The recruitment has changed dramatically in the last decade or two. The older recruiters still remember the Rolodex and the Filofax. Faxing the CVs to the clients, well it wasn’t that long ago. Computers & internet replaced the paper-based systems. We, recruiters, become more productive and effective. Really? :)
The social networks changed the recruitment completely once again, but that’s not all. The whole other set of technologies are now at the recruiter’s disposal that we couldn’t dream of only a few short years ago. In this post, I will talk about the mapping software.
How can Mapping Software help your Recruitment?
I was approached by an American company based on a talk I made on the last #TruDublin (The Recruitment Unconference) that was looking to set up in Ireland. They picked Ireland for the most common reason companies pick Ireland when setting up their HQ in Europe. They decided to set up a call centre in Ireland. I wonder if that is related to the staff number they had to promise to get their incentives, but that is another story. Their dilemma was about what is the best location in Ireland to set up. They looked at the obvious choices, as “close to the major Airports” and the usual locations the US multinationals are setting up. They asked me what are the benefits and drawbacks of Intel being in Lexlip, Microsoft in Sandyford, and Apple in Cork?
We looked at what type staff do they plan to hire here in Ireland. We looked at the cost of living, possible buildings they could rent and their availability in the Business Centers and Industrial Zones. Obvious choices in Dublin have been Sandyford, City West & East Point and a few buildings close to Google in the Docklands. Since the staff cost makes a large part of their running costs we looked at other locations in Ireland where the staff costs would be far less than in Dublin. And the move out of Dublin seemed to have a lot of sense. Actually the move away from all the major cities.
Where are the Candidates?
In this whole long-lasting exercise no one ever looked at where will the applicants came from. Where do people that will likely work there actually live? What we did is we have made a Recruitment Campaign in the various media. Mostly online since the IT knowledge was one of the requirements for those jobs anyway. We got plenty of CVs. What did with them I extracted the address of each applicant from the CV and used the location mapping software to show where the candidates are.
The resulting map instantly ruled out most of the country. We simply got no applications miles away from some of the most obvious spots like the Industrial Zones where most of the US multinationals are set up already. And the telesales/support roles we had are not much different than the other companies have.
What we learned is that if we didn’t use the map of the applicants we would have 90% chance to set up in the area with very little or no applicants for any the jobs.
