Job Preferencing Software

April 10, 2008 7:12 AM

Job Preferencing Software solution required. Do I need a bespoke solution or is something already available?

I have googled and looked at past AskMe’s. All solutions seem to be for recruitment advertising, rather than preferencing. So Hivemind, 100-200 Candidates coming for interview for 50 jobs.
There are 9 job-types (A-I) available in 17 different geographical locations (1-17).
Before they arrive we want them to number all the jobs available in order of preference by type & location, through the website. So Candidate XX might put A1, A2, A3 if she/he will only accept this job type, while candidate XY might put A13, B13, C13, if he/she feels the geographical location is more important.

At the end of the interviews, we want to be able to rank the candidates, then match their highest preference of job and offer them that.

Confused? I thought not. So, is there something available I can buy off the shelf?

posted by Wilder to computers & internet (3 comments total)

seems like what you need is a simple survey software.

Coz ur problem isn't any different from a survey for a new car.
ex: Rate following features by their importances to you.
1) ABS 2)Leather Seats 3) Cruise Control etc....

In your case it will be
1)A1 2)A2 ..... x)M9

try surveymonkey, but there are tons of other free and paid applications.
posted by WizKid at 7:45 AM on April 10, 2008

WizKid: that might work for the preference setting part, but I'm assuming they also want the solution to automate the job matching too. I don't know of any software that does all of the out of the box, but I'm not an expert on HR software so I might just not know about it.

One way of doing it might be to use standard web survey software to get the preferences, export it to some sort of table format, and import it into MS Access or some kind of database. You could then create relatively simple queiries to find the most appropriate job offer for a given candidate. If you need to do analysis or tracking that ends up being too complex to do in a simple database, you will probably end up needing to write custom code for at least part of it.
posted by burnmp3s at 10:14 AM on April 10, 2008

There are two variables, so using WizKid's car scenario it would be rate model and features in order of preference.

As you say burnmp3s to match the Excel or datasheet listing of the candidates against their preferences will be the tricky part, so the Candidate that scores highest gets his/her 1st choice, which then takes that job out of the equation for all others. If second ranking candidate preferenced that, he/she would have to be offered their second choice. By candidate 10-12 this will get complicated.

Thanks for the feedback, I'll look at the surveymonkey.

There's also a possibility that the software used in University or Med School matching excercises may be useful but probably expensive.
posted by Wilder at 10:32 AM on April 10, 2008