I am currently investigating recruiting tools for a healthcare employer. Recently, I was asked to attend a conference call with Aquent Healthcare to discuss their RPO product MedCatcher. I have been with my current employer for over 10 years and have been asked to observe all products relating to IT or database applications. Aquent claims that their “no-training required” web-based solution serves dozens of satisfied clients by collecting resumes from 40,000 websites including Monster.com, Careerbuilder.com and 40,000 other websites for a quarterly price of $6,000.

My comments:

1. Pricing.
How is it possible for Aquent to offer the services of Monster.com and Careerbuilder.com and other pay sites in addition to almost 40,000 other websites for only $6,000 per quarter? Monster.com alone is almost $4,000 per quarter. It appears that Aquent is using their current licensing agreement, a direct violation of their agreement since we are currently subscribed to Monster.com. Also a bit of common sense would indicate that in order to search 40,000 websites, pricing would be at least triple the cost since the software development project would be a monumental process. How could you possibly prove that 40,000 websites are being searched and why would you need so many? How do they determine which websites are legitimate? Aquent does not make reference to any agreement with Monster.com, Careerbuilder.com or any other websites that they supposedly search.

2. Trial.
Aquent does not offer a free trial. Either pay or else. This concerns me about the actual status of this new service. The demo was a dull static pictorial supported by high-pressure sales techniques and an obvious time-limit of 30 minutes. Does MedCatcher work as effectively as they say? If it does, then why can’t I try it free for one day? A request for a free trial was strongly discouraged. When I asked specific questions about the product testing, the responses were straight out of a “Sales & Marketing 101” handbook. They appeared to be unfamiliar with the software development and QA process. More than likely the product is being developed by another company and Aquent is simply slapping their label on it which places them at the mercy of the development company regarding the price of development and in return, the price that you will pay for their service . I am wondering if they took the time to conduct a pilot study or QA of this product.

3. References.
The many references posted on their site are not clients for the MedCatcher service but for their international nursing service. We are affiliated with three of the hospitals on their site that are not using the MedCatcher service. A request for (2) current client referrals using the MedCatcher product was strongly discouraged.


Summary
The MedCatcher service offered by Aquent is a new product and a new technology that Aquent is exploring. Aquent has never offered a web-based service and it is apparent since they offer sales and marketing answers to any logical or technical questions that make reference to the results of a pilot program that they hopefully conducted to test their service. Maybe they simply made an agreement with another company to scale down their service to offer a healthcare only service and have Aquent simply slap their logo on it… it is possible and would explain their weak background knowledge. When asking for references from the product trial, they dance around the question and continuously ask for the sale. Buyers beware. Our executive team has come to the conclusion that there are other services out there that offer a tried and true service for a lower price, offer a free trial, and only search legitimate websites.

If anyone has any first-hand accounts on what products I should be investigating, then please let me know.