In a Swiftpro world, recruitment software is here to help

The explosion of Internet job boards has brought numerous benefits to the recruitment market, such as reduced advertising costs, enormous time savings and shorter time to placement. However, just as job boards have solved many problems they have also created new issues and challenges. It is true that online job advertising is faster, cheaper and more responsive than the print-based alternatives. In fact, on average, a recruitment agency can expect upwards of 150 responses to an online job advertisement.



Although building a substantial applicant database is central to creating a successful agency, it is easy to see how consultants can find themselves inundated by CVs/resumes that need to be screened and entered on to their system. This can effectively cancels out many of the cost and time savings mentioned. One way of resolving or mitigating the dilemma is to place more targeted job advertisements on niche rather than general job boards. Your applicant response rate will fall, usually by two-thirds, while the quality and suitability of candidates will rise. At the same time, you will still have 40 to 50 CVs/resumes to process.

CVPlus Visual recruitment software transforms imported CVs into fully skilled new applicant records automatically, including name, address, employment history, skills and qualifications. Whatís more, each time the applicant sends a CV/resume, it is saved in the original CV/resume folder and can be viewed by date. Consultants can create up to nine versions of a CV/resume ready to send to clients at a keystroke.

Naturally, some applicant responses will be unsuitable for the job posted or the client company. Using the CVPlus Visual mail centre it is easy to send a standard rejection letter. Consultants can send email, letter, fax and SMS text messages at the press of a button direct from their desktop. New document templates are easily added, modified or deleted by the recruitment agencyís system manager.

Because of the overwhelming number of responses that job boards receive on behalf of their clients, they are forced to rely on software to screen applicants, which often use mechanical filters to cut down the number of CVs/resumes. In most cases these applications perform adequately enough for first round screening purposes. Nevertheless the use of such software often ends up screening out a number of suitable candidates unnecessarily, as it lacks the sophistication to make such important recruitment decisions. Similarly, most high street recruitment agencies use some sort of desktop software to search and match candidates with jobs or clients, often with the same results.

CVPlus Visual recruitment software offers a wide range of facilities to help recruiters find the information they need quickly and efficiently. All of these advanced search facilities can be used throughout the application on all different types of client, job and applicant information.

CVPlus Visual offers recruiters superior search and match capabilities that allow them to search any combination of keywords, free text, post codes, and random data fields using a single form. The search form also offers consultants various options to widen or narrow their search, such as looking for words similar to those entered or dates and numbers that are greater than, less than or between a specified range.

If a recruitment consultant finds themselves pressed for time or they have a temporary job that must to be filled urgently then they can use the Match function. This instantly produces a list of applicants matched against the jobís requirements by identified skills, and it does it automatically.

As most recruitment companies specialise in certain industry sectors their consultants tend to use the same search criteria repeatedly. The practical nature of the softwareís design means that busy consultants can save search forms for frequent use.

Having run a search, CVPlus Visual allows consultants to save their results in a shortlist folder of applicants. They can then work through this shortlist folder, make some calls and flag those candidate records they wish to reject immediately, consider further, or send the applicantís CV/resume to the client. CVs/resumes can be sent to a client with the appropriate cover letter by email, fax and mail directly from within the application.

Of course, a key element in the successful implementation and day to day use of any software application is how well trained and knowledgeable the users are. Inadequate training of recruitment consultants on the companyís chosen software can prove a real barrier to accurately identifying and short-listing suitable candidates. In some cases itís estimated that poor training and understanding of an applicationís potential can reduce a recruitment agencyís operational effectiveness by half. Swiftpro offers on-site and remote training for consultants, managers and systems managers tailored to a companyís specific needs. Swiftpro also trains trainers so that its client companies have a permanent internal training resource readily available.

For more information visit www.swiftpro.com or download a fully functional evaluation copy of CVPlus Visual at www.download.com and type in CVPlus in the search field at the top of the page.