies thrive and survive. Well, in the business world of marketing it seems life is not much different when it comes to automation and tracking!

ATS Vendors: Do your customers love you?

I have been running my Corporate Recruiters Survey for the last few weeks and one particular question was around their ATS and how well their Vendor looked after them. This amongst many of the other questions has thrown up some interesting data as you will see below just on the beloved ATS.

For anyone who would like a copy of the final report please take the survey.

ATS vendors - where next?

Following on from the Stepstone acquisition of Mr Ted what else may be on Mr Parkers shopping list? Is it just acquisition for growth or acquisition to expand the depth of their product offering. The likes of Amazon and Tesco have expanded way beyond their roots and Stepstone appear to be following suit. But the focus for most of the ATS vendors has been downstream of the application process into the talent management space whilst the likes of Success Factors are trying to push upstream. But I think their is a massive gap upstream for the ATS vendors.

Stepstone acquires Mr Ted: Another one bites the dust

Have to admit this was a big surprise seeing as how Mr Ted has been hiring like crazy; maybe it was done to make them a lot more of a player to prospective buyers? That aside I think this is a VERY smart move by Stepstone. Or Mr Stone as they may now become!

Without doubt Stepstone can sell software but, and this is the key bit, their technology is old and needs rebuilding very soon. However, Mr Ted has a newer technology solution but has only just started to learn how to sell by hiring some great sales people. So Stepstone get a much better ATS without having to go through the pain process of building and then launching a new product. A bit like taking on someone else's children once they have gone through the baby stages. Still some work to do, but a lot less hassle I can tell you.

Will be interesting to see how it all plays out although the likes of Jobs2web will be needed as the Mr Ted candidate experience could learn from the old iGRasp candidate portal.

Good luck both.

Social Recruiting Workshop New Format - Registrations Open #SMIR

Following on from the Social Media in Recruitment Conference last week (#SMIR on Twitter) I am delighted to say that you can now register for this workshop as of today at www.hirestrategies.co.uk/newformat. 

This workshop is being sponsored by Jobsite.co.uk which helps keep the cost down hence the first one is going to be FREE!  Thinking of registering?  Read on.

The Corporate Recruiters Handbook - Your Recruitment 1st Aid Kit

If you haven't got a copy yet you can order one at www.hirestrategies.co.uk/handbook.

P.S. Look out for the stalker in the video!

How a Customer chooses an ATS

If every ATS vendor builds an Applicant Tracking System that looks the same, costs the same and does pretty much the same; how do you choose?

2010 New Year predictions for social recruiting et al

I know it is a bit early but I thought I'd get this one done before I retire for the rest of this year.  My last post of 2009 and hopefully my last day of work for 2009.

So what are my predictions for 2010?

Salesforce Chatter to ATS Chatter

Salesforce Chatter has been described by SF as Facebook for the Enterprise whilst Marc Benioff says that it brings the “magic of Facebook and Twitter to the enterprise.”  But how does this affect the humble ATS?

There's gold in them thar CV's

Linkedin are constantly adding more and more features to make search ever easier and Monster are launching the teeth gnashing Power Resume Search.  Then of course we have the CV parsing technologies being added to the ATS's and before we know it, the recruiter has as many places to search as they do post.  And what about the poor job seeker?  What about giving them a Power Job Search?

But are we missing the point.  Surely half the reason for search is that recruiters have way too many CV's that are irrelevant but they can't get to the good ones that easily.  Maybe if something was created for the job seeker it would help them find the right job and stop them just blasting out as many CV's as possible?  Maybe not...

So is the next step for Linkedin to add more and more CRM type functionality?  Do we end up with the ATS being all about "post screen" and being more about shortlist to hire?  Or is the ATS going to become less complex and focus purely on processing and reports?  Lots of mashing and crossover of functionality in the recruitment process.  Imagine trying to track all of this - makes that ROI dream even more dream like.

Either way, and I can't think it will become that much clearer that soon and expect 2010 to be grey skies tinged with some pockets of blue.  Whoever can make the best CV mining tool may just be a winner!