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Online Alliance Broadens Recruiting
In a move to broaden their reach into the talent pool, a group of Fortune 500 companies has banded together online to share a database recruiting tool. Called AllianceQ, the Web site was launched in the past few months with founding members that include Best Buy, Wachovia, Baxter and Starbucks. Unlike more traditional online job boards, the recruiting database engine behind Northbrook, Ill.-based AllianceQ, called QuietAgent, preserves a candidate's anonymity and is not based on resumes, but on matching fields of information that are filled out by the candidate and recruiting corporation. Jason Kerr, co-chairman of AllianceQ and the CEO of Chicago-based QuietAgent, compares the database engine to an online dating service. "If you pick an apple, and I pick an apple, it's a match," says Kerr. "There's no rocket science to it." There's no charge, either. Kerr says AllianceQ is a free service for member companies, provided they invite candidates who are turned down for jobs to use the service so their talents are searchable by other members. Phil Haynes, director of AllianceQ and a former director of talent acquisition for Wachovia, says the service saves member companies both dollars and brand integrity. "You spend $2 million a year advertising to drive traffic to your career site. You're driving 700,000 people to apply for jobs, and you're only going to hire 24,000 of them," he says. Rather than dump hundreds of thousands of candidates or send them to a black hole of non-response, Haynes says AllianceQ can salvage talent that's been turned away, and buff a corporation's brand. "If a rejection is handled incorrectly, that can be a big turnoff for a brand," Haynes says. "For instance, Wachovia uncovered that a little over 50 percent of the people who applied for jobs were actually customers of the bank. Now, look at Starbucks or Best Buy, and it's not too hard to imagine that number being closer to 70 percent." Tim Kutzer, manager of staffing operations for Richfield, Minn.-based Best Buy, won't say how much the consumer electronics company spends on recruiting. He says, however, that the company's motivation in joining AllianceQ was strongly influenced by brand preservation. "I think it shows that we're willing to look at things a little differently, from how we treat our candidates and also how we find talent," he says. Rather than send rejected candidates a boilerplate e-mail, Kutzer says, AllianceQ members thank candidates and invite them to share their skills anonymously with other AllianceQ members. The company receives about three million applicants per year, and Kutzer says those are millions of reasons to preserve the brand image. "It lets us change the message back to the candidates," he says. "We saw this as a great opportunity to give our candidates something else." Haynes says candidates can volunteer to let other companies access their information or preserve anonymity. Neither QuietAgent nor AllianceQ are intended to be Monster-killers, according to Kerr. "It's a different approach," he says. "We're not a job board, so if you're looking for a job right now, [other online career sites are] probably the best place to be." Haynes says he expects the AllianceQ database of candidates to reach 30 million per year.
November 1, 2008 Copyright 2008© LRP Publications |
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