New IT Recruiting Firm Promises to Serve the Needs of Employers and Job Seekers

Job seekers who e-mail their résumés to recruiters are often frustrated by the results: Their résumés end up in a black hole, and their follow-up e-mails and voice-mail messages fail to inspire a response. Now a new IT recruiting firm aims to change all that while making it easier for employers to find qualified candidates for open IT positions. Ready to Hire promises job seekers a high-touch relationship with its recruiters while it streamlines hiring processes by giving employers access to a database of prescreened candidates.

Based outside of Philadelphia in Willow Grove, Pa., Ready to Hire places IT workers at all levels, from help desk associates on up to IT executives.

The company’s eight recruiters vet all job seekers over the phone. They ask candidates about their education, work history, job responsibilities, skills, salary, certifications and ideal job. If a candidate is not willing to answer all of the recruiters’ questions about his work history, he will not be added to Ready to Hire‘s database, says Bill Wiseley, a principal with the firm.

Recruiters communicate with candidates every 45 days to make sure the candidate’s profile is up to date. They also offer informal advice on résumé writing or interviewing during the course of their conversations and correspondence with the candidates to which they’re assigned. Ready to Hire also keeps candidates’ résumés and references on file. The high-touch recruiting service is provided to job seekers for free.

Each recruiter specializes in a particular IT discipline, so the recruiters know when a candidate may be stretching the truth about, for example, salary or job responsibilities, says Wiseley.

Employers pay a monthly fee to access Ready to Hire’s Web-based database, which currently contains profiles of 5,500 candidates. Clients can search the database using any term, including a candidate’s location, a particular skill or salary range. Ready to Hire didn’t disclose the subscription fee; Wiseley just said it was “one to one-and-a-half times a placement fee.”

Ready to Hire President Colleen Haviland says the subscription model will save employers money. “People pay for the service, not per hire. A company can make 30 placements and only pay a monthly fee,” she says. “We think this will cut a corporation‘s agency fees in half.” Haviland adds that the average agency fee for an IT hire is $20,000.

Because candidates are prescreened, employers also benefit from faster searches. “We complete step one of the hiring process in advance for our clients,” says Wiseley.

Ready to Hire was incorporated in February 2007, began populating its database of passive job seekers in March and started selling subscriptions to its Web-based search service to clients earlier this month. The service is available to companies in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware and New York. Ready to Hire plans to expand nationwide into other professions in the next six months. At the time this story was reported, the company had two clients and several others in the pipeline.

Richard Schierer, an IT director who lives on Long Island and is looking for a new job, is impressed with Ready to Hire’s service even though he has not landed any interviews yet. He registered with the company in July and was placed in its database within a day of speaking with a recruiter.

“I had a very long talk with Gabriella, my rep. Instead of just saying, ‘Send me your résumé and we’ll get back to you,’ I was on the phone with her for 30 to 45 minutes,” he says. “I’ve gotten calls and e-mails from recruiters who make it sound like they have a job for me. When I call them back, I get their answering machines. I never get a real voice, and that’s quite frustrating. Gabriella has always responded to my e-mails.”

Job seekers interested in contacting a Ready to Hire recruiter can do so on Ready to Hire’s website.