A Poor Man's ATS

This posting is probably applicable only to contract recruiters, and people who are doing contingent placements on the side. About 6 months ago, I was trying to figure out away, to store all of the resumes I found, for future use. I did not like the idea, of keeping them on my computer, because of the hassles of transferring so many resumes to my computer, and then later using a client’s computer, and not having access to all of those resumes I saved. It also seemed redundant to always be starting over from square one with each new req, I got. I also am not yet ready to put down a large sum of money for an ATS system of my own, or pay a monthly fee. My resolution to this issue is Google Docs.

With Google Docs. I can upload multiple resumes at one time, through a special email address, when used in conjunction with the Google Toolbar, if I open a word doc that appeared through a Boolean search, that doc is automatically uploaded into Docs for me. I can search all of the resumes by using key word search (Perl, PHP, "Software Engineer") to pull up only the ones that are applicable. This beats reinventing the wheel because I always have a starting point from which to begin my search, I can access Docs from any computer in the world, and it is "FREE".

This was my solution. Let me know what you think and what solutions you may have come up with.

Comment by Donato Diorio on March 19, 2008 at 2:58pm: Steve, great solution. Have you have seen Broadlook's Diver application? It may make sense for Broadlook to add Google Docs as an export target.
http://www.broadlook.com/diver

Comment by Lorna Johnson on March 19, 2008 at 6:29pm: Hi Steve,
This sounds intriguing. How specifically do you search for keyword matches? Also, do you happen to know how this would work with other remote recruiters on a team? Would I have to type in all their email addresses every time I upload a new resume that I want them to have access to?

Thanks!
Lorna

Comment by Steve Sill on March 19, 2008 at 6:53pm: Hi Lorna,

At the top of the Docs page is Google search box. Just type in your search criteria, such as: perl python (unix OR linux) "software engineer" "computer science" Masters "university of texas" then press "search docs" and only those docs that match that criteria will appear, if there are any.

You can set up email aliases (or Groups as Google calls them) and share the docs with who ever is in that group (they must have a Google account). Unfortunately you are not able to share folders (at least I have not figured out how) so the best way to share is once or twice a day, click on all the new docs and share. Not enterprise ready, but good enough for a small operation.

Hope that answers your questions :)

Comment by Stacey Boyer on March 20, 2008 at 8:44am: I have reviewed many, many low end ATS's. I have been familiar with google docs but never really used it. This is a GREAT suggestion!!!

Comment by Lorna Johnson on March 20, 2008 at 11:49am: Very interesting, Steve. Thanks for the info. Ok I have another question ;) Does this mean you have to use a google email address? we have a corporate email address and emails come into Outlook. How would that work with Google Docs - in other words, how do the resumes gets uploaded into google docs? i've look at the online tutorial but can't figure out how this works......

thanks!
Lorna

Comment by Stacey Boyer on March 20, 2008 at 11:51am: I test forwarded about twenty resumes from my work email into google docs (from a corporate email account using outlook). It appears to have dropped one resume. Other then that seems to have worked like a charm.

Comment by Lorna Johnson on March 20, 2008 at 12:04pm: Cool. So, Stacey you are using Google Docs also?

Comment by Steve Sill on March 20, 2008 at 12:28pm: Hi Lorna,

To be able to share Docs, each employee would need to set up their own Google account, though you do not need to list the email address as a gmail account. You could for instance have lorna@mac.com as the email address on the account.

For up loading Docs what you need to do is press Upload on the Google Docs menu bar. You are then taken to a new screen. The first option is to press browse and search for the doc to upload and select. This only does one doc at a time. The other option is a little further down. It gives you an email address in bold, which you then can through Outlook mail the resumes as attachments. You can mail up to 5MB at a time, though to make it easy for myself I send 10 resumes at a time.

Steve

Comment by Stacey Boyer on March 20, 2008 at 12:34pm: Sorry no, I am in a corporate role now, but I ran my own firm for the past four years and was constantly on the lookout for cheaper/easier ways to do my work. I think the storage/search functionality of google docs would be decent as Steve suggested. I think I would try to pair it with maybe a CRM app or something (Sugar CRM is open source and free...) for the notes and organization aspects. Dunno...haven't put much thought into this. The best I had settled on at the time was the CATS applicant tracking system. Up until the last few weeks it was also open sourced and free and very functional for a budget minded (and semi-technical) individual. It's no longer open source and it's no longer my solution of choice. Google Docs plus something to supplement might be just the ticket.

Comment by Lorna Johnson on March 20, 2008 at 4:00pm: very interesting. Yes i was planning on looking into CATS and have heard of Sugar but thought it was more for sales not recruiting.....What do you think of OpenHire?

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