So here’s the deal. For the past couple of months, our customers have been asking for an efficient way to acknowledge candidates that don’t make the cut. At first blush, this seemed easy enough. But, as our product team began researching and designing the feature, all sorts of complexities became evident.
Some interesting questions were raised. Questions like:
What if a candidate has applied to or is assigned to more than one job? And. What if she is active on multiple other jobs?
Who should send thank you letters? Should hiring managers be able to? Only HR?
Thank you letters should be stage specific. How can we make them more intelligent?
Should thank you letters come from HR or an individual’s email account?
What if you’ve already sent a thank you letter to someone in the past? Should you send another?
If hiring managers are not permitted to send thank you letters but your company still wants to send them, how should you store them to be sent later?
What if you source passive candidates? Will Newton help you determine whether you’ve spoken with someone before sending a thank you letter?
Yeah, some stuff to think about huh? So, what we thought would take a couple of weeks to design, has taken nearly three solid months and a lot of brain cells. But, the good news is Newton’s Thank You Letter feature is super thoughtful and ultimately will improve life for both employers and applicants. That’s the goal!
Right now, we’re just making sure everything works great. Look for Newton Thank You Letters in two weeks.
We are proud to have been selected to present at the Silicon Valley New Tech MeetUp on Tuesday, November 3rd. Joel Passen, our VP of Marketing, will lead entrepreneurs, investors, bloggers, and tech enthusiasts on a 5 minute live tour of Newton, our popular applicant tracking software. Our team will also be fielding questions following the presentation.
The Silicon Valley New Tech Meetup is a series of monthly events for techies, recruiters, investors, journalists and anyone else who just wants to see the hottest new technology in the Valley up close and personal. At 4,200 Members strong and growing, the Silicon Valley NewTech Meetup, is one of the largest Meetup groups in the country.
Come join Newton Software and others for an hour of exciting tech demos. Afterwords enjoy a full hour of networking including free pizza donated by gracious hosts DLA Piper.
Details:
When: Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009
Where: Palo Alto, DLA Piper 2000 University Ave, Palo Alto, CA
How to attend: It’s FREE!! Join the Silicon Valley New Tech Group. Follow this link, http://bit.ly/D5Jr8
This weekend we released an enhanced version of Newton Analytics, our performance management dashboard. Not only have we made the dashboard more intuitive and easier to read, we also improved some of the algorithms making Newton more powerful than ever. Here are the improvements:
New Newton Recruiting Analytics Dashboard
New Outflow Graphing:
The new “Outflows” graph shows you candidates that were inactivated, and candidates your company pursued including percentages for easy, at-a-glance reference.
Improved Candidate Source Tracking:
Newton now surfaces stage-to-stage applicant source information instantly. See where you are getting your applicants from in real-time. Take a deeper dive to see which sources give you the best candidates too.
Improved Time to Pursue Information:
Drill into your process, use the “Average Days to Pursue a Candidate Bar” to identify slow moving jobs, or “curve-busters” that skew your data. “Time to Pursue” is a great tool to identify stages in the recruiting process that may need your attention.
New Candidate Distribution Graph:
Easily identify which jobs are receiving the most or least activity. Newton now ranks each job by candidate flow—at every stage.
Today we released a new feature that allows you to ask applicants to submit additional documents during the job application process. Now you can further customize your application process by hiding, requiring or giving applicants the option to upload additional documents when they apply to jobs.
To customize your application process, go to the “Administration” tab and then select “Careers Page”. See all documents associated with each applicant including their original resume, cover letter, references, etc.
Now, when you are looking at an applicant in Newton, you will notice that on the bar above the applicant’s profile, there is a list of the documents associated with that applicant. For example, Bobby Filet has his original resume, a cover letter, and another document attached to his record. Upload any document to store with an applicant’s record. It’s easy!
Joel Passen, Newton Software’s VP of Marketing addressing the members of the Silicon Valley NCHRA
Last week we joined the Silicon Valley chapter of the NCHRA at Hakone Gardens in Saratoga, CA. The evening event billed as the Summer Social brought together members of the regional HR community including some interesting guest speakers and local vendors.
We want to quickly share some of our takeaways from the event.
