Thursday, 09 February 2012

Recruiters’ databases in need of upgrading

Thu, 29 Oct 2009

An expert in recruitment technology has warned the staffing industry that it risks falling behind clients in the drive to harness the power of IT to reach candidates.

Echoing a trend reported in Recruiter, 28 October, Raymond Pennie, commercial director of IT outsourcing specialists Kamanchi, as well as co-chair of the Association of Professional Staffing Companies’ Technology Forum, says that recruitment clients are investing in technology to build their own candidate databases.

Pennie says: “We are seeing moves by end-users of recruitment services, particularly large corporations, to develop their own technology to build candidate networks.

“We know of a number of multi-national companies which will refuse to pay a fee to staffing firms if the recruiter puts forward a candidate who the firm already has in their database.

“To make sure that they can continue to provide a service for their clients, recruiters need to invest in the latest technology, ensuring that they have access to the candidates who their clients will want to speak to but who will not be on the client database.”

However, some in the industry believe that recruiters having their own ‘exclusive’ database will be a thing of the past, thanks to the expansion of social media and professional networks.


In September, Mike Pilcher, director, corporate solutions Europe, at professional networking site LinkedIn, told delegates at the Association of Executive Search Consultants’ annual Summit in London:

“If you can potentially link with 414m [the projected number of worldwide professionals] through LinkedIn, why would you need your own database?”

For more on candidate ownership, see Recruiter, 28 October, ‘Does the one who pays the piper really call the tune?’

Readers' comments (5)

  • Damian Eyre | Thu, 29 Oct 2009 8:37 am

    A network is not a database per se. It is a carefully grown group of people you have met and built strong realtionships with. A database will help with a search but successful recruitment goes far beyond that. LinkedIn is a useful too for maintaining your network - agreed, but that is little use if you don't talk to it.

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  • Darren Revell | Thu, 29 Oct 2009 9:07 am

    At last another voice telling recruiters they need to do more with their technology. There are 201 million searches for jobs in Google each month and another 100 million in the other indexes for jobs, less than 20% of this traffic find a job board the rest gets lost. Plus 38 million searches by clients looking to find recruiters.

    We studied 4,000 websites in the past four years and less the 1% of the sites were capable of reaching anyone one of these searches made clients and candidates alike.

    In the US recruitment strategy is being driven by the in-house recruiter. We know one firm who signed up 100 of the world largest companies to optimise their career sites to bring them talent direct to stop paying recruitment fees, and so far their income is $6 million from the venture.

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  • Brad Wills | Thu, 29 Oct 2009 12:18 pm

    LinkedIn is all very well - but it's optional for people to log their contact details. Given that the recruitment market should be, and in the main is, driven by personal contact (telephone, face to face), the lack of contact details on LinkedIn means you can't necessarily get hold of the person you need to, when you want to.

    There is also the consideration of due dilligence, process, logging of placements, payroll, invoicing, all of which comes from the data we have within our own systems.

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  • Lis Wilson - HR Connexions | Thu, 29 Oct 2009 5:41 pm

    The recruitment industry is certainly changing as technology becomes very accessible and cost effective for hiring companies of ALL sizes.

    Not only is the cost per hire dramatically reduced, companies also improve their employer brand through direct media advertising & engaging directly with their talent pool, whether through marketing APIs or social media networks.

    Technology is automating the process so much so, that recruitment consultants are quickly being replaced by online recruitment robots. Ours even has a human nickname and can arrange interviews for clients all by itself!

    The movement is happening so fast, that recruiters will have to think hard and fast about what they can offer hiring companies to stay ahead of the game and justify their fees.

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  • Raymond Pennie | Fri, 6 Nov 2009 8:51 am

    With this being the time of year for doing 2010 budgets, what to invest in next year has never been harder.

    How can consultancies find ways to demonstrate to their clients the better use of technology when the same technology companies are selling to both clients and consultancies!


    The only way is understand better how to use it; don't just buy it and hope for the best. Make you investments work for you.

    Agreed Linkedin will never replace the database, but it levels the playing field for the search part of 'Search and Selection'.

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