Manpower takes advantage of ‘humanistic’ NCorp search engine

Manpower have announced the implementation of NCorp’s ‘Ijen’ state-of-the-art technology for its candidate-to-vacancy matching system.

The Ijen system – 10 years in the making – works by developing an understanding of what constitutes the closest match between a candidate and a job. Manpower is the first in the staffing industry to utilise this technology, which is able to replicate the complex matching ability of the human brain. Ijen forms part of Manpower’s new proprietary web-based system, PowerBase.Net which will be introduced later this year.

“The idea was to get a product to provide quality matching facility for candidates. The programme is a quality front-office matching system which will match up a candidate with a client in a humanistic way,” said Yoav Michaely, managing director of Manpower Inc.

UK employment prospects will face a sharp dive in the first quarter of the year, according to Manpower's ‘Quarterly Survey of Employment Prospects’. UK employer’s predictions for the period January-March 2002 show the steepest quarter-on-quarter drop in the 33-year history of the survey. However, Mr Michaely believes that the Ijen system will help improve prospects for many in the marketplace.

“For example, the IT sector is depressed but it has not reached bottom yet. But no matter of the situation in the UK, in any environment there are always vacancies. Even in the worst economies there are always people to place – there will always be candidates and vacancies. Ijen will further help our consultants to select the best possible candidates according to specific client requirements,” he said.

Nick Bidmead, chief executive officer of NCorp said that the system is “ideal for an industry like staffing and recruitment”.

“Enabling Manpower’s consultants to maximise the potential of its entire database, whilst simultaneously improving the quality of matches, is something that traditional structured query language (SQL) searching just cannot deliver,” he said.

Recruitment consultants regularly have to make candidate choices based on skillset, location, availability and personality. Yoav Michaely believes that Ijen “will certainly help our consultants narrow down the right applicants for the right job even more quickly and effectively”.

Manpower Inc. provides workforce management services and solutions to 400,000 customers world wide through 3,800 offices in 59 countries and annually provides employment to more than 2.7 million people worldwide. NCorp are best known for websites like autotrader.com, lastminute.com and easyvalue.com. (GMcG)