Cheezhead Recruiting News and Opinion

Seven Fortune 500 companies have aligned with a new recruitment exchange intended to level the playing field between search firms and internal recruiting departments.

Wachovia, Starbucks, Best Buy, Entergy Corporation, FPL Group, ADP, and Baxter have signed on to become the founding members of AllianceQ, a partnership of companies that will direct all rejected candidates to a membership-only database powered by QuietAgent.

The founding members, capped at 20 with several contracts still pending, will have access to the database for free, while non-members will have access but must pay the $34.99 fee QuietAgent requests to reveal the anonymous job seeker’s contact info. Contingency search firms will not be allowed access to the database.

QuietAgent’s new Managing Director, Phil Haynes, said the idea first sprung from a talk he had with QuietAgent CEO Jason Kerr while Haynes was still the Strategy Manager of Global Talent Acquisition at Wachovia. Haynes told Kerr about the challenges corporate recruiters face when utilizing expensive third party agencies, SEO firms, and job boards to attract candidates.

“After doing a lot of research on other companies we discovered that Wachovia was not unique in the fact that we only hire about 2 or 3 percent of all the people who fill out applications, yet we spend millions of dollars on attracting these candidates,” Haynes said. “That’s a terrible ROI. So we decided to form this alliance and get other companies to agree to send all these rejected candidates an email proposing the opportunity to get into this pool where other companies can present new opportunities.”

So why hire a rejected candidate? Haynes said that every day recruiting departments reject “A” candidates because they don’t have the ability or finances to bring them on, so by ”contributing to consume,” companies are building a diverse, talent-rich database that can be shared.

Getting more big-name companies to sign on to the partnership was easy, Haynes said. “We told them that when you are rejecting a half a million job seekers, you are also rejecting your customers. With this new candidate-focused experience, we are stopping the disenfranchisement of people with your brand.”

Hayes said another added bonus was the fact that agency recruiters are not allowed access to these candidates. “Agencies set up call centers and have people on the phone making 50 outbound calls a day, which corporate recruiters cannot do. They are always struggling with how to compete with third party recruiters. So we wanted to level the playing field by only letting Corporate America search the database. It’s the war to talent, not for talent.”

Kristina Parker, Director of Selection at Best Buy, said the membership within AllianceQ “ensures that our candidates can be connected to opportunities - inside or outside of Best Buy - that can put their strengths to work.”

Wachovia was the first member of AllianceQ to launch their revamped rejection letter to candidates with the AllianceQ endorsement attached. According to Haynes, their stats show that for every 1000 candidates rejected, 250 are signing on to QuietAgent. AllianceQ hopes to have about 30,000 new candidates each week.  

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