Radix Careers is a full-service staffing agency specializing in Information Technology jobs. Recently we chatted with Buddy Simpson, who is responsible for their recruitment systems, regarding their implementation of Applicant Stack as their Applicant Tracking System.
Hi Buddy. Tell us a little about what Radix does.
Buddy: We’re a recruiting company for Information Technology positions. We’ve been in the business since around 1982. We originally started out as a consulting company and evolved into a placement agency because our clients kept asking us if we knew good people. So we moved away from the consulting to the actual placement of candidates for our clients.
What is your role at Radix Jobs?
Buddy: I take care of all the systems for our recruiters. For example, we have systems for applicant tracking, marketing and mass emailing. So I go out and do the research to select the new systems, test the new systems, and handle implementation including conversion of data from the old to new system.
Did you have an Applicant Tracking System before ApplicantStack?
Buddy: Yes, we had a system that was developed in house that worked fine. But then the development staff decided to move on and I decided it was time to move to a commercial system. We didn’t want to continue to go through the time and expense of supporting the system in house. And we wanted to save money. We wanted a commercial system where we wouldn’t have to worry about support and system problems.
How did you go about selecting an Applicant Tracking System
Buddy: The main thing we needed, of course, was to get qualified applicants. I looked at 200 or more systems, whittling it down to about 25 systems which I detail tested and wound up selecting ApplicantStack based on its features and ease-of-use. It has the ability to eliminate the wrong candidate and select the right candidates for my client. For example, it saves us time by giving us the ability to ask questions of all applicants, which limits the number of resumes we need to read. We only read those resumes of people who answer our questions correctly, most closely to our match. This saves the recruiters time, it saves the applicants time, since we don’t have to call them to ask them questions that we can ask them online when they apply, and it saves our clients time, since we don’t send them resumes that don’t meet their needs. One of our strongest criteria is the ability to save time.
How many people in your company use ApplicantStack and how many resumes are you tracking?
Buddy: Right now we have about 24,000 resumes in the system. We’ve converted over our resumes from the old system to ApplicantStack, which was very easy to do and went smoothly. We have 3 people who use the system at this point, but we’re hoping to expand on that.
Where do you post your job openings?
Buddy: We use Dice, and we also use Craigslist. We’re basically IT, and most IT people reside with Dice. We’ve used HotJobs and Monster, but didn’t have the same success we had with Dice.
Would you recommend ApplicantStack to other recruiters?
Buddy: Absolutely. It was very easy to learn. You don’t have to spend days and days learning and relearning the system. It’s very well designed and documented well. And I like the flexibility to add my own fields and questions. It’s very handy both for me and the applicant end of things. By the way, anyone who is planning to do the research I did, if they want to save time they can call me and I can talk with them directly.
That’s a generous offer! OK, last question, and this one is kind of for fun, if you could have any job in the world what job would you want to do?
Buddy: That is an interesting question! I would like to just spend time doing research on projects. I’ve been doing it for what seems like a hundred years. I started in data processing in 1959, and it’s really an addiction. It’s fun. I love the development end of it, putting the things together and seeing the satisfaction when it all comes to production.
I will definitely recommend ApplicantStack to my network. It is a great program, user friendly, cost appropriate and customizing is easy!
