Situation: More Applicants Than Time to Manage Them

Veronica Flores is recruiting coordinator for PinnacleAIS, a Houston-based technology and services provider that specializes in Risk Based Inspection and Asset Integrity for the petrochemical industry. The company is only three years old, but it has grown quickly from two employees to 45. Although her background is in industrial engineering, Flores took over recruiting for the company a year ago and quickly noticed that the paper and spreadsheet system of tracking of resumes coming from the company’s website, job board postings and college recruiting program began taking up more time. As applicant volume increased with the unemployment rate, she saw her work hours stretch later into the evening because she was unable to keep up with phone calls, emails and resume review. Flores knew that her company needed an ATS to automate the process.

Assessment: Truly Free and Intuitive

Although PinnacleAIS considered an ATS product from a major job board, the cost left them with sticker shock, Flores said, and the cost of building a solution on their own was also very expensive. Then Flores found out about SmartRecruiters in a major business publication. “I visited the website and took the demo,” she said. “After I showed it to the president and CEO, we kept wondering how this could really be free. But it is free and fully functioning.” Even though she admits having little web expertise, she was able to get SmartRecruiters up and running in minutes and integrate her Career Site and job openings on PinnacleAIS’ website with a little help from her IT manager. “Everything was surprisingly easy for me,” says Veronica. “The community support of the SmartRecruiters website is very helpful, and I learned a lot from the experience of other users.”

With the help of her SmartRecruiters ATS, Flores has found her workload far more manageable. “Candidates can apply directly on our website and upload their resumes, and we can also upload resumes received from other sources,” Flores said. “SmartRecruiters makes it easy to rank them, and if an applicant calls to check on their status, I don’t need to dig through folders and spreadsheets to find the answer. It’s all right there in front of me.” Flores can also quickly send unqualified applicant’s rejection letters using a customized template that she has setup in the ATS. “Now I can quickly notify people who are not being considered for a job, so I am not bogged down answering their phone call and emails,” she said.

RESULT: A Free and Easy ATS

Because PinnacleAIS frequently needs to hire quickly when they win a new contract, SmartRecruiters provides Flores and her company with the agility they need to hire the mechanical and chemical engineers, CAD drafters, programmers and other functions to begin projects. “Without SmartRecruiters, we would probably have built something in-house that would have cost more and offered less functionality,” Flores said. “Sometimes we need to post a job, select candidates, interview and hire in as little as a week. SmartRecruiters allows us to compete with much larger companies. It’s an exciting feeling.”