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AKKEN Adds Comprehensive Payroll Processing Options to Staffing and Recruitment Business Management Suite



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Akken, provider of the cloud-based all-in-one business management suite for staffing and recruitment firms, announced at Staffing World last week that it has added net payroll processing capability to AKKEN Staffing, in addition to its existing integration with QuickBooks and third party payroll service providers. AKKEN Staffing now provides the most complete and flexible set of options for payroll management. To improve visibility into business operations, AKKEN also introduced new customizable dashboards that aggregate and present front to back office performance metrics in graphical form.

Cold Calling, Technology, Weigh In!

Best of Breed: Phone or Online?



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Which contact method is the best, and why do you think that way? If you’re an online person, why do you think some people prefer the phone, and vice versa? Do the new online and social tools available make the phone less important in the recruiting world?

Jump right in, leave a comment, and let us know your uncensored thoughts. If you prefer, send me an email, just be sure to let me know if your comment is “on” or “off” the record. We will select some of the most interesting, no-holds-barred responses for inclusion in an upcoming article in The Fordyce Letter!

TFL archives

Swat Recruiting



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RESUMate

Anyone who reads this column with any regularity knows that I review recruiter database software almost every month, as the interest in that topic remains high among the Fordyce subscribers. Most of the software reviewed in this category is extremely complex for many recruiters as many packages try and be so many things to so many people. Most recruiters I know, including myself, do not use their software systems to their full potential. For those that don’t need all the bells and whistles, nor the price tag associated with options and features you don’t want or would never use, here is one, RESUMate, that would suffice for any resume-driven recruiter looking for a simple solution for a very reasonable price.

RESUMate is a simple, easy-to-use database program that parses contact information from resumes and stores that information in a database. Exactly what many recruiters are looking for. I really like the way they have accomplished something few before them have accomplished…to put all the pertinent candidate data on one screen. It is a busy interface for sure but not too busy.

Aside from parsing the usual contact information, which I tested a number of times with excellent accuracy, it can also parse out user-defined keywords and then highlight them in the new record. Text resumes (attachments are linked) are part of each record. Some of the data fields are customizable, enabling you to enter the information important to your business. Unlimited space for notes, logs, references, etc. Six date fields note past and future contacts, which feed into a built-in calendar. Once the record is created, you can search any field in the candidate record. You can send emails and open web pages directly from the candidate record. It also has a dialing feature where it will dial the telephone for you if you have the correct hardware setup.

The RESUMate Lite version reviewed goes for $295 for the first user and $99 for additional network users. They also have a RESUMate Pro version available for $795 and $195 for additional network users that integrates client, contact and job order records with the candidate records in the Lite version. There is also the optional Import Express add-on ($200 with purchase) is handy for those performing imports for multiple resumes.

I want to thank Charlie Schaldenbrand for his help in writing this article. Anyone interested in more information about RESUMate can visit their website at www.resumate.com or contact Charlie direct via email at charlie@resumate.com or voice at 800-530-9310 x208.

Eclipse by BroadLook Technologies

I am glad I had the opportunity to review another great product this month, Eclipse, by BroadLook Technologies. We have written about BroadLook in this column a number of times relating to their flagship product, BroadLook Engine and also their free data capture utility, Rosetta. Eclipse takes data capture to a new level by capture data directly from links and formatted tables, and spidering hyperlinks to capture data on the linked page without opening it. As useful as this product might be to a recruiter, marketer or researcher, it is a very simple program. The top half is an Internet browser and the bottom half is for your captured results.

One of the main features is “Get Links.” Many times when you are looking at a list of hyperlinks, the actual website URL may or may not be visible (except by looking at your status bar at the bottom of your browser). By highlighting your target links and clicking the Get Links button Eclipse produces all the URL’s in a table format for you. You have many options here to clean and edit your data including splitting columns, renaming column headings, state code usage, etc. Once cleaned up a bit this data can be exported to a spreadsheet or fed into another Internet research tool, including the BroadLook Engine.

