TheSkillsMarket win Innovator of the Year award

TheSkillsMarket, the UKís growing supplier to the recruitment industry, won ATSCoís much-coveted ìInnovator of the Yearî award having been nominated by a number of its clients for its latest version of its resourcing tool. The tool was designed by recruitment consultants for recruitment consultants to specifically help them make placements faster than ever before.

The award was presented to Daniel Elkins, CEO of TheSkillsMarket, at ATSCoís sixth annual charity ball to an audience of over 500 of the industryís leading figures at London’s Intercontinental Hotel. The award, which was voted by an independent panel of adjudicators, recognised TheSkillsMarketís resoucing tool as the most innovative and pioneering product introduced into the staffing industry over the past 12 months.

Elkins commented: ìOur resourcing tool is the result of extensive research into how recruitment consultants like to work and our tool enables them to resource for vacancies much faster than their competition. This award is an acknowledgement that the considerable effort of all those that work at TheSkillsMarket and our clients alike does pay off and we look forward to showing more recruitment companies how our innovative approach to resourcing can help them to make more placements more quickly as well.î

TheSkillsMarketís resourcing tool was built after their research revealed that the average recruitment consultant spends 67% of their time on resourcing activities and only 33% actually selling to their clients. Also, for every placement made consultants read a staggering 769 CVs, of which 56% were not worth reading in the first place.

Elkins continued: ìTechnology should be reducing the cost of making placements but in most cases the opposite is occurring. Recruitment consultants are wasting more and more time wading through thousands of CVs to find the best candidates. Getting CVs to clients faster than anyone else is key to making placements and our product focuses on enabling consultants to do this by combining all the techniques that work for them whilst taking away all the slow and frustrating hurdles. Clients already using the tool are benefiting from the results and as it is rolled out to the rest of our client base more and more iProfile Compatible recruitment companies will soon stand out for their speed of delivery.î

The product was launched with selected clients in April 2005 and it is currently being rolled out to the rest of TheSkillsMarketís customers. 42% of the UKís top 50 IT recruitment companies are already signed up to receive it and once fully rolled out over 2,000 consultants will be using it as their primary resourcing tool.

A consultant at leading London IT recruitment consultancy, JM, commented: ìTheSkillsMarketís resourcing tool has easily cut my resourcing time by over 50%. Within the first two weeks of installing it I had secured several interviews of the back of it. The ability to store hot lists in searchable folders that are kept up-to-date has been invaluable. The interface is excellent because it is so user friendly and it enables me to quickly review candidatesí information as well as see which CVs I have already read. It is definitely enabling me to deliver CVs to clients faster than ever before.î