Doing the right thing (sending Thank You Letters to every candidate that has ever applied to or interviewed for one of your jobs) feels good. While we didn’t invent the thank you letter, we did make them easy to send and both employers and applicants are speaking up.
“Just wanted to let you guys know that I’ve sent out two thank you letters to “non responsive” candidates. Both of them got back to me the same day.” – Sr. Recruiter, SolutionStream
“I really appreciate your feedback!Almost all the time, I hardly get any reply back from the employers/recruiters I apply to for jobs.You’re one of the very few exceptions.” – Job Applicant, Newton customer
Thanks for send me a note to let me know where I stand. A couple of my co-workers are looking right now. I will suggest that they check out your open jobs. – Job Applicant, Newton customer
“I love it! I was able to send out all my Thank You Letters today -thanks” Recruiter, Relyon
“It’s nice when recruiting software can actually do some of my heavy lifting and at the same time provide such a high level of service to candidates. You guys built a double whammy” Sr. Technical Recruiter, Proofpoint.
In 2004, when we started to design the first iteration of Newton, one of our core ideas was to design applicant tracking software that could easily show someone what’s happening inside of a recruiting program at a glance. We wanted Newton’s home page to be “air traffic control”, only the stuff you need, the blips, not a bunch of peripheral clutter. We also knew that this “dashboard” needed to be interactive so users could drill into the data unlike the spreadsheets that so many people still use today.
Lately, we’ve been exploring some very cool ways to expand on the progress we’ve already made. Recently, we announced an enhancement that gives our customers the ability to view and manage recruiting data for multiple divisions or business units from on central dashboard – one login. Now our customers with multiple recruiting teams can stay on top of what’s going on in various BU’s or regions simply.
Currently, we’re working on enhancing the Newton home page by surfacing more critical data for our users in our 4.0 release due out in several weeks. And, our product design team is also working on improving Newton Analytics, currently our most popular recruiting dashboard. We even have some secret things in the mix that will come to fruition in the summer, stuff no one has seen yet. More to come.
EEO Compliance. Make you nervous? Applicant flow logs, hired/offers logs, reasons for non-selection for every applicant, minimum requirements for every job. Tracking all of this is nearly impossible let alone actually reporting it – until now.
We’ve designed an elegant, powerful feature in our recruiting software to track and report all of your EEO data for you - automatically. No more going back in time to add missing data, no reason for spreadsheets and no extra work for your team. Newton’s EEO / OFCCP tracking feature is the most advanced on the market and we’ve designed it to be the easiest-to-use too.
Track reason for non-selection for every candidate, build appropriate minimum qualification questions for every job, ensure that you’re being an equal opportunity employer and build the same reports that used to take you weeks or months in minutes. Sign up with Newton, it’s like insurance for your recruiting program.
Newton now automatically captures reasons for non-selection.
EEO Compliance. Make your stomach turn? Applicant flow logs, hired/offers logs, reasons for non-selection, minimum requirements - how do you capture and keep track all of this information? Until now, we know it’s been a time consuming struggle. So, we’ve designed an elegant, intuitive new feature in our recruiting software to track all of this data for you - automatically. No more going back in time to add missing data, no reason to maintain multiple spreadsheets and no more extra steps for your hiring managers. Newton’s EEO / OFCCP compliance feature is the most advanced on the market and we’ve designed it to be the easiest-to-use too.
With Newton you’ll automatically capture, store and track required EEO information without ever creating more work for your team. You’ll build the right content with your labor attorney or HR experts ahead of time so you’ll never scramble when your number comes up with the auditors. From now on, avoid the headaches and never worry about costly fines, EEO / OFCCP compliance is at your fingertips. Newton’s EEO/ OFCCP tracking feature is like insurance for your recruiting program.
Newton Software’s EEO / OFCCP tracking feature is going to be available January 1, 2010.
We think so. For the past several months, we’ve worked with our customers, lawyers, and even an OFCCP compliance officer to design Newton’s compliance module. Today, our development team finally started implementing this feature that will make OFCCP and EEO compliance a breeze. While we’ve always allowed our customers to collect EEO data, we recently decided to expand this feature providing our customers the easiest way to collect, store and report critical information often required by the US Government.
By mid-December, customers of Newton who are subject to laws administered by the OFCCP (Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs) will have the most advanced tracking and reporting feature available in any applicant tracking system. And, for our larger customers, those over 50 employees, Newton EEO/ OFCCP is going to be a veritable compliance blessing spitting out applicant flow logs that export to the same form required by the US Government.
So stay tuned, we’ll have more information on this time saving feature out soon.
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.
Newton Software, a startup building innovative, easy-to-use, applicant tracking software, presented to a packed house last night at DLA Piper’s Silicon Valley headquarters. The event, a monthly showcase of new technology startups, drew a diverse crowd of Silicon Valley engineers, business people, vendors, lawyers and venture capitalists. Newton was among the 4 lucky startup companies selected to demo their applications this month.
As the co-founders of Newton led the audience through a short demo of their product, it became evident that design and usability are indeed the knockout features of their system. Newton is designed to help you organize and manage your corporate recruiting program so nothing slips through the cracks. When you sign up for one of their affordable pricing plans, you’ll receive a fully branded careers page, free job advertising, an easy-to-use collaboration platform, and amazingly powerful, real-time analytics dashboard all the same day.
Newton’s VP of Marketing, Joel Passen, emphasized that Newton requires very little training to get started and that you can be up and running the same day you sign up for the service. During the demonstration, Joel took attendees through a 30 second mock training of Newton to emphasize Newton’s ease of use. “If you like the candidate, press the green button. If you don’t wish to continue with an applicant, push the red button. Green means go. Red is no. It doesn’t get much simpler than that”, chimed Passen.
While the founders started the company in January of 2009, they’ve been developing and improving Newton since 2004. Originally conceived to run a recruiting services business, Newton has been deployed to thousands of users prior to the official launch of the company. The current version of Newton is designed for corporations, mainly small and medium sized businesses, to manage internal hiring programs. The founders say they are working on a version for recruitment outsourcers that may be ready for release as soon as Q1 2010.
So what can Newton customers expect to see before the end of the year? Steve Hazleton, Newton’s CEO and Head of Products, promises his design team has been anything but complacent lately. “We’ll be shipping a feature later this month that’ll significantly improve the applicant experience while also allowing recruiters to be more efficient. And, for companies that need to track EEO information, we’re releasing the industry’s most advanced EEO/OFCCP compliance and reporting feature before the end of the year.”, said Hazelton in a post-demo interview. Hazelton also hinted at an extensive roadmap that will feature additional thoughtful features designed to continuously improve recruiting and to constantly enhance the applicant experience.
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
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.
