Staffing Technology

31: Introducing Human Capital Supply Chains

At the 2009 SHRM Annual Conference in New Orleans (my new favorite city) we gave away nearly 500 reviewer’s copies of our book, Human Capital Supply Chains. I was a bit worried that the HR audience would not appreciate the concept of the book, but I was very pleasantly surprised by their overwhelming interest. Here’s what we shared with them:

Human Capital Supply Chains has three main themes. The first theme is about tying together your business planning, strategic workforce planning staffing and recruiting processes into a unified and cohesive business process.

The second theme discusses the methods and benefits of applying common manufacturing and distribution supply chain management principles to this end-to-end, human capital supply chain. The idea is to leverage 30 years of expertise developed by companies like Toyota, Wal-Mart and Dell. Total quality management, lean and strategic supplier relationships, when applied to our industry, can help us hire the right talent at the right time at the right location at the right price.

The third major theme of the book is around managing all types of human capital. While most companies focus on managing the cost of their full-time, permanent workforce we suggest that firms need to manage the cost of their flexible workforce at the same time. The flexible includes temporary workers, contractors, consultants, business services and outsourcing costs.  Both flexible and permanent workers make up a corporation’s workforce.  Surprisingly, most companies do not manage all worker types consistently; it is more common that worker types are managed out of a different pot of money and even a different organization, mostly likely procurement instead of HR.

Human Capital Supply Chains suggests corporations define their own human capital supply chain and manage their permanent and flexible workers as a single workforce.  Managing the process and workforce holistically and tying workforce planning tightly to business planning positions corporations to take cost out of the human capital supply chain while increasing workforce quality and productivity. 

Thanks to all of you who shared your interest in reading the finished book later on this year.

30: Time for job posting SEO

I recently submitted an article to SI Review magazine on the topic of job advertising. I find the subject fascinating since it seems that candidates seem to be using Google for their job search as much as they are using job boards to conduct their job search. It used to be that one would never think to kick-off a job search from Google but I guess we’ve all been Googlefied at this point.

Looking at Google’s keyword search volumes for the keyword jobs has the following results: 

The returned 150 job-related terms total ~200m+ searches per month.

When looking at Quantcast I see CareerBuilder.com gets about 12.9m unique visitors per month and Alexa tells me 6.4 page views per user, giving an estimated total monthly page hits of 82.56m. Monster numbers are slightly lower. Numbers for Indeed.com are 5.4m unique visitors, 6.23 pages per visit for 33.642m pages visited per month. Seems like those three sites total in the range of Google’s numbers.

Of course, these are all very rough numbers and there are a lot of flaws in my data and calculations, but it does seem to provide compelling evidence that it is now time to focus on job search traffic on web search engines.  You’ve probably spent some effort optimizing your corporate site -- now it’s time to apply those SEO techniques to improve your organic and paid positions in web search engine results for your individual job postings.

29: Green Bills

My daughter just started preschool this week and what a watershed week it has been. She’s attending a new little Montessori school in town which aims to have 28 pre-schoolers. We live in Santa Cruz and you may know that this town is known for being a bit hippie (though I prefer to think of it as down-to-earth). Anika’s school works hard to be as “Green” as possible.

I just received my first bill 3 days after Anika started school. The bill was sent to me as a PDF attached to an email. The tag at the bottom of the email says the email and its attachment were generated using QuickBooks Online.

After just a few days of school my daughter is already asking if Donna, one the co-owner/teachers, can come to our house. Donna is also the person who sent me the electronic bill. Clearly, Donna is a relaxed person who is spending the day engaging with the kids and ensuring a calm, learning environment. She’s not spent all day or night generating these bills.

When I wrote my staffing back office article [Download bo_vendors_may08_si_review_smoss.pdf] I found that electronic forms of billing in staffing are still new and uncommon. For some reason they are not the de facto billing method for our industry and creating them seems to take special effort. While larger firms may have difficulty making electronic billing formats the standard because of inflexible technology, smaller firms can jump on this opportunity. In addition to the social responsibility brownie points, I think your clients will appreciate it as much as I do…not to mention that your bills will be received faster which may translate into fewer days outstanding.

28: Mobile recruiting

Hallelujah on two fronts! One. This industry seems to be getting serious about leveraging mobile devices for recruiting. Two. I am blogging again. It’s about darn time and I sure have missed it.

You may have seen Geoff Peterson’s article about the iPhone last week. The iPhone is such a user friendly and useful device, it just may be the first technology (ever) that recruiters are excited to use. Here, at The Code Works, a few of us wanted to get a slick iPhone, but our provider doesn't make it easy to add them to our small business plan.  I'm sure the telecom carriers will get this figured out, but I am wondering how many large staffing firms will really be willing to go the iPhone route.

