Recruiting software

Hiring seems to be a feast-or-famine affair, at least if you use the past five years as an example. In the late ’90s, we couldn’t hire people fast enough. Today, candidates are beating down doors for job openings that don’t exist.

I lend a lot of bytes to this topic as it’s one of the most critical management responsibilities. And since it’s more art than science, we could sure use all the advice and ideas we can get. Many times when readers e-mail me on recruiting and hiring they relate their difficulties in sorting through the reams of resumes that land in their laps when they do have a job to fill. It’s understandable. Most managers have to sift through the deluge on their own. Some have human resources help, but also feel the need to go through them themselves as HR may not be as attuned to IT needs as the manager would. Sure, HR can weed out the truly underqualified, but you’re still left with probably more resumes than you can handle.

That’s why last week’s news that Yahoo is rolling out recruiting and hiring software caught my eye. Called Hiring Gateway, the software uses the Yahoo’s search technology to sort applicants using rules defined by the user. It lets managers track and annotate progress in the recruiting process, and plan meetings and even instant messaging with candidates who have a Yahoo Messenger account. Designed to look like the Yahoo home page, Hiring Gateway’s aim is to make the entire process easier for the manager. And here I thought the only thing Yahoo wanted to give me was incessant pop-up ads.

I was feeling all warm and fuzzy about Yahoo until I read further into the story and saw the price tag: $200,000. Um, Yahoo, how about something for us shallow-pocketed mortals? The story made me wonder what others are using for recruiting software – if anything. If you’re using a package, drop me a line, I’d be interested to hear how it works for you and if it makes the hiring process any easier.

One final, somewhat-related question to close out this newsletter. If you were (or are) looking for a job today, what’s the best way to go about that? I recently took a survey from an IT organization that posed that question. It listed several choices: networking, online job boards, classifieds, cold calls, recruiters and industry organization. I chose networking as my pick, thinking that knowing someone on the inside of any organization is the way to go today, for the reasons we covered earlier in this e-mail. Do you agree? What advice would you give your colleagues out there pounding the pavement?