What is converged recruiting software?

You are converged when your database, email, and phone are all combined into a single interface and presentation environment, with integration between them to provide for seamless use; ideally encompassing mobile computing and cross-platform use away from Windows PC’s.     

There are some major competitive advantages in being a converged user.  You will save time clicking between your email and db, cutting and pasting documents, dialing the phone, and creating new database records arising from emails and phone calls.  You will have a true virtual office; so you will save time e-mailing files to yourself, setting up multiple voice mail and Outlook accounts, checking versions and backups for multiple computers.  You will be more accessible to your audience (when you want to be, of course) because your full suite of technology will be portable in a practical way.    

An even more compelling reason to become converged is that it can help you make connections that you otherwise might miss.   You can quickly and situationally review complete e-mail correspondence and phone records along with activity information from database records, so you will be generally more informed more of the time.   The more complex your process are and the interactions between you, your team, and your audience, the more benefit you will see from a converged experience.  

How is converged recruiting software achieved?

The core of converged technology is web-based database software system – you can call it your ATS, or your CRM, or your recruiting software, Service Delivery Platform, etc. but the function is the same; it’s the main set of data tables that will hold information about people, jobs, and events.  

Converged applications will share this framework to manage e-mail and phone information.  A web-based e-mail client is the next critical piece.  E-mail clients are the last stop of any -mail's trip, and it’s usually your personal software. E-mail client software is used for storing, reading, and writing e-mails.  Your e-mail service, on the other hand, is the arrangement with which your e-mail client is able to send e-mail messages to the Internet, to then be routed to the recipients through various mail servers in various organizations, ending up inside their email client to be read, deleted, etc.   Your e-mail service need not be affected by any changes to your e-mail client.   The web based email client will share database tables with the central system. 

Can you use more than one e-mail client?   Yes, there are several methods to do so.  You can simply forward all of your received e-mail to a second e-mail address, and connect that second address to your converged e-mail client.   Any email items sent from the database will be reflected in the sent items section of your converged e-mail client, and all of your received mails will have been forwarded and so will show up in the inbox of your converged email client.  However, your email items sent from your Outlook or other non-converged e-mail client would not be reflected in the converged e-mail client’s sent items folder, unless you also forwarded them to the email address connected to your converged e-mail client.   Alternatively, a local software utility can synchronize your multiple e-mail clients in real-time.  The converged software vendor provides the utility; you decide which way is the best for your situation.     

The telephone situation is somewhat similar to e-mail; your non-converged telephone is the end-point or start-point of a sometimes-complex process that moves your voice to the public phone network and then to someone else’s’ phone.  In the early days of telephony, you were directly electrically connected to other phones, but now your voice is recorded, transmitted, received, and reassembled by various equipments many times on its trip.  Today, the Internet is serving as a substantial part of the public phone network as voice traffic is switched between traditional telephone technology and the Internet, now easily possible because voice and data are indistinguishable.  This broad trend is known as voice over IP or the common ‘VoIP’.  

In a converged recruiting application, your telephone handset and office phone system is replaced by software, but your phone service carrier, long-distance provider, etc. all may remain the same, or may be changed.  The Software telephones use several communications protocols to communicate over your LAN or the Internet to a phone server, which interfaces with your carrier.  The two prevailing protocols are H.323 and SIP.  These protocols allow telephone software (‘Softphones’) to interact with telephone systems.

With the ability to reach your Softphone over the Internet, your phone system can be accessed from anywhere, including voicemail, extensions, and other phone system features.  Inbound and outbound calls can be made, recorded (both the event and the actual call content), screen pops occur when known callers ring in, and any number of excellent phone system benefits like find-me/follow-me , adaptive call groups, and IVR can be used. 

How do you get converged recruiting software?

Costs very depending on your situation; as with many technologies, converged installations are more cost-effective with larger numbers of end-users.  Because of the high-value of information and personal information productivity inherent in recruiting practices, recruiting organizations with as few as three to five end-users can still show tremendous returns on investment from becoming converged.

Vendors are all over the map with this one; find out if yours is working on voice and email or is taking other steps to bring various computing environments together.  Like any leading edge technology vector, you will find a range of approaches from open systems to sealed proprietary designs, at every price point, with many interesting variations as the market for these applications forms.        

In recruiting, working with your telephone, e-mail, and data of all kinds with one single interface is something that (to paraphrase Ferris Bueller) if you have the means to accomplish, I highly recommend.