For recruiters, reaching the right candidates first, increases the chances of closing job openings for clients. Which would mean that recruiters that reach the right candidates first have an upper hand.

The Jobhunt.in Subscription tool helps recruiters get the right candidates first. The subscription tool lets recruiters subscribe to resumes that match their search criteria. The resumes matching their criteria are emailed to them. It’s the same as running a search, the difference being that the results are emailed to the recruiter and they are sent almost real time. So when a candidate uploads a resume that matches the search criteria of a subscription created by a recruiter, he gets notified by jobhunt.in of the candidates resume.

Subscriptions in jobhunt.in can be created two ways, from recent searches or create a new subscription from scratch

From Recent Searches
1.    Select one of your recent searches, from the dashboard.

2.    Click on the “Add subscription” link

3.    Click on subscribe.

New Subscription from scratch
1.    Click on the “see all subscriptions”

2.    Click on the “Add subscription” link

3.   Fill in your new subscription details and click on subscribe.

Skills to have for your next “jobhunt”. Summary of the post at TechRepublic:

1. One of the “Big Three” (.NET, Java, PHP)
2. Rich Internet Applications (Flash, Silverlight, JavaFX)Web development (JavaScript, CSS, HTML)
3. Web services
4. Soft skills
5. One dyanamic and or functional programming language
6. Agile methodologies
7. Domain Knowledge
8. Development hygiene – Bug Tracking, SCM …
9. Mobile development

Read the post in detail here.

Recruiter’s get the resumes matching the Job openings by searching through our data base using the Search Tool. The Search results for a query are optimized to give the resumes which are most relevant to the query.

The search results would describe the candidates with details like

1. Title

2. Current Designation,

3. Current Company,

4. Years of Experience

5. Tags (Which should give a brief of the candidates skills)

6. Brief summary

7. Email address

The results also contains links to download and view the resume in the HTML or Microsoft Word Formats

The Jobhunt.in resume parsing engine extracts this information from the candidates resume to display it in the recruiter search results.

The results page also provides you with a feature to reach all the candidates or select candidates in the result and Email them with a subject and content of your preference.

Resume search results

This article is focused on the Indian IT industry but most of it is valid universally.

Recruitment was more of a seller’s market, but suddenly this has changed. Companies now have a much bigger pool of talent to choose from and the requirements are on the low. Hiring is at the minimal across the globe at the moment and every hire is scrutinized double the usual.

People do not want to make a bad hire. But how do you make sure you zeroed in on the right candidate for the job? People tend to think of an interview as a major decision point in recruitment. But given the statistical data, it seems we raise the chances for a better hire through an interview only by 2%. That is, if a person made it through an interview, there is only 52% chance that he is the right choice.

It is often seen that some of the steps involved in the hiring process like defining the Required Skill set, writing the Job Description, screening the Resume and choice of Interview Panel are not given much attention even though they are important in getting the right candidate like,

• Often I find that the HR is not very clear about the exact skill set he should be looking for. This widens out the search and in turn leads to a more tedious filtering.
• Similarly most of the JDs are so generic that it kills the entire purpose. A good JD should be able to tell about the skills we are looking for, the responsibilities involved and a picture of their role within the organization.
• The resume screening is often a confusing job as people are quite aware of the buzz words and make sure they have it in their resume. So looking at the skills will not do much of help. A better way could be to go through their previous accomplishments/projects.
• Another important step could be to make sure that the interview panel is competent enough to evaluate the candidate and are aware of the requirement and skills.

A little more attention to these and the hiring could be much more efficient.

The primary tool that a candidate looking for a job has, is a Resume. He would also need a means for getting that resume to companies that have job openings.

The Wikipedia definition for a resume is

A résumé is a document that contains a summary or listing of relevant job experience and education. The résumé or CV is typically the first item that a potential employer encounters regarding the job seeker and is typically used to screen applicants, often followed by an interview, when seeking employment.

The resume has detailed information about the candidate’s job experience and education. It also contains the candidates name and contact information (email, telephone numbers, mailing address). From a recruiters point of view this is the information required to match candidates to the job openings that the recruiter is trying to fill. So ideally a “job hunt” site should ask for a candidates resume.

For a recruiter to match a candidate with a job profile, there are a few additional details that would be helpful like
1. The minimum salary that a candidate is willing to work for.
2. Preferred location of work.
3. The kind of companies or the kind of job the candidate is looking for.

Jobhunt.in is a one step job search tool, where the candidate need only upload his resume to start looking for a job (you don’t have to fill 30 text boxes ).

Wishing all our users a Happy New Year. Party hard, drive carefully.

– Team@Jobhunt.in

There are several articles on the Internet for effective head hunting, covering many basic tips. This article discusses subtle points which are often overlooked in IT recruiting, yet play an important role in improving your chances of finding the right candidate.

The first email should be carefully crafted

An email can be seen as two parts. The subject line and the contents. The subject gets the reader to open the email, while the content plays a part in the decision to pursue it further.

When posting a resume gets 10-20 emails a day, getting a candidate to read the email is not very easy. The subject becomes important; be very specific. A good subject could be – “Oracle Admin in XYZ company (Bangalore)“, or “Project Manager, for a UK Assignment“. BAD subject lines are plenty. “TOP PAY MASTER – CALL FOR YOU“. “This is a very urgent opening for Java Professionals“. Avoid weasel words like “excellent”, and those such as “urgent”, “critical” in the subject, and content.

The contents are equally important, in generating interest. Simple emails, explaining the job position and requirements are always better. It is important for the mail content to be free of typos and be grammatically correct. In our analysis, more than 50% of a sample of 600 emails had grammatical or spelling mistakes.

