Tuesday, February 6, 2007, 10:54 PM
Last month many of you took part in our first Client Satisfaction Survey. And when we say a lot,we mean a lot: a stunning 46% of people responded. These surveys often get response rates in the 4-8% range and most of you took the time to fill out the whole long thing.
We will be talking more about the results over the coming months, but first, a few of the things which stuck out:
- 74% of you use Resume Direct at least once a day.
- 59% had never used an ATS before, while 22% considered themselves "ATS veterans"
- 84% consider our unique apply-by-email a "Must-Have Feature." Wow!
- 95% would recommend Resume Direct
What You Told Us
Above all you told us you want more documentation. We'll write it if you promise to read it! Second, you want more speed and power! No surprise there, and we are gearing up to deliver some big performance upgrades. People now expect web applications to be as responsive as desktop programs and we aim to satisfy.
In terms of major new features, custom fields and enhanced application forms functionality were high scorers. Custom fields are coming out very soon, and we're working hard on some new enhancements for application forms. A sleeper surprise was options for additional email auto-responders, which are now on our radar screen.
Task and process management is something we've been drilling into since the start, and we've always approached this a little differently than everyone else. This was also a very popular area which we were already working on before the survey went out, and we were happily surprised to see something so abstract be recognized so widely.
Last, we were a little surprised to see integrated background checks and assessment tests score at 16 out of 18 possible new features. This remains a messy process and we expected it to be more popular, but that's what keeps elections interesting.
Still, even the lowest scoring ideas had multiple clients voting for them as critical/must-have features. This illustrated very well why most ATS vendors have becomes jacks-of-all-trades and masters of none. There is an audience for every feature you can imagine and it is not easy to resist the temptation to implement check-the-box features which only work in scripted demos.
We'll be writing more about our plans for 2007 and beyond but we wanted to once again thank everyone for taking the time to respond in such great detail. The feedback was eagerly anticipated and has already played a key part in many key decisions here.
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Tuesday, February 6, 2007, 10:21 PM
A note from Colin Kingsbury
I wanted to take a brief moment to introduce everyone to Justin Gallucci, who recently joined our Account Management team. In the coming weeks many of you will begin to get to know Justin as one of the new faces of HRMDirect's client service team.
Justin arrives as he's finishing up his degree in MIS having paid his way through school running his own IT consulting firm. This experience has given Justin an unusually advanced sense of the importance of providing great client service. In his interview he told me that while clients might initially buy you for your product, competitors would always copy it, but that customer service was something you could always choose to do better than everyone else.
No one could have possibly summarized our feelings better and we're greatly looking forward to seeing Justin grow with us. Our client list continues to grow rapidly and with Justin on board we are looking forward to continuing our tradition of dedicated, expert-level support for all clients.
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Tuesday, February 6, 2007, 08:51 PM
We are very excited to announce the impending release of version 2.1 of Resume Direct, scheduled to begin this coming weekend, Feburary 10th-11th.
Custom Fields
This eagerly-awaited feature was originally scheduled for a late Q1/early Q2 release but some key additions to our technology team helped us complete this ahead of schedule. As a result we decided to hold back the 2.1 release a little longer in order to get custom fields out ASAP.
Custom fields will be supported at the candidate and requisition level and can be added by clients using the setup tools. Those of you who have used screening questions will find the process to be very similar, and everyone is of course welcome to contact the support team for help setting up and using this great new feature.
Attachment Handling
The email processing pipeline has been upgraded to support extraction and capture of all email attachments in addition to resumes and cover letters. The system will still identify the resumes and cover letters for special treatment, while all other attachments will also be captured and linked as attachments on the candidate tearsheet. Please note that the 8MB/file limit for uploads still applies.
All-New Requisition UI
The requisition entry/viewing/editing screens have been completely redesigned to radically enhance the ease of use and reduce training requirements. While no one has been outwardly complaining about these, we realized that a tremendous amount of training and support time was being spent on these screens. The underlying functionality is identical, but the look and feel is all-new and beta testers have raved about it so we're very excited to get this one out the door.
We believe the new design will make the whole req management process far more transparent and easy, not to mention a whole lot easier on the eyes. Please let us know what you think.
Preview the 2.1 Release Now!
Clients can preview the 2.1 system on our staging site by logging in with your current username and password via the link below.
Please note that this is a testing site only and any work you do here will not be saved. Note also that this is running on a testing database so it will not be 100% in synch with your current live data.
Login: http://resume2.hrmdirect.com/resumedirect/login.aspx
If your current username and password do not work, please contact support@hrmdirect.com and we will set an account up for you. We invite everyone to log in and familiarize themselves with the new layout and also help us swat any remaining bugs prior to the production release.
Release Schedule
This release requires several major database updates which will require significant downtime for the recruiting application. Career websites and inbound applications will be up and running without interruption, but you should plan on limited access to the ATS this coming weekend (2/10-2/11).
We will post a more detailed schedule as we finalize the release plans, but we appreciate your understanding as we stay flexible to get this release out as soon as possible. We will do our best to keep the downtime to the off-hours so as to limit the inconvenience.
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