Telephonic communications – Centralized switching system – Call distribution to operator
Reexamination Certificate
1999-12-14
2003-03-04
Smith, Creighton (Department: 2742)
Telephonic communications
Centralized switching system
Call distribution to operator
C379S088250
Reexamination Certificate
active
06529597
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The invention relates to the field of contact management, and more particularly to the management of job recruitment contacts using automated telephone and network equipment.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The field of job recruitment is a significant and fast-growing market in the United States. Burgeoning labor markets have increased the demand for high-quality contact, screening and recruitment of managers, accountants, engineers, attorneys and others for professional and technical job slots. It is not uncommon for large organizations to spend millions of dollars a year in recruitment budgets. Recruitment campaigns are typically farmed out to outside consultants charged with the task of bringing in suitable candidates for selection. The employers benefit from efficient access to those skilled labor pools.
However, the traditional methodology of a recruitment firm is not highly efficient or always likely to produce the best candidate results. More particularly, and as illustrated in
FIG. 1
, in a typical recruitment firm a senior manager or a partner in that firm becomes aware of a job slot to be advertised, circulated and filled within a certain time frame. The typical approach is for that senior person to create a job description and enter that job description in some sort of automated databased package. A group of recruitment agents reporting to the recruitment manager then scans the database entries and places telephone calls to lists of candidates matched to individual job slots.
The list of candidates may be broken down and associated with one or more pending job slots according to skill sets, experience, geographic locations and other factors. After the group of calls is placed, which may number in the hundreds or more, those candidates expressing a desire to explore the available opening are screened under the oversight of the recruitment manager with the hope of placing the candidate with the employer.
However, this technique is less than perfectly efficient in more than one regard. For one, typically the contact messages left with or spoken to the job candidates during the initial contact by the recruitment agent are undifferentiated, often simply the same for all of the job candidates. Moreover, the list of candidates is not highly examined for the closest possible match to the available job slot. Rather, reliance is placed on reaching a great many candidate workers in the hope that a comparative handful will truly meet the criteria set out in the job description.
Thus, because the initial contacts are inappropriate to the majority of job applicants, gaining the interest of any individual candidate is not a likely proposition. The percent yield on callbacks for such high volume recruiting campaigns is therefore predictably not great, sometimes less than 25 per cent. Of those persons responding, only a fraction again will be suitable to the criteria of the job slot and willing to take the subsequent steps necessary to obtain the position. Thus, most of the efforts expended by the recruitment firm as a whole are wasted on relatively low-yield contacts.
More efficient, highly targeted and rigorous recruitment methodology is desirable.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The invention overcoming these and other problems in the art relates to a system and method for contact management which develops and executes lo high-quality, high-yield candidate contacts and executes those contacts using a designed sequence of messaging events aimed at producing the greatest possible candidate yields. In the invention, automated call delivery equipment may be programmed to deliver a high-resolution voice message introducing a new job opportunity to a selected group of candidates, after which a series of further messages are delivered in defined stages. That message sequence offers successively greater detail and emphasis concerning the job slot.
The intervals of time between the delivery of the messages are carefully controlled to encourage the greatest possible consideration by the group of active candidates. Receipt of call back inquiries is also managed using prepared agents according to pre-assigned dial-up telephone lines. A contact management database may be used to assist in the management and documentation of the recruitment sequence, and to aid the efficiency of the overall operation.
Because of the high quality of the voice mail messages, the targeted and customizable nature of the message content and the controlled timing of the contact sequence and other aspects of the invention, overall initial callback yield may reach 75 per cent or greater for a given recruitment campaign. The use of automated message processing on the delivery side permits throughput that may be 3 times or greater that of manual contact operations as well. Recruitment costs may therefore be reduced, and staffing requirements for the recruitment firm and its clients may be lessened considerably.
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Hunton & Williams
Smith Creighton
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