Yesterday, TMP Worldwide announced a partnership with Velti to “[connect] job candidates to suitable vacancies via their mobile phones.”  That sounds exciting and I am looking forward to seeing what happens as a result of this new relationship.

ERE's Dr. John Sullivan published The Mobile Phone: The Most Effective Recruiting Communications Platform and noted a number of recruiting uses for the smart phone.

One thing we know about recruiters is that they love the telephone. So I have been kind of curious as to why staffing organizations have been slow to adopt mobile technology.  Having the device is merely the first step. Enabling recruiters to synch with Outlook, having access to their contacts and email are certainly key.  Mobile applications on their device makes the most sense in my mind.

Providing recruiters with mobile access their front office / applicant tracking system makes sense for recruiters who are often out of the office.  Mobile methods for data entry are important for getting updates and new data into the system while the information is still fresh. Many FO/ATS vendors say they offer a mobile solution, when in fact, they only allow access via very slow web browsers. If you've ever used a web browser you know what I mean - it's painfully tedious.

Downloading a mobile version of your ATS / FO to your phone is really the only way to have a decent recruiter experience. This technology is highly underutilized in an industry that is so dependent and in love with the mobile phone. A few of us at The Code Works built mobile apps in past lives and actively seek out these projects in the staffing and recruiting industry. I hope all of this talk about mobile technology and recruiting in the press means we'll finally start getting some mobile application projects. Our industry could certainly benefit from this capability.

 

27: Cool recruiter tools

I attended a session called Cool New Tools for Recruiters at HR Tech in Chicago last Wednesday. The esteemed panel included two top sourcing consultants, Shally Steckerl (JobMachine) and Eric Jaquith (Recruiting Choices), practitioner Fraser Donnell (RIM) and was moderated by Gerry Crispin (CareerXroads). 

In addition to being a fan of Gerry and also of Shelley's blog, I wanted to compare notes. My article, Cool Tools for Recruiters: 2007 was just published the October issue of SI Review.

I was glad to see that we were on the same wavelength. Here's the line up (dupes marked *):

HR Tech panel:

• LinkedIn
• infoGIST*
• AIRS SourcePoint*
• ZoomInfo*
• Job VIPer

Sara's SI article:

• Jigsaw
• Pipl
• ZoomInfo*
• AIRS SourcePoint
• infoGIST*
• itzbig
• zenhire
• JobThread
• Constant Contact
• InstaStaff
• Call-Em-All
• NEO Pro

I had a lot of fun writing this article and intend on updating it each year, so feel free to tell me about your cool tools. I'd love to hear about them.

Also, I noticed that there was a similarly themed session at ASA Staffing World, so if you attended that session, I would be very interested to hear about the tools mentioned.

26: Social, Alumni & Affinity Networks

I've been out and about at a lot of recruiting and HR conferences this fall. There is a lot of talk about social networking and how this technology may or may not be cost-effective for organizations. I'm thinking the business case for staffing is wrapped around increasing gross margin per candidate over their entire life cycle.

At HR Tech today, I heard a read-out of a report from CedarCrestone that noted most HR technologists are not currently spending their time or money on Web 2.0 technologies, like social networking. Lexy Martin, the presenter, suggested that this is not an indicator that HR organizations don't care about social networking; it's more like they are looking for additional education and ways to effectively apply the technology.

I've had the pleasure of hearing Gerry Crispin speak a few times this month and I think he makes a fantastic point - one that really resonates with me. He states that as popular and intriguing as MySpace and Facebook are - he believes they are our training ground, helping us to learn about social networks and online communities. His expectation is that social networkers will migrate to private, affinity groups, like corporate social networks (Starbucks example), corporate alumni networks (Deloitte example) and other niche affinity groups.

Currently, we see some staffing companies experimenting with social networking technology to help build a candidate community or to source candidates (e.g. hundreds of recruiters that are Linked In Professional users).

I just wrote an article on candidate relationship management concepts for SI Review (due out in November issue). One of the ideas that really struck me as I wrote the article is that the candidate life cycle need not end. The idea being that candidates who are aware of your staffing brand ideally transition into clients.

Maintaining candidate relationships past the job order close date is an interesting method for increasing gross margin. If a candidate is sitting in your database, you've already made some investment in them, that is, you've already paid to screen, interview and onboard them. Why not invest a little more to get more? Placing candidates on multiple temp assignments increases gross margin per candidate. As candidates develop their careers, multiple perm placements are a possibility for increasing profit.

Further, candidates often develop into clients - another opportunity to increase revenue. If your staffing firm builds a trusted relationship with candidates over time, you'll be the first to profit from their job changes and career development.