Another common mistake is to litter the email with different fonts, colors and font-sizes. Choose simplicity, and minimal variation in fonts and colors. You could use bold fonts to emphasize key points, and everything else could be just normal text. Simplicity, like Google.

If you are mailing a candidate individually (instead of mass mailing), include a line on why you think the profile is a good fit.

While telephoning the candidate

Candidates with good language skills can make interviewers overlook technical deficiencies. There is nothing wrong with this, since a large part of the work in an IT Services company involves communication with customers.

If you are asking the candidate for references, immediately follow up with an email mentioning the job profile, your contact details, and a single line of appreciation. People are too busy to remember phone numbers and pass it on. To save time, use a standard template for such emails.

Are the required skills really REQUIRED?

Sometimes when Teams or the Technical Division hands out requirements, they mention all technologies and libraries used in a certain project for which they are seeking candidates. Ideally, one should only mention the basic qualifications, like exposure to a fundamental and core set of technologies (eg: J2EE, Struts and Oracle, or Asp.Net and Sql Server).

There is no point in mentioning the items in bold as a required skill:
.NET, HAF, EIRG (Rapidigm), CSLA (a real example)

There are hundreds of such libraries in the wild, and you need just a day of reading up to get started with them. The idea here is that a candidate who can learn them quickly is a lot better than an idiot who has used them at some point. When you see absurd requirements like this, discuss it with the person who gave those requirements and ask them if they can be learned.

In just about every situation, you are looking for an intelligent guy who knows some basics.

Choose a fair Interview Panel

Avoid egotistic interviewers from the panel. It is important to gauge the technical proficiency, as well as his/her capability to accept different views and suggestions. An adamant, narrow minded panel will not only cause the candidate to walk away; it will also bring the organization to disrepute.

In one of our surveys with job seekers, they rated top irritants with Interviewers (technical):

• Focusing on minor technical details, and not the ability to learn
• Assuming there is only one way to do it
• Programmer Ego!

Observe, don’t just See

If you were in this profession for a while, you would have short-listed thousands of profiles. You may also have a statistic on the number of candidates you placed. But there are other little pieces of information you can identify:

• Do you know that more people post their resumes on Wednesdays, followed by Thursdays? – A logical explanation for this could be that people tend to become frustrated by the mid of the week, due to work pressure and friction. So, Wednesdays and Thursdays are when you can expect more candidates. (In our samples, we found that resume updates on weekends were 70% lower than on Wednesdays).

• Among experienced candidates, many of them update their resumes on weekdays. But better candidates do so from home, late in the night on weekdays or on weekends.

This helps in deciding when to search the databases for new resumes. And perhaps, analyzing the behavior of the system can improve proficiency in a job. You may have noticed many such things, please share them with the readers as comments.

This is the first installment of a three part series. Stay tuned for more.

Meanwhile, if you are a recruiter you may also want to take a look at some resumes for recruiters.

Many of the users on a job site are first time users, and most of them don’t have a resume. Often, what they want is a reference to get started. We decided to help out, and we are announcing the beta of our Resume Gallery.

With a fast and easy-to-use interface, users can download Microsoft Word format resumes and edit it to their liking. The examples in the gallery contain suggested content, excellent formatting and beautiful typography. Currently, there are more than 250 resumes in the IT category. In a week, that will exceed 1000, and we are hoping that it will be a very useful tool for job seekers in the IT industry.

edit: We will soon expand the gallery to include non-IT resumes too, as some of our users have requested.

So, take a look at the Resume Gallery BETA and you can start using these resumes right away!

These are the first days of marketing jobhunt.in. As we meet people, of the questions they have is how we monetize this site. They do not see ads, and everything seems to be free for everybody. We just tell them that we are working on an interesting model, and it is too early to share the details.

The fact is that we haven’t figured that out, yet. And this is still according to the plan.

In one of his essays titled “Be Good“, Paul Graham says “Another thing we tell founders is not to worry too much about the business model, at least at first. Not because making money is unimportant, but because it’s so much easier than building something great.”

Our reasoning is along similar lines. Let’s be useful first, and then as we grow we will find interesting opportunities to monetize the services. Right now we may not know what the best choices are. Another argument was that monetization in this early phase is more of a distraction when the basic features themselves are being laid out, and some are being tweaked as we get feedback from users.

It is always easy to think of advertising as the revenue model. And for us, it is indeed a promising revenue stream. But we are sure that it cannot be the only one. Dharmesh Shah, in his intersting talk at Business of Software 2008 votes against an advertisement based revenue model for startups. He argues that one reason why startups think they can monetize eyeballs is because it is easy. Easy to conceive, that is. It may be due to laziness, so that they don’t have to figure out a “real” revenue model. We agree with him.

Possible revenue streams

Right from the beginning, we had made the promise that basic features will remain free for jobseekers AND recruiters. Uploading resumes will remain free for all job seekers. Basic search services on the entire resume database will be free, for all recruiters. Enhancements to these two fundamental services will also remain free.

We see some interesting possibilities though. Paid recruiters could see additional features, like posting jobs, candidate mass-mailing services (no spam), sharing resumes, collaboration tools and online storage space.

And of course, there is advertising. Advertisements on job sites can be very effective, since we know that the users are looking for a job, and from the resume contents we know their experience level and skillset. We can already do some advanced extraction out of full-text resumes, so a part of that puzzle is mostly solved. The real monetization of this possibility will happen later.

But for now, it is all about making a product users will love.