The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for providing an interactive computer-driven employment recruiting service. More specifically, the present invention relates to a method and apparatus which enables an employer to use a computer network, such as the Internet, to advertise available positions and receive resumes electronically from prospective applicants, and enables prospective applicants to use the Internet to find those available positions.
Many resources are presently available to assist businesses in finding suitable candidates to fill available positions. Perhaps the most common recruiting method is direct advertising by employers in the employment section of a newspaper, or in a magazine that is targeted to people having specific skills (e.g., engineers, attorneys, computer programmers, and so on). A typical employment advertisement will generally include a brief description of the available position, along with the address, telephone number, facsimile number and/or e-mail address of the employer. Applicants can apply for the advertised position by sending their resumes directly to the employer by facsimile, regular mail or e-mail. An employer will usually have a person in its employment or human resources department screen the resumes to identify the applicants best suited for the position.
Many disadvantages are inherent in this conventional recruiting method. For instance, a magazine and especially, a newspaper, has a limited amount of subscribers and generally services only a limited region. Therefore, the company""s advertisement may never be seen by many qualified people outside of that region. In order to distribute the advertisement more universally, it may be necessary for the employer to run the advertisement in several newspapers or magazines, thus substantially increasing the advertising expense incurred by the company.
Furthermore, this conventional method is also very inefficient even after the resumes are received by the company. For example, because the resumes must be manually organized and screened, a person in the company""s recruitment or human resources department may need to spend a significant amount of time every day performing this task. In a large corporation having many positions becoming available on a daily basis, it may be necessary for several people to devote most of their time to organizing and screening applicants"" resumes. Furthermore, because a large amount of resumes may be received, the task of organizing and screening those resumes may be particularly onerous and thus, a certain resume may be overlooked or mishandled. As a result, a candidate who is well suited for a position may never be considered.
In an attempt to increase the scope of their advertising, some companies have begun using computer networks, such as the Internet, to post employment opportunities. For instance, a company may set up its own xe2x80x9chome pagexe2x80x9d on the World Wide Web (the xe2x80x9cWebxe2x80x9d) on which various job openings can be posted. Anyone who subscribes to the internet can thus access or xe2x80x9clog onxe2x80x9d to that company""s home page, determine which positions at that company are available, and send a resume to the company via regular mail, facsimile or e-mail.
Although a home page can be a useful tool in enabling a company to expand its advertising capabilities, a home page provides no mechanism for organizing or screening resumes that are received. The received resumes still must be organized and screened by a person in the company""s human resources department in the traditional manner. Hence, the possibility still exists that a resume will be overlooked or mishandled.
Furthermore, in order for an applicant to see the company""s advertisement, the applicant must be aware that the company exists and has a home page on the Web. Hence, if the applicant has never heard of the company, the applicant would not be aware that that company has a home page. Many highly qualified candidates therefore may overlook a company""s advertisement because they simply are not aware that the company exists.
Several advertisement agencies have recognized these potential shortcomings and have developed xe2x80x9ccareer bulletin boardsxe2x80x9d on the Web. A career bulletin board, such as CareerMosaic, MonsterBoard, and the like, is an electronic bulletin board on which messages can be xe2x80x9cpostedxe2x80x9d as on a conventional bulletin board. A career bulletin board is advantageous because it provides a single location at which many companies can post employment opportunities. A job seeker can log onto the bulletin board to peruse the posted available positions. However, several problems are inherent with career bulletin boards.
For example, if a company wants a job seeker to see complete descriptions of their job openings, the company must send those complete descriptions directly to the bulletin board provider. The computer at the site of the bulletin board provider must store all of the company""s information and thus, must have access to a large amount of memory.
Furthermore, the computer must be capable of continuously accessing that information to display it on the bulletin board. These accessing and displaying operations, which involve the handling of large amounts of data, may slow the computer""s operation significantly. As a consequence, if many job seekers are accessing the bulletin board at the same time, the computer may be incapable of handling this high level of activity. Hence, additional job seekers may be unable to access the bulletin board at that time, or job seekers who are already logged onto the bulletin board may experience very slow service. Also, if a failure occurs with the computer, the entire bulletin board will become unavailable and thus, every job posting will become unavailable.