Another main feature is “Get Table.” Tables are often difficult for data capture tools but Eclipse makes it look easy. Select your table, click Get Table and you are returned a column for each field in the table you captured. You have the same sophisticated data cleansing tools and export ability with this feature as well.

Many lists of hyperlinks are not linked to a homepage but to another page with related data. Eclipse can spider a list of URL’s and create “capsules” of information related to a specific link. Capsules are these bits of data captured from behind a link, not available directly from the page you are spidering. You may pickup contact names, addresses and phone numbers from these links. In the old days, you would have to click on each target link one by one, parse the data, go back to the main list, click on another one…over and over. This technology is a serious benefit and time saver for any researcher.

Can’t close out without at least mentioning the training, which for many recruiters is just as important as the product itself. BroadLook offers first training for Eclipse as well as its BroadLook engine. I attended the Eclipse training in preparation for this article and it is performed via a live web conference with a BroadLook trainer. Unlike many training scenarios, BroadLook offers all it’s training under an “open-drop-in” concept; training is done within a group and users can sign up for multiple training sessions. In addition, BroadLook has a series of pre-recorded web conference trainings where you can log in to the BroadLook support system and watch at your pace. I also watched the included Eclipse Demo, which was very informative. The training and support exceeds expectations and their innovative model is starting to catch on with other vendors.

Pricing: $1295 per copy but $795 for current users of the BroadLook engine.

I want to thank Donato Diorio, President and CEO, for his help with this article. For more information you can visit the BroadLook Technologies homepage at www.broadlook.com and view an Eclipse demo. Anyone with any questions or comments can also reach Donato at (262) 691-3900 or via email at ddiorio@broadlook.com.

Nurse-Recruiter.com

If you recruit nurses for a living you might want to check out this service they claim to be the most visited job board designed exclusively for nurses on the Internet. They also claim to be the number one search result on Google, AOL and Yahoo when a nurse types in “Nursing Job” as keywords.

I have not used this service myself but report based on their marketing email. They offer access to their resume database and online resume web pages, free broadcast of job openings to an e-mail list of nursing job seekers, and offer to post your jobs on the JobSites network of frequently visited nursing sites.

For more information you can contact them via voice at 866-721-9799 or visit their website at www.Nurse-Recruiter.com.

TIP

This month’s tip is related to email tracking options most of you have but don’t know about. If you are an Outlook user you can be advised whenever someone receives and then opens an email message you sent to them. You can also stop others from getting messages that you have opened their mail. This is often handy when you know when a hiring manager has received and read the resume email you sent them. This feature is buried…in Outlook 2000, click on Tools Options Preferences Email Options Tracking Options. Once on the Tracking Options page, click the checkboxes for “Request a read receipt for all messages I send,” “Request a delivery receipt for all messages I send” and “Never send a response.” In the future you will receive an email, not from your recipient but from your recipient’s email program notifying you that your message has been received and/or opened. Many other email programs have similar features. Look for a Tracking, or maybe a Receipts feature.

TFL archives

Internet Recruiting



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cBizOne by cBizSoft

Due to the continuing strong demand from The Fordyce Letter readers for information on recruiter databases, I have been trying to review an ATS each month. This month I thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to review a database I had heard of but had never seen: cBizOne by cBizSoft (www.cbizsoft.com). It is one of the most complete and comprehensive systems I have reviewed to date. That, combined with speed, ease of use, and a very familiar “Windows” design make for a solid system.

This product is a web-enabled client-server application that can be used either stand-alone or networked. Your database is also accessible from anywhere using the Internet. cBizOne can be hosted on your desktop or network or hosted by cBizSoft or a third-party hosting company. For virtual companies and remote users, regardless of hosting model, they utilize data replication to continuously update information back and forth from your desktop to the server. The beauty in this configuration is that you always have access to your data, regardless of whether you have an Internet connection. When you are connected, your data is synchronized with the server so it can be shared with others in your office, or, if you run a solo shop, you can have access from multiple PC’s. When you are not connected, the system if fully functional, and all your adds and changes are synched up with the server the next time you are connected.

