Powerful Electronic Resume Submittals

By Terri Roeslmeier

January 26, 2015

Emailing resumes to clients has been common practice for a number of years. Can you even remember a time when staffing companies submitted resumes via any other means?

Resume submission via email is a major component of the placement process. When you email a resume you are hoping to get immediate feedback on the candidate so that the placement process can advance to the next step. Usually, this will take place with a response email from the customer or a conversation.  Hopefully, the result is positive but if not, it is important to submit other candidates at the earliest possible time. Wouldn’t it be valuable to facilitate client response?

It’s fair to state that customers find communicating via electronic means very convenient. It is also true that email communication is faster than phone contact because a response can be generated before or after work hours. Even during work hours, people can encounter some serious phone tag which delays communication. Rapid communication is one reason why client portals are increasing in popularity.

What is a client portal?  A client portal is a secure website that allows a user to log in and view information particular to their firm.  For over a decade, client portals have been widely used in the staffing industry for time approval and reporting.  A new option, resume submission, is being adapted by firms that wish to view resumes via a secure portal.

The benefits of resume submission via portal are many. First, resumes being submitted can trigger an email to a hiring manager to notify them that a resume is available to be viewed on their portal.  The resumes can be organized by categories such as: viewed, not viewed, liked, rejected, etc. This makes it very easy for the customer to keep resumes from the staffing firm organized in a very simple way.  It is much more convenient than having to save resumes from an email and then to a hard drive.  Even better, it is very clear which resumes were received from the staffing firm that provides the portal.

How does it work?  The client logs into the portal and can view resumes that were submitted for a particular job order.  Alternatively, there is usually a section that allows the staffing firm to submit random resumes when they come across candidates they think the client may like.  This form of resume submittal can generate an order.  Under either scenario, the client can rank and comment on the resume that was submitted. The staffing firm can receive an immediate email with the assessment results real-time.  Also, the staffing software can receive this input real-time so that the staffing company’s software will have immediate resume ranking results and notes logged.

Staffing companies adapting this type of technology are ahead of the curve.  Any convenience that can be provided to a client opens the door to another placement. Portals take electronic resume submission to the next level.

Photo Credit: 1st Formations

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Terri Roeslmeier is President of Automated Business Designs, Inc., software developer of Ultra-Staff staffing software for the staffing and direct hire industry. Ultra-Staff is a full-featuredbusiness solution with components for front office, back office, mobile and web portal. For more information on Ultra-Staff go to www.abd.net.