Project Hired is a great organization and it’s time to get involved
For those of you not familiar with Project Hired, it’s time to learn more about them. Project Hired’s mission is to assist individuals with disabilities to gain and sustain employment, in partnership with businesses and the community. During the event a Project Hired alumni explained how the program not only helped him find the confidence to look for a new job after a debilitating accident but, also how Project Hired’s placement service helped him find a great job. For more information about volunteering opportunities visit Project Hired at: http://www.projecthired.org/volunteer_how.html
Recruitment outsourcing is alive and growing
Recruitment outsourcing seems to be gaining momentum. At the NCHRA event last week, I met representatives from 3 recruitment outsourcing companies. In years past, I knew of only 1 or 2 companies in the Bay Area providing RPO services. While the space still seems pretty fragmented (every RPO has a different focus), more and more of these firms are emerging to offer creative recruiting services to customers of all sizes. This is definitely a segment to watch as recruiting once again becomes a front-burner issue.
HR professionals are hungry for metrics
Throughout the evening, we presented a live demo of our latest release of Newton’s real-time performance management / analytics platform. It was amazing how many folks we had come up and ask questions about the product. Based on the response, it is evident that HR people are hungry for metrics that can help them make decisions and improve the service they offer their internal customers. We appreciated all the attention, feedback, and suggestions for future metrics to capture.
Pulling from the emerging movement of evidence-based management, Newton helps people answer important questions that arise in recruiting programs with real-time data. Simply put, Newton helps people solve problems and make decision based on the most up-to-the-second information available.
Next week we are releasing the newest version of Newton Analytics. Expect a formal announcement on September 23rd. In the meantime, here is a sneak preview.
Join the members of the Santa Clara Regional (Silicon Valley) Chapter of the NCHRA and Newton Software for an evening of great food, networking and prizes. Get reacquainted with old friends and network with other HR Professionals at the beautiful and renowned Hakone Estate and Gardens. We are expecting nearly 100 HR professionals from all over Silicon Valley. Space is limited. Make your reservations now.
Open to members and non-members:
Where and When
Thursday, September 17th 5:30 – 9:00pm
Hakone Estate and Gardens
21000 Big Basin Way
Saratoga, CA 95070 http://www.hakone.com/
Silent Auction
A portion of the evening’s proceeds will be donated to Project Hired, a non-profit dedicated to assisting individuals with disabilities to gain and sustain employment.
Prizes
Come to the event and enter a drawing to win a free annual subscription to Newton’s web-based applicant tracking software. The prize includes free activation, free training and free support – everything’s included, even free job advertising.
We want to thank the people that gave us feedback this week after SF New Tech. And, we want to give a special thanks to Loren Cheng who works on the PayPal Platform Product Management team and writes for X.com. On his blog “Geek out With Us” he wrote a review of our recent Newton demo.
Here’s an excerpt.
“Their software looked like a fairly run-of-the-mill (but cleanly designed) process control package — calendars, candidates, blah blah –until they got to the metrics: buttery smooth graphic representations of data sliceable in lots of different ways to figure out where your candidates stalled or fell out. The power of Flex. Who knew recruiting software could be sexy?”
So, thanks Loren and cheers to you! We knew recruiting software could be sexy.
We had a great time at SF New Tech this week though our presentation started off a little bumpy. Someone disconnected our internet connection before we got on stage. In the video, you can see Steve lean over and mouth, “we don’t have a connection”. You may be able to hear people yell for me to tell jokes. I didn’t. Truth is, the delay loosened me up a bit. And a man I consider to be wise, once told me, “don’t make comments or jokes when you don’t know who in the audience you are going to offend.” I survived. Watch the video and see for yourself. Add a comment to tell us what you think.
If you are interested in technology, SF New Tech is a good event supported by an enthusiastic community. Cheers Myles!
We just made it faster and easier to analyze your recruiting program using Newton. Now you’ll see a tab on your home page called “Analytics” replacing the “Overview” tab. Click the Analytics tab to open a an interactive dashboard that will help you slice and dice you recruiting program. You can analyze your recruiting data based on a selected period of time or by job, or both.
This release, v3.6, is the first of several planned releases to tackle analytics. With a focus on measuring stage-to-stage metrics, we wanted to help our customers answer fundamental questions.
Where do I have bottlenecks?
Where can I get involved to make an immediate impact?
Is everyone in the process doing their part?
Am I spending money on the right resources?
Most importantly, we want to give our customers the power to know when something is going wrong before anyone else notices -to be proactive. After all, as John, our product manager, says, “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”
