The Advantage Consulting business development process and training is proving very successful in teaching companies to identify good business opportunities, position themselves to win the business and get contracts awarded to them. The most difficult business process now becomes finding the "right" people or at least "enough" people to actually perform the work on the awarded contracts. In today's competitive labor markets, effective, multi-source recruiting is absolutely required in many industries, particularly the more technical ones.

Several good tools covering a broad range of recruiting features are available in this category. The best one will depend on your specific needs.

Key benefits of using these tools include:

• Meet ambitious recruitment goals Ensure critical positions are filled quickly with strong matches between applicant and open positions. Spending more time matching qualified people with open positions lets you search your database of current employees. You may find more opportunities to promote from within, boosting employee morale and avoiding search firm fees.

• Build more sound hiring policies and ensure objectivity.

• Keep your company hiring costs at a minimum.

• Ensure hiring procedures stay in step with ever-changing government legislation and produce any documentation you need to prove compliance.

• Allows you to examine affirmative action programs.

• Manage the growing administrative tasks associated with screening and hiring applicants.

• Accelerate the recruiting cycle by facilitating the search process and minimizing the time required to screen and respond to résumés.

• Maintain the valuable database of applicants your company attracts, allowing you to access their résumés in the future as additional requisitions are created.

• Reducing double entry and entry errors by integrating applicant data with your HR Information System (HRIS) when you complete a hire.

• Save time on personalized mass mailings.

Key features to look for include:

• Handle résumés, applications, offers to qualified applicants and responses to acceptances.

• Generate automatic reply correspondence.

• Search résumés you receive by mail, fax, email or Internet based on key words you define that describe skills, education,experience, previous employment, and more.

• Conduct weighted qualifications searches ranking qualified applicants in order of preference for each open position.

• Create summary profiles of qualified candidates and forward them via email to the appropriate managers.

• Track applicants through the interview process.

• Copy applicant information directly to your new-hire employee records.

• Manage job openings, special skills required and recruiting cost-effectiveness analysis

• Satisfy EEO reporting requirements.

• Integrate recruiting with the HRIS when required by company growth.

• Personalize form letters by merging information from database files.

• Print mailing labels automatically for one or many applicants and in a variety of formats.

• Modify existing form letters or create and save new ones.

• Control access to sensitive information.

For further information, contact John Bender at 703-642-5153.

Advantage Consulting helps clients make the right tool decision.