There is no main screen, per se. You start the program and get a two-pane view with all your folders on the left and all the data in those folders on the right. They have folders for Companies, Contacts (hiring managers), Candidates, Requirements, a Calendar and Sent Mails (there is a built in email client that works hand in hand with your Outlook program). Once you select the folder you want to look at, all your data appears on the right in a datasheet view. One very handy feature is the (patent-pending) Live Search Bar, at the top of each data page. You simply type in a few letters in the text box above the field you want to search (Name, State, Skills, etc.) and you are able to locate almost any contact or candidate within seconds.

ding a new candidate is easy. You can add new records either singly or batch up many together and by using the GrabIT feature. It can create new records extracted directly from emails, folders or web pages. Once you add your new candidate record, all activity and correspondence with that person is recorded. The good part about that is that on each candidate record you have information on all your email correspondence, what requirements/companies they have been submitted to, all interview and placement activity, plus all the standard fields for contact information, job history, skills, education, etc.

The database is highly customizable. New records can be created using use a set of fields to capture data in a Win-Form, which can be completely customized by the user to include industry, company-specific or any other fields of your choosing. An example might be custom fields for certifications or licenses. Also, you can create a web form that can reside on your own website. Candidates can enter their profile/resume into your web page and the candidate will be automatically added to the database.

The Companies folder allows you to link all your clients within a company and the linking information lets you see all your Requirements and Submittals for that company. The Requirements form is very straightforward and similar in functionality to the Candidates form in that it also captures data via custom fields or can be entered via your website.

Once your Candidates, Companies, Contacts and Requirements are in the database it’s time to do some searching. This is accomplished in any one of several ways. I have already mentioned the Search Bar, a great feature to find data fast. You can also use the Advanced Find (a comprehensive search against the Candidate records, notes and resumes) and/or the Document Find (a text search against your hard drive or server) features. A nice touch is the highlighting of your keywords in the search results.

Once the search is complete, time to make some submissions. A few clicks and you’re there. On sending the Candidate to your Contact, the Candidate is automatically linked to the Requirement, Contact and Company. They offer a highly customizable email template, including your logo that really makes your submissions stand out from the competition. A copy of the sent email is logged to the software and your external email client. Tracking the candidate through the placement is made simpler when the components are linked and easily accessible.

A unique feature of cBizOne is its direct integration with Outlook. Through an Outlook toolbar AddIn called cBizBar, you can use GrabIt, parse resumes, directly add clients to cBizOne, link emails to any database entry, etc.

I could go on but I’ll stop here for now. Having said all of the above, they have the lowest monthly fee for this type of service that I have seen to date. Their standard, published fees are $30 per month per user. There are no fees for setup, support, upgrades, training, or data import. Unheard of up to this point. Also, there is no minimum contract. Service is billed month by month. For $10 more per month you can get a SQL Server based system (as opposed to the Access based system) if you have a larger office. Hosting and remote administration services are also available.

They offer a free 60 trial of their software that can be downloaded from www.cbizsoft.com. My thanks to Bob Nelson, cBizSoft, Inc. Director of Marketing, for his help with this review. Anyone with any questions or comments can reach Bob via voice at 972-713-3888 x 24 or via email at bob@cbizsoft.com. I would strongly encourage anyone that has any interest in a solid, versatile, comprehensive ATS should definitely put this software on your review list.

Haley Marketing Group Contest

Haley Marketing Group, who we have written about more than once in this column, is celebrating the launch of their upcoming brand new www.haleymarketing.com website by giving one lucky staffing company a free website makeover, worth up the $4500. The “I Hate My Website Contest” website will include a new look for you plus many features to keep your candidates and clients interested in coming back again and again. Included will be an interactive job board with advanced communications capabilities, plus, a complete library of staffing and HR content.