I think developing and fostering long-term relationships with candidates is a very interesting, and potentially profitable idea for staffing firms. This type of approach does not fit the transactional culture of staffing companies - certainly the skills shortage will motivate change. There is a ton of technology out there to support professional and social networks - it seems that developing and investing in the vision may be worth the effort.

25: Peopleclick announces 30+ new customers

Peopleclick has been practically stealth on the VMS front over the past year or so. It's good to see some PR spam on them. I was beginning to wonder. With so much acquisition in the VMS space in the recent past, there are not so many interesting VMS players out there to consider at this point.

Peopleclick Grows In First Half Of 2007 (ala Hunt-Scanlon)

Peopleclick, Inc., a global talent acquisition solutions provider, closed the first half of 2007 with a record $25.4 million in revenue. The firm signed agreements with over 30 new customers across all product lines in the second quarter. "With the impact of a global labor shortage, companies are quickly recognizing the need for technology to help them recruit and retain the highest quality workforce. Also, the workforce -- as an organization's most valuable asset -- must have a recognizable return on investment. A solid talent acquisition strategy is the only way to see this return," said Ron Kupferman, CEO. "Our success in 2007 and beyond stems not only from our focus on the tools required today to gain a competitive edge in recruiting and retaining people, but also from an extensive investment in the next generation of solutions necessary to meet the needs of an ever-evolving business landscape." New clients added in the quarter ranged from small and medium-sized businesses to multinational organizations. To support this growth, Peopleclick will be expanding its U.K. headquarters later this year.

24: Candidate data privacy

Word is that 1.6m resumes were stolen from Monster.com and there has been very little press coverage so far (Electronic Recruiting News, Cheezhead). My feeling is that it's not news because everyone who has a profile on these national boards has already been such a spam, etc. victim; they wouldn't even notice the impact of this particular thievery.

In speaking with itzbig the other day for an article I am working on for SI Review, I learned that candidate privacy is one of their key features. At first, I thought this meant that the candidate name was kept confidential. Actually, itzbig candidates don't store their contact or confidential data in the system at all. Rather, when a candidate wants to connect with a recruiter, they pass their contact information directly and meet outside the system. The point being that itzbig candidates won't be a target.

23: VCG takes $5m

VCG Software announced that it took $5m last month (June 2007) Jefferson Capital Partners Ltd. and Constellation Software Inc. to support the launch of Pointwing, their next generation front office built on the .NET platform. 

It looks like Jefferson Capital made a previous investment in VCG for the WebPAS product. Looks like VCG took $7.5m in 2000.  Constellation Software says they invested $4m, generally buy vertically focused software companies and like the potential of being able to buy VCG in the future.  I honestly had not realized VCG was venture-backed until Constellation's press release said so - they've been around so long..

I am trying to think of any privately-held front office application vendors that are venture-backed and can't think of a one this morning. Can you?

Post a comment or email me if a vendor name springs to mind.

22: VCG's Pointwing to scale to 10k users

VCG recently announced their upcoming Pointwing release, which I personally find quite interesting. They are in the process of rebuilding their front and back office application from top to bottom. The new version, called Pointwing, has been built on .NET, will include HR-XML SIDES compliant APIs and has a newly designed UI. 

What more could a staffing company want? But wait...

Larger staffing companies have tended to consider custom software due to scalability or customization needs. Pat McCall VCG sales and marketing VP explains, "Our current plans are to have the initial release of Pointwing certified to scale to a minimum of 3000 users (600 concurrent), assuming a 5:1 ratio for conversion to total number of users supported.  Our second release in the 4^th quarter of this year would be certified to scale out to 10000 users (2000 concurrent)."  Clearly, VCG is going after the large and very large staffing players. 

And I see why. There is definitely a need for off-the-shelf software options since so few staffing software vendors have proven their ability to scale.  I really like VCG's decision to certify their scalability rather than just state they are scalable. That adds credibility in my mind.

In addition, VCG is publishing an impressive customer list:

• Ablest Inc.
• Accountants Inc. & Acsys Inc. (divisions of Vedior NV)
• Analysts International Corp.
• CBS Personnel Holdings Inc
• COMFORCE Corp.
• CoreStaff Services Inc.
• Coworx Staffing Services
• Eastridge Group of Staffing Companies
• Global Employment Solutions Inc.
• Hobart West Group Inc.
• Roth Staffing Companies Inc.
• Smith Hanley, LLC (a division of Ventiv Health)
• Select Personnel Services
• The Nelson Family of Companies
• Todays Staffing (a division of CDI Corp.)

Just for the record, The Code Works does not have any business development relationship with VCG. I really just think it's great to see an off-the-shelf product make a serious run to provide both front and back office to the largest staffing companies.