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?’