There is no cost to enter this contest. A drawing will be held on the day they launch their new website, which is soon sign up now. You can enter by filling out the form at www.haleymarketing.com/ihatemywebsite.htm.

ZillionResumes

ZillionResumes, calls themselves the world’s foremost resume aggregator. They use advanced robot technology to search the Internet continuously, gathering active and passive resumes from over 100,000 Internet locations. I have not used this service but here are a few tidbits from their email:

Over 2.6 million passive and active candidate resumes

Search for candidates from any location

New resumes added daily, thousands added every week

Passive candidates that you will not find on job boards

Easy to use, keyword searching and keyword highlighting

Option to display candidate’s emails only for simple email collection

They have an introductory special, 3 months for the price of 2 at $159.98 (less than $54 a month). An entire year of service is $599.99. You can also go month to month for $79.99. Anyone interested in a database of primarily passive candidates can visit their website at www.zillionresumes.com.

FYI – NewYorkJobs.com

From a recent email: “Recently we launched our new employment website www.NewYorkJobs.com servicing the whole Northeast. I would like to invite you to use our new service. You can advertise your job leads, search resumes, drive traffic to your agency and it’s completely FREE.” Anyone interested in this type of service can reach Kelly Fargo via email at kelly@newyorkjobs.com or visit their website at www.NewYorkJobs.com.

FYI – CareerWomen.com

Recently received an email from CareerWomen.com, a 100% woman-owned business. Seems to be a niche site catering to women and diversity candidates. From their email: “CareerWomen.com – Helping Women Achieve Success in their Careers & Lives.” I have not used this service but if you ever need female candidates you might check them out at www.careerwomen.com or you can call them at 503-221-7779 or reach them via email at sales@careerwomen.com.

TIP

Online Social Networking

Catchy phrase? I have been noticing a lot of emails over the last year or so from past contacts asking me to join one of several online networking groups. Although I have not taken anyone up on their invitation one who has, Shally Steckerl, has been kind enough to contribute to this month’s column, as he has done many times in the past, and give his thoughts on this concept and offers some benefits of two of the major players. Here they are:

Online Social Networking is not a new concept. Because the media has been giving it much attention lately, these online networks are beginning to grow in popularity and are becoming very useful. Before social networking software we would gather at meetings, conferences, symposiums and trade shows to share leads and make new connections. Online, people meet in discussion forums and discover each other by reading profiles. Online social networking software adds another set of tools to our network building tool bag by allowing us to find out who our friends already know.

Meeting in person, we can only make connections one by one. Some of the best business deals are forged with a casual meeting where someone you already knows introduces you to someone they think you should meet. Online, these connections can occur much faster, and there is the added value of being able to search through our friends’ connections to help us achieve specific networking objectives.

How does this relate to recruiting? Networking is something all good recruiters do. Like with face-to-face meetings, we find common areas of interest with potential candidates and interact with them to build relationships. This can result in new placements, or new business.

Why does it work? Talented people have two things in common: 1. They easily relate with people they already know and, 2. They love to talk about themselves.

Major Benefits

Online social networking software enables you to find quality people who may not be familiar with you, or with your organization, and creates an opportunity to connect with them and sell them on your opportunities. They may be unfamiliar with your company or business, or may not have even been looking for something.

Because you already know someone who knows them, you can feel more comfortable that they are a quality prospect or at least can do some checking around. Also, because of that mutual connection, you can more easily overcome cumbersome barriers and begin a relationship with a little more trust and warmth than with a total stranger. Like “six degrees of Kevin Bacon,” social networking sheds light on the contacts you never knew you had.

You can contact people in your network about other people in the system by rekindling old connections, maximizing value in your weak connections, and making new connections.

