Search & Match
ERE just published a list of What's Hot for 2007?" and I was so glad to see candidate/position matching tools make the list. ERE mentioned QuietAgent in their article; we've seen VC funding go to next generation job boards like Market10 and CareerBuilder issued a press release recently on their offering branded Recommended Resumes. All of these companiews are focusing on helping recruiters/candidates find the right candidate/job.
I find these web-based tools interesting and do my best to track them all, but not get too caught-up in the latest and greatest. I think the most important asset for a staffing and recruiting organization is not the number of web-based tools they use, rather the search and match capability embedded in their front office application (see related post).
While it is hard to believe, it seems many staffing companies are still using the full-text search capabilities that come out-of-the-box with name-your-database (e.g. 'MS SQL Server). The smarter firms have replaced that outdated functionality with more advanced capabilities, like bi-directional matching and contextual search.
There are a lot of vendors out there that offer enterprise search capabilities. It's a booming market as you'll see if you check out Gartner's Magic Quadrant, Forrester's Wave or IDC's recent publication (available at FAST or Coveo
Endeca
Engenium
FAST
WCC
I could blog-on for hours on searching and matching, so feel free to email me if you find topic as riveting as do.
I wrote an article on this subject that you may also want to check out, "Search Matters: Make It Work for You"*(SI Review, April 2005).
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