by Emily Sopensky

"I don't believe in résumés," says Hank Stringer of World.hire. "One of the biggest bottlenecks in the recruitment field is the résué sitting on a decision-maker's desk."

After years of placing talented people in the hot high-tech job openings at companies like Dell and Tandem Computers, Stringer decided there had to be a better way to recruit top professionals. He wanted to cut the time spent on hiring the right individual for the right job.

The result is World.hire Recruiter. Used for hiring from inside and outside a company, it is an enterprise software tool for use on either side of the network firewall.

After installing the software, companies post their job openings to the Recruiter. With its web-based interface, the program accommodates the inquiries of both serious candidates and the just-curious, who can privately register with the Recruiter's Job Finder. After specifying their capabilities, requirements, and interests, registrants can sit back while software agents work in real time to find matches.

What World.hire and Stringer ultimately seek is the very talented, brightest-of-the-bright high-tech worker who is simply too busy to test the employment waters. Stringer labels these the "passive" job seekers. By completing a confidential profile - not a résumé - at the website, the passive job seeker is on file for any current or future job that matches his or her credentials. The system sends notification when such a position becomes available.

After the registration process, the program automatically scores the profile and distributes it to as many locations in a company as is needed. With its Internet-based access, Recruiter can open up a world of hiring possibilities. Just recently, a multinational corporation headquartered in Dallas posted an opening for a Sydney, Australia position; the same day, it received a response from a Sydney candidate. In another example, Stringer tells of a candidate the system found on a Tuesday. On Thursday, only two days later, that candidate was officially hired.

Recruiter became a viable enterprise a year ago when EDS decided to try it out. Since then, companies like IBM, US West, MCI Worldcom, Coastal State Energy, and COREStaff (a large, Houston-based recruiting firm) have signed on.

Forty thousand people are now registered at Recruiter's various corporate installations. In just one month, 5,000 people registered at MCI's site.

Backed by local investor angels, such as former CIA director and high-tech investor Bobby Inman, John Hine, and Greg Kozmetzky, World.hire also boasts Tom Peters on its advisory board. CTO and Senior Vice President Charlie Sauer, Ph.D. also comes with a few credentials: He was the lead developer on AiX, IBM's Unix implementation, and was CTO for VTEL, a videoconferencing systems developer.

Deployment takes one to three weeks. Administrators can be trained in two days. Pricing for Recruiter is based on the number of employees within the purchasing company. While sales have been targeted at establishments with 1000 employees or more, World.hire recently signed a marketing agreement to target smaller companies.

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Published in Texas Software News, December 1998

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