Find new leads for networking into companies by researching companies/industries/people, making fewer cold calls, preparing for the cold call, and leveraging contacts you already have.

Major Players

With most services, the initial sign up is free. We begin by filling out a form with personal data and then invite our friends. With some networks we can upload our current contacts, but with others we need to invite our contacts directly through the application’s interface. Our connections then invite their own contacts, and that’s how our network grows.

There are hundreds of online social networking sites. Most of the applications competing for your attention offer a combination of professional and personal networking. Some are better suited to find a date while others are more seriously oriented to business. After joining and reviewing the top twenty players, two of them stand out:

LinkedIn.com

Subscription service allows you to input and manage your own contacts.

Search for connections only with people through whom you are already connected. Approve each connection individually.

Very protective of privacy.

Profiles look very much like a resume. A large percentage of members are high-level executives.

Unsolicited endorsements tell you what people are really like.

Search for industry experts, potential employees, hiring managers, deal-makers, by location and other keywords.

Strongly aligned with DirectEmployers.com.

Growing quickly. New people sign up every day. If LinkedIn finds them in your contacts it will remind you to ask for a direct connection.

Spoke.com

Deeply integrated, extracts contact data from enterprise applications (e.g. Outlook, Notes, etc.) to establish and leverage connections.

Find people you already know by company, keyword, name or function. Search for senior executives, VPs and higher, or Directors and higher. Search by company to connect with executives you don’t yet know.

Get information about companies too. Integrated web search functionality.

Other users approve web search results added to a connection’s profile.

I want to thank Shally for taking the time to inform us all about the benefits of this type of service. Shally, proprietor of JobMachine.net, can be reached via email at shally@jobmachine.net if anyone has any questions or comments.

TFL archives

Big Biller



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Big Biller

For this month, I had the pleasure of reviewing the Big Biller applicant tracking system from Top Echelon. I was a member of this venerable organization for many years and my lack of participation at this time is in no way to be considered a lack of respect and admiration for this top flight recruiter network. I remember the days when all their resumes came in the mail, and then they introduced the MS/DOS database and sent us diskettes each week. We could even upload resumes and resume data sheets to the main system with a built in FTP program. Then came the first couple of Windows versions, which looked exactly like the DOS version, only more colorful. This was all leading up to their current offering, Big Biller.

You might ask why a review for a software product for a proprietary network. Answer … Big Biller is no longer just for the Top Echelon members; they are now offering the system on the open market. A first for them. This is strictly web-based. Nothing to install on your local system. Home or work … you can access your data at any time. I spent a couple of days on their system and here is what I came up with.

You log onto the main menu and see everything you need to begin your day right in front of you. From this screen you can Add, Find, Search, View and Email People, Companies and/or Jobs. Handy to have is the list of the last fifteen records you looked at.

I started with the People section of the database and tried my hand at adding a couple of new candidates. If you want to take advantage of the resume parsing feature you first browse for the resume on your hard drive, which pops a text copy of the resume into the new record, then, on clicking the parse feature, the new record is automatically populated with the contact information for that candidate as well. It is up to you to complete the rest of the record including, but not limited to, person type, employment, relocation, education, positions, compensation, skills … as much or little as you desire.

Please note I said “people” section and not “candidate” section. I like the way they have checkboxes on each record to denote the type of person you are entering. Candidate … Hiring Authority … Recruiter … just check the appropriate box. Many databases I have reviewed in the past require you to maintain separate databases for candidate contacts and hiring contacts. This has always been frustrating for me as on the occasion you have a hiring contact who happens to be your candidate as well (the audacity), you had to enter a new record for that contact. Two records for one person (one in the candidate section and one in the hiring authority section) in the same database? A big no-no in my book. Kind of defeats the whole purpose of having a relational database.

