InfoGIST Platinum Recruiter vs. TalentHook?

Both TalentHook and InfoGIST can serve as a veritable Swiss Army knife in the arsenal of Internet recruiting tools. But which one comes out on top? I've been a user of TalentHook for a few years now and have found it to be a practical, if recalcitantry unpretty way to search multiple online resources at once.

This morning, I had the opportunity to walk through a demo of infoGIST, so I thought I'd make a few observations about how they stack up.

First of all, they seem to be highly comparable tools. The pricing is pretty close and they both do what they purport to do... they go out to the web, log in to pay sites as well as search free sites and various other online resources. They can search multiple sites at once and return relevant resumes that match keyword criteria. Based upon the sites they are looking at, both can drill down into some pretty good detail. The pay sites are better at supporting complex queries. The free sites frequently don't like much more than an "OR" operator in your searches. But that's not something either tool has control over. Considering the wide variety of resume sites, it's pretty impressive how both manage to do such a good job of sifting data from disparate sources.

From an appearance point of view, infoGIST is a better-looking user interface. TalentHook has always, to me, looked like it was a client-server app built in 1995 and has never benefitted from a good user experience assessment and facelift. InfoGIST isn't much prettier, but it is neater and cleaner-looking, eschewing the way that TalentHook forces you to organize searches into elaborate tree-structure folders consisting of Company>Manager>Search Query schemas.

Functionally, there's a great deal that works well, too. InfoGIST uses a "smart" search technology that prevents you from downloading duplicate resumes from pay sites--something that can save you bucks if you access a large number from, say, Monster (and Monster does charge for downloading resumes beyond a certain number in a year). InfoGIST also lets you limit the number of downloaded resumes you'll get in a given search query.

Both packages also allow you to bulk e-mail single, multiple, or an entire list of candidates from a given search.

Finally, both packages purport to allow you to directly send your candidate resumes from search queries directly to whatever Applicant Tracking System you happen to be using. This is a bit tricky, though. Depending upon what system you use, you may have to take multiple steps. Companies like InfoGIST and TalentHook apparently aren't as concerned anymore about tight integration with ATS's because there's a distressing lack of standardization amongst them.

Many ATS's use a product called ResumeMirror to load resumes into their system. ResumeMirror lets you e-mail, fax, or, as nearly as I can tell, telepathically project a resume into your ATS (I wish). It's pretty handy. Your ATS just assigns you an e-mail address you send a resume in text, .doc, or PDF format to. ResumeMirror parses the resume contact information (read:mostly successfully) and, voila, it's in your system. You can even put a Job ID# in the subject line and it will associate the new resume with an open job in your system.

Having an ATS that uses ResumeMirror is your best best and easiest fix for getting resumes from InfoGIST and TalentHook into your system. If you're using Taleo, they apparently require you to export the resumes to a folder and then go into your ATS to upload them into the system.

In my opinion, this = suck.

When it comes to transferring single or multiple resumes, this is where I see the major difference between InfoGIST and TalentHook. InfoGIST lets you send mulitple resumes at once into your system (again, with the provisos above taken into consideration). For my ATS, which does thankfully use ResumeMirror tech, you have to use a little hack to send resumes via TalentHook. Namely, when you set up a hiring manager for your open position, instead of inputting his or her e-mail address, you need to drop in the ResumeMirror e-mail address. Then, when you're within a single candidate view (multiple selections do NOT work), you choose from among the Tasks button to Submit the resume to the Hiring Manager. You must click to attach a text version of the resume, type in the Job ID into the subject line, and then Send it in.

If this sounds kludgey, you're right. Neither system is without its hassles, though, and both could do with a usability redesign. In a well-designed app, I would argue that you should be able go to either application's Settings window, specify your ResumeMirror address and then, when you are within a list of candidates, select one, multiple, or all candidates, right click and tell it to Send to my ATS. Then--BOOM--it's gone.

Now, to be fair, such an option supposedly does exist for TalentHook. But that's the "tight integration" issue I mentioned earlier. If you're thinking about buying one of these apps for your recruiting team, you'd do well to ask some very specific questions about what ATS's they integrate with and precisely how they will integrate with yours in as much detail as you can get the company representative to talk about.