The site's initial goal was simple: present retail as a viable career option to new college graduates, and Federated as a particularly enlightened employer. That proved so successful that over time, the company has expanded the site's capabilities; last October, during a 10-week pilot that coincided with the holiday hiring period, 49,000 people self-selected interview times after having submitted their resumes and passed the first round of screening.
Susan Burns, operational vice president for employment initiatives and college relations, says that while the front end of Retailology is essentially informational, the back end is a heavily automated candidate-tracking system that replaces a once intensely manual task, freeing HR staff to address "talent-opportunity areas." For example, if a promising candidate applies when there is no suitable opening, a Federated recruiter will maintain a dialogue with that person and alert the individual when an opening occurs. "Handling that kind of follow-up was virtually impossible when everything was paper- and phone-based," she says. Today, more than one quarter of the 100,000+ employees hired by Federated apply via the Web, and that percentage is growing. "No doubt it's a very cost-effective way to extend your reach," Burns says. "We expect the talent market to get even tighter, and we'll need more tools like this in order to keep the pipeline flowing." —S.L.
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