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Case Study: ISYS Recruited to Manage Resume Glut

BSI People Group recently upgraded to ISYS Search Software's ISYS:web 8, the latest offering from the global supplier of enterprise search solutions for business and government.

In doing so, BSI experienced first-hand the added value of ISYS -- not only is the software feature-rich and effective, but its sales and support staff get a leg up on understanding each customer's business needs.

About BSI People Group

BSI People Group is a recruitment firm and HR consultancy that specializes in staff recruitment, training and retention, and building the overall strength of an organization's employment offering. The company has four different services: BSI People focuses on executive search and selection; BSI Consulting provides corporate consulting and training services; BSI Learned Friends focuses on recruitment for the legal marketplace; and BSI's Employment Value Proposition Diagnostic (EVPd) paints a detailed picture of factors affecting staff retention. Together, these four arms deliver a comprehensive range of human resource and staffing services.

As a part of its recruitment business, BSI People tracks about 4,000 resumes per month. Over the years, the company has retained more than 231,000 resumes and cover letters.

The Challenge

BSI People found it challenging to keep up with the constant flow of incoming resumes, CVs, and other candidate information. The company's customer relationship management (CRM) system needed assistance to keep track of this information effectively, and it did not want consultants to ever sift manually through these documents. It was essential for this growing organization to have an effective "filing system" that ensured a candidate wasn't missed during a job search process. In 2000, the company began to look for technology that could help it search, sort, sift, and organize its candidate data.

Selecting the Right Tool

To begin its search for a solution that would effectively manage its vast repositories of internal documents, BSI People started evaluating recruitment-specific CRM systems. Unfortunately, the evaluation team discovered that the majority of recruitment CRM vendors had limited search capabilities as the data retrieved was only as good as the data entered (and consultants were adverse to administration). Plus, CRM systems most were too expensive.

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"We found that even though many of the recruitment CRMs have a 'resume database search technology,' they still require a person or persons to manage the database," said Dugald McCulloch, group operations and talent acquisition manager, BSI People. "By our calculations, we would have needed to hire a few full-time employees to manage our database, input the right information and ensure accurate results. To us, this was unacceptable, especially with the high cost of these CRM systems."

BSI People then turned to enterprise search vendors. An employee had used ISYS Search Software's search technology previously, so the evaluation team gave ISYS:web a test drive.

"We didn't need to look at any other search vendors," said McCulloch. "ISYS has it all -- it's flexible, affordable, feature-rich and very conducive to customization. We looked at a lot of recruitment software, but none of it had the capability of ISYS."

Selecting the Right Tool, Again

BSI People originally implemented the ISYS:web 5 back in 2000. In the fall of 2006, ISYS:web 8 was launched, and BSI People decided to upgrade to take advantage of the software's new features and capabilities.

In addition, the company's growing database had begun to encounter a large number of duplicate files. For example, candidates often apply for several different jobs with the same resume, creating multiple copies of that file in the system. Leveraging ISYS:web 8's flexibility, the company tackled this problem by way of internal development work and some assistance from a systems integration (SI) partner.

ISYS' sales and support staff collaborated with this SI partner and the tech team at BSI to create a solution that eliminated the duplication issue. The problem was solved by re-working the results page and enabling an option to export the results list as a CSV (comma separated values) file. When the CSV is created, ISYS pulls only the most recent details (email address, phone number, etc.). BSI People took this capability even further to enable email-harvesting capabilities with ISYS.

"The ability to implement email harvesting is the most powerful thing about the ISYS:web integration," said McCulloch. "This way, we can contact our candidates and get them to send us updated CVs, as well as send them position descriptions specific to their skills and experience, before they are advertised. Our clients appreciate that. We can get in touch with our pool of candidates and interact on a more consistent basis now."

Because the SI had never worked with the back end of ISYS before its tech team worked very closely with ISYS' technical support staff. BSI People appreciated the efforts made by ISYS to make the integration possible.

"The technical team at ISYS is the best team I've ever worked with," said McCulloch. "They are really remarkable. No other vendor would take the extra time to ensure our integration process was as smooth as this process was. The ISYS team really knows their technology back to front and understands how it fits into the larger IT infrastructure. I truly believe there is nothing that they can't do. Even today, 6 months later, the technical support team at ISYS still contacts me to make sure the technology is working at optimum levels."

Results

Implementing ISYS in 2000 quickly added value to BSI's bottom line. Employees were immediately more effective at their jobs.

"If we were looking for a candidate with a specific skill, like a J2EE developer, we could type 'J2EE, developer, Sydney' and we'd immediately have all J2EE developers located in Sydney," said McCulloch. "There was no need to second-guess the accuracy of the results list. It was all right there."

ISYS continues to add value today. Although initially sceptical about the value of upgrading, BSI saw how much extra benefit ISYS:web 8 brought them.

"When deciding to upgrade, we didn't know if it would be worth the time and effort to re-implement ISYS," said McCulloch. "But the ease and speed of search came back to us almost immediately. Within weeks, version 8 of ISYS had already paid for itself in terms of the time, money, and resources we invested in the upgrade."

BSI People's marketing efforts were made almost doubly effective when implementing ISYS:web 8. Prior to ISYS, BSI had a database filled with dormant candidates -- they didn't know how to extract relevant data or turn the information into a workable source. The company can now search for specific groups of candidates, say legal assistants, and target them for new services based on their individual skills and interests.

"We used to spend 20 percent of our turnover on candidate attraction activities," said McCulloch. "Now, we have a powerful tool to use before we embark on costly advertising campaigns."

Also, because of ISYS' stellar reputation in the recruitment industry, BSI People is able to recruit its own staff much easier. "We name ISYS as one of our strengths to get people to work for us," said McCulloch. "And, it works!"

BSI People envisions many ways in which ISYS can help develop its business in the future. "Because the product works so well, we're actually starting a new division called Career Care," said McCulloch. "With this service, we'll be able to contact candidates and see how placements are going. It's another way to maintain relationships with our candidates."

Overall, ISYS has been one of the best technological investments BSI People has made because of the value ISYS has provided to BSI's operations. "ISYS actually understood our business needs, rather than just implementing the software and leaving us alone," said McCulloch. "I could easily call any member of the ISYS team now, or in the future, and they would remember exactly what our business needs are and were. ISYS, the team and the software, is most impressive - I'd recommend the company to anyone."

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