Another strong suit is the way they handle the search process. You can enter data until the cows come home but, unless you have a way to get it back out again … you are wasting your time. As an IT recruiter I am always hung up on how a database handles a candidate’s “skills.” This typically would be where I denote COBOL or UNIX or some other skill(s) the candidate has that I am going to search on at a later date. Enter text searching. A foolproof way to search for anything and everything. Big Biller allows you to text search your resume, comments, skills and any other bit of data you have entered. Don’t get me wrong; they still have fields that you can enter data into and search directly, but why take the extra time to enter all that when it is all in the resume already. I think this is a trend we’ll all see more and more. Less field searching and more text searching. It works fine for Google, Alta Vista and all the big Internet search engines and it works for recruiter databases as well.

Clicking on the Jobs section, I get a listing of all my open job orders. Adding a new order is easy. Enter the job title, company, contact, some type of job description and your done. Many fields for skills, industries, educational requirements, compensation, among others. If this is a new client where you do not have the company name in the database, it is easy to add on the fly. To add the job order contact, you click on that field and are presented with a list of contacts in that company. A new contact for that company is very easy to add on the fly as well. Searching your jobs is fairly straight forward as well. You can text search all your records or search specific comp, relocation or any other defined field.

Pulling everything together is easy as well. Getting search results is just the first step, you still need to get these people out to client sites, set up interviews and place them. On each person’s record is an activity button. Using the built-in email client, this is used to send a candidate’s resume to a client site, with a notation of the resume being sent automatically copied into the record. Using the same interface, you can track that submission through the rest of the placement process by logging interview and placement activity.

Enhanced communication is one of the keys to this software. You can communicate with whom you need to, when you need to, and keep a record of the entire correspondence. You can easily pull information directly from the database including both resumes and job orders, then send it to multiple recipients. You can also create groups, send emails to search results, and personalize the emails if you wish. Included is an excellent built-in planner where you can plan, track and view all activity available for you and other members of your firm.

They have an excellent and very competitive pricing plan which is $50 for first user and $10 additional for each additional user per month. This is one of the lowest monthly fees I have seen for this type of service. There is no setup fee and data conversion is a flat fee of $275.00 plus 2 cents per record for each database converted.

I wholeheartedly recommend to anyone seeking this type of service to check out the Big Biller software. My thanks to Mark Demaree, Vice President at Top Echelon Network, Inc., for his help in writing this review. Anyone with any questions or comments should contact Todd Bossler via telephone at (330) 455-1433 or email at tbossler@bigbiller.com. You can also visit the Big Biller website at www.bigbiller.com.

Chris Forman AIRS CEO

Congratulations to Christian Forman, new CEO at AIRS, whom, I am proud to say, I have known for many years. From their press release:

Wilder, VTMarch 1, 2004 — AIRS, a global leader in recruitment training, tools and information, today announced that Chief Operating Officer Christian Forman has been named CEO, effective March 1, 2004. Forman has been tapped to lead the company’s worldwide expansion of its new human capital solutions, which include training and technologies for talent acquisition, hiring, mentorship and employee transition.

Forman joined AIRS in 1999, and has served as COO since 2002. According to outgoing CEO Michael Foster, “Chris has been instrumental in helping AIRS navigate the worst downturn in staffing history, and is responsible in large part for strengthening and repositioning the company for rapid growth in the next cycle.” Outgoing CEO Foster is leaving AIRS to focus on his responsibilities as a founding director of the Human Capital Institute, a new professional organization and think-tank for global talent leadership.

As Chief Operating Officer, Forman led product development of AIRS Oxygen, Atmosphere and Horizon technologies, as well as introducing new training and services. Oxygen, launched in late 2003, is a turn-key sourcing platform that helps recruiters post jobs, search resume banks and the Web, make contact with candidates and build talent pools. Atmosphere is AIRS Web-based mentorship and collaborative learning platform, slated for introduction in Q2, 2004. Horizon is a comprehensive career portal that allows employers to provide displaced workers with high value, step-by-step job search training, tools and assistance via the Web.

