The point of using Wombat for ResMan (W4R) is to make more placements.

I remember being at a client site to demonstrate our product, and the client just had a temp job come in for a forklift driver.  This requirement was a little bit out of the usual field, so there were no candidates specifically tagged with this skill in ResMan.  This was an ideal test for Wombat to search through Resumes.  Typing in forklift found 5 people, and we interrupted the demo for a few quick phone calls.  By the time I had grabbed a coffee the placement had been made and we went on to the serious stuff.

Just like magic

“I need a senior PA” came the next request.  Typing in PA found over 1500 documents.  “Want to look through 1500 documents?” I asked.  No, me neither.  Lets find a PA within 5 words of a General Manager.  That would be a senior PA, and a good place to start.  The search was PA w/5 General Manager.  Bingo, we returned about 40 documents.  As we scrolled through the hit list I had the usual “Ooh Ahs” because not only was PA found within 5 of General Manager, but the search revealed things like “Personal Assistant to the Managing Director” and “PA to the Chairman”.

The power of the proximity search, combined with automatic synonym searching enabled PA to also find Personal Assistant; Managing Director also located President, Chairman, MD, General Manager, GM, etc.

Maximise the benefits

If you are not using proximity searches and not making use of the thesaurus features of Wombat you may be making less placements, or taking longer to look through large lists when you don’t need to.  If you would like to maximize your use of Wombat, email us or RIL for an information pack.

And the client?  They bought Wombat, and last I heard the forklift driver role went permanent.

By Tyrone Coupland

Sometime during 2004