Additionally, bulletin boards are typically set up so that a job seeker submits a resume directly to the bulletin board provider. The resume is stored in a central repository along with all of the other resumes, and must be forwarded to the company to which the job seeker is applying for employment. This type of arrangement decreases the confidentiality of the resumes, because they are handled by the bulletin board provider instead of only by personnel at the company. Also, this type of arrangement decreases the company""s confidentiality, since a complete job description is sent to the bulletin board provider. Furthermore, once the resumes are received by the company, they still must be manually organized and screened. In addition, if a company updates its listing of job descriptions, the updated list must be sent to every bulletin board to which the company subscribes.
It is further noted that the direct advertising methods discussed above require that a job seeker monitor the advertisements on a regular basis in order to ascertain whether a specific position is available. Hence, instead of relying on advertisements, an employer or job seeker may use a professional recruiter to find suitable candidates for available positions and vice-versa. However, the efforts of professional recruiters are limited by the resources available to them.
For example, if a recruiter has been hired by an employer to find suitable candidates for an available position, the recruiter must undertake efforts such as xe2x80x9ccold callingxe2x80x9d suitable candidates employed by other companies, networking with other recruiters to obtain names of potential candidates, and the like. Conversely, if a recruiter has been hired by a job seeker to find a suitable position, the recruiter may need to undertake similar efforts to locate such a position. Hence, it is likely that a recruiter will overlook available positions and suitable candidates. Furthermore, since recruiters charge a substantial fee for their services, many companies and job seekers are reluctant to use a recruiter and incur such expense.
In order to assist companies in facilitating their recruiting efforts, several software companies have developed resume screening programs which can be configured to screen a collection of resumes for the most qualified candidates. Resumes that are received by an employer who uses this software are first scanned into a computer and stored. The computer running the resume screening software can then be controlled to search those resumes for various attributes, such as college degrees, prior experience, special qualifications, and the like. The computer will then provide a list of the most qualified candidates out of the entire collection of resumes. This computerized screening and sorting method allows human resource personnel to devote more time to other tasks.
However, known resume screening software does not assist employers in advertising available positions. Although the resume screening software is useful once a resume has been received by the company, it provides no advantage in enabling the company to seek out the most qualified candidates. A company must still use either the conventional methods of advertising (e.g., newspaper, magazines, professional recruiter, etc.) or a career bulletin board in order to solicit resumes. Hence, the drawbacks associated with those types of advertising methods have not been resolved.
Therefore, a continuing need exists for a system which will maximize the scope of a company""s advertising efforts while also providing a reasonably secure and efficient manner of forwarding resumes to the company and enabling the company to efficiently screen and categorize the resumes received. Additionally, a continuing need exists to assist a job seeker in locating available positions quickly and effectively.
An object of the present invention is to provide a method and apparatus which enables an employer to advertise available positions on a computer network, such as the Internet, to directly receive resumes from prospective candidates, and to efficiently organize and to screen the received resumes.
A further object of the present invention is to provide a method and apparatus which monitors employment advertisements for a job seeker and automatically notifies the job seeker when a position for which the job seeker is suitable becomes available.
A further object of the present invention is to provide a method and apparatus which enables a plurality of companies to advertise job positions at a single location accessible via a computer network, such as the Internet, enables a job seeker to access those positions via the computer network, and then disconnects a job seeker from the single location while enabling the job seeker to communicate directly with a company via the computer network when the job seeker selects an available position at that company.
The above objects are substantially achieved by providing a software program, recorded on a computer readable medium, for controlling a computer of a potential employer to generate a listing of available employment positions that can be accessed via the Internet. Specifically, the software program is adaptable to be run by an employer""s computer to control the computer to generate a computer readable file (position file) that includes information pertaining to available employment positions and which can be accessed from a remote site via the Internet. For example, the position file can be posted as a Web site on the World Wide Web. A job seeker can access the Web site and search the information in the position file for a desired position.
Also, a portion of the position file can be uploaded to a remote site computer to link the position file to a computer readable file, such as a remote Web site, that is hosted by the remote computer. Job seekers can access the remote Web site and search the uploaded portion of the position file for a desired position. The remote computer also is capable of automatically searching the uploaded portion of the position file for data that matches data provided by the job seeker, and is capable of informing the job seeker""s computer by an electronic message sent via the Internet when a match is found.
Furthermore, the portion of the position file which includes more detailed information about the available positions is maintained by the employer""s computer instead of by the remote site. Hence, when a job seeker chooses to explore this additional information, the job seeker""s computer is disconnected from the remote site, and reconnected to a new site which possesses this additional information that has been provided to that site by the computer of the employer offering the position. The position file further includes linking data which enables the job seeker""s computer to send an electronic message, such as an e-mail or the like, to the employer""s computer and vice-versa via a computer network such as the Internet.