“Chris is an energetic and visionary leader, and AIRS is very fortunate to have him at the helm as we bring exciting new products into an improving marketplace.” says Foster, “I’m confident that as CEO, Chris will successfully grow AIRS brand, scale the company into new markets and provide even more exciting and useful solutions for our clients.”

Again…congratulations to Chris.

Passive-Candidates.com

I came across this site at some point and wanted to make all aware. Anyone into passive candidate recruiting could probably make some use of this free service. www.Passive-Candidates.com is an Internet search engine that catalogs resume pages. They are a “page exchange” site, meaning that in order to get a batch of resumes, the site asks you to “feed” one of your resume pages to it. Just copy the url of any web-based resume you locate into the interface and once the software confirms you have put a resume in, you get back results (resumes) of other passive candidate in the database, per your search requests. For best results, have several resume pages ready to feed the site, as it sometimes disqualifies pages that you may enter (usually because the database already contains the page). Anyone interested in checking this out can visit their website at http://www.Passive-Candidates.com.

TelecomCareers.net

Anyone involved in the once dead but reviving telecom industry should check out this site catering to that specialty. Although I have not used this service personally they claim to be the #1 Telecom job site on the Internet. They claim to have a database of over 125,000, telecommunications-specific, job-seeking candidates. Sounds like a good start to any telecom search. Anyone with any interest in this type of service can visit their website at www.telecomcareers.com. The email I received also noted a free month if you sign up for two.

eCruiter Connection

Looks like an excellent portal to the myriad of goods and services provided to the recruiting community. They offer a centralized listing that includes links to job and career sites, contact managers, ATS systems, resume parsing systems, payroll funding, data mining, recruiter websites, training, third-party screeners, testing and background checking, HR benefits and other categories as well. Anyone in the market for these types of products should use this site as a starting point. Visit their listings at www.ecruiterconnection.com.

CareersIntellect.com

You wouldn’t know it by the website name but here is another site dedicated to the burgeoning and ever-growing health care recruiting marketplace. They cater to physicians, physician’s assistants, nurses, pharmacists and executives of all industries. You can post unlimited jobs and candidates (to split with other recruiting firms). The introductory price of $49.00 per month seems like a reasonable pricing plan. Anyone involved in this recruiting specialty should visit their website at www.careersintellect.com.

TIP

This month’s tip is graciously provided by David Carpe, the host of both PassingNotes.com and of a fairly new Yahoo Group catering to competitive intelligence. David is a true expert dedicated to human capital research and talks about “Google by Mail.”

“I’ve been bothered immensely by the challenge of storing specific searches of interest on various search engines, either forced to bookmark searches (tedious for organization), record queries (also tedious) and so spent a great deal of time looking over ‘web search by email.’

For those who don’t follow this, the basic idea behind hosts of such services (queries all run through volunteer servers), the idea was to deliver internet search to disparate geographies plagued by low quality internet access, zero browser access, and minimal access to email – so the summary goal: allow only email users to view search results via email without requiring a browser, or allow users to minimize required browser time (e.g. go to a specific site, versus searching and then viewing multiple results, etc.)

I’ve tested many of these – very many. If you’d like to research your own, check out any search engine and search for ‘web search by email’ (goes by multiple terms, from accmail to emailsearch etc.)

So far, the simplest and most effective one I’ve found is for Google Search by Email hosted by a company called ‘capeclear’ – to run a search, you simply put in your query in the subject line just as you would within a search bar (replete with all forms of syntax, etc) and send an email to:

google@capeclear.com

The server will respond within a couple of minutes with summary search results and links. In this way, you can quickly archive the email, import to a folder (for any research, contact or organization) and easily retrieve and modify the subject line (e.g., modify, edit and forward back to the server again and again and again)

Certainly an interesting workaround to archiving results, though not for everybody.”