Hi Friends,

Even as I launch this today ( my 80th Birthday ), I realize that there is yet so much to say and do. There is just no time to look back, no time to wonder,"Will anyone read these pages?"

With regards,
Hemen Parekh
27 June 2013

Now as I approach my 90th birthday ( 27 June 2023 ) , I invite you to visit my Digital Avatar ( www.hemenparekh.ai ) – and continue chatting with me , even when I am no more here physically

Friday 1 September 2000

RECRUITGURU



In the already overcrowded e-recruitment marker, comes a newly launch 

product with a difference…www.recruitguru.com. There is no huge, upfront 

annual subscription. Its service can be activated with a nominal 

activation-fee. It is a pay-per-use or pay –when-use or tariff-based

 self-service, much like a prepaid SIM card of a cellphone. The subscriber can 

customize what service he wants to use and when. A transparent and powerful

 Admin Tool (Flight Deck) places entire control in the hands of the subscriber.

 He can monitor modify usage-pattern of all the “authorize” recruitment 

managers of his company at anytime and in any manner of his choice

. Subscriber can create their own private / secure resume database on 

RecruitGuru (which no one else can access).
Artificial intelligence based, self-learning software of RecruitGuru, will

 automatically convert plain emails resumes into a structured and searchable 

database, without  human  intervention ! So, thousands of email resumes 

accumulated by a corporate over the years, overnight get transformed into a 

database. Now, instead of re-advertising same or similar vacancies again and 

again, all that the subscriber needs to do, is to search his own or secure 

database, using RecruitGuru’s powerful search engine. This one feature alone 

can save lakhs of rupees in advertising cost annually. A its homepage 

proclaims, it could we; be heralding in the future of recruitment web services.


BACKGROUND STATISTICS

  • India has over 100 million jobseekers – 44 million of whom are registered with some 945 Govt. employment Exchanges.

  • In 2003, Employment exchanges could place only 1.5 lakh registered jobseekers.

  • Some 2 million jobseekers are registering with the Employment Exchanges every year.

  • 17.2% of those registered are graduates

  • Some 3 million students graduate from Indian colleges each year, of which approx. 3000,000 are engineering professionals.

  • Of India’s  workforce, some 7 million are in the “Organised” sector

  • Some 850,000 professionals are working in the IT/ITES sector

  • Manpower requirement in IT/ITES/BPO sector is growing at the rate of 30% per year and expected to reach  5 million by the year 2012.

  • In his budget speech, Mr. Chidambaram said “IT sector, by 2009, will offer an additional 7 million jobs”

  • The churn-rate in BPO sector ranges between 60% - 90% (Last year, spectramind’s annualized churn-rate was 90%)

  • Churn-rate in IT sector ranges between 15% - 25%

  • Company like Infosys, last year received ONE MILLION emails resumes against their various job-advts ! Processing such a huge volume of resumes, to short list a few thousand for interviewing to ultimate appoint 12000, is getting to be nightmare for Recruitment Manager everywhere.

  • Between April & December 2004 WIPRO made 40,000 employment offers!
  •  
     
  • Major Indian jobsites ( Monster / Naukri / JobAhead / Jobstreet etc) Between them, claim to have resume database of 7 / 9 million professionals.
  •  
     
  • Discounting duplicates, this could be 5 / 6 million.

  • Major Indian jobsites, between them boast of

  • 250,000 job-posting database

  • 10,000 New job posting DAILY (-although many are repeated day-after-day!)
  •  
     
  • 15000 corporate clients
  •  
     
  • Some 630,000 complains are registered with the Dept. of Companies Affairs (DCA)

FAQ


What is GuruMine/ What does it do/ How does GuruMine help?

It is a web service that makes HR Manager’s life easier and more effective by:
Extracting resumes automatically into a structured database – could be used for precise searching and mail merging 

Instantaneously plotting the competence profile of candidates, using artificial intelligence (knowledge bases)

Facilitating quick-reading of incoming/existing resumes by highlighting important keywords found in the resume

Helping in interviewing the candidates by displaying what’s missing in her/his resume compared to an ideal profile

In short, improve the speed of hiring the right candidates at reduced costs!

Who can use this software?

RecruitGuru Services can be used by:

Corporate Recruiters

HR Manager and Head of HR to perform intelligent searches on the candidate database.

Department Heads to view the competence profile of their employees.

Why  "Web-service"?

Latest applications all over the world are moving towards Web Services Architecture. It has tremendous advantage over current applications:

It allows integration and collaboration of various applications that are already available to the business.

XML based communication offers structured and most widely acceptable form of data exchange.

The application based on web-services can be accessed from any device like PDAs, laptops, mobiles, PCs etc.

Highly scalable and more secured compared to traditional internet  applications.

Can it process any resume? What limitations? How about international and other language resumes?

Currently it is capable of processing Word Document, Rich Text Format (RTF) and HTML resumes. We will expand it to cover formats in the next version. 

Although it could extract most of the details from any English language resume, we are currently offering this service only on Indian Resumes. Future versions will cover additional countries and non-English resumes. 

How long does it take to process a resume? How long for 1000 resumes? What kind of performance benchmark testing has been done?

Processing time depends on various factors like Network speed, Client Hardware, Volume etc. as well as the size of the resume. Initial test show average time taken is about 6 to 8  seconds per resume. Thus, around 500 resumes per hour. However, this could be improved manifold after due performance tuning of the application. Benchmark testing using advanced load testing tools will be performed prior to commercial release. 

How is duplication of resumes handled?

Currently the software checks for the First Name and Date of Birth or E-Mail ID for the duplication. The user can decide his/her own criteria for checking.

Can we extract resumes in bulk? If yes, how do we know the success and failure cases?

Yes you can extract the resumes in bulk. Once you upload the batch of resumes and start the extractions, no need to stay connected. Next time when you login int he application gives you the statistics of how many resumes got extracted successfully, how many got rejected and why, how were the duplicates etc.

Which all resume formats are extracted? Can it read the resume directly from an email?

As of now it can extract Word Doc, HTML and RTFs. We plan to update it to extract PDF in future. Currently the software can not read the resumes directly from email. But in future surely it will do.

What kind of bandwidth/internet connection speed ids required?

On normal 56k modem on can use this so software. But if you plan to upload the resumes in bulk then you need the higher bandwidth. We also provide an option whereby you can send us the resumes on a CD and then we will extract the resumes in-house.

Which all fields are extracted?

  • Name

  • Age

  • Experience

  • Educational Qualification

  • City / Country

  • Function

  • Industry

  • Designation

  • Current Employer

  • Keywords

  • Address

  • Phone No./ Email-ID

Do you plan to add further “Modules” to your web service to cover entire range of Recruitment process?

Yes we plan to add modules like, “manpower Request Module”, “interview Management Module” etc. to our offering so that we can cover the entire recruitment process.

While searching the candidates for short listing, can we perform both free-text and database search?

YES

How does GuruMine protect my resume database, lying on your web server?

We have hosted our webservers behind the strong firewalls. One cannot reach database server using internet only. Since we offer the separate databases for each client, one can not access the other’s database.

After  converting emails resumes into a structured database, using your web service suppose I want to migrate / export such structured resume-database, to one of my other OFFLINE HR applications, can I do so?

We provide this facility under CUSTOMISATION. We will study the database and the offline applications that you are using and accordingly will provide the export facility so that you can easily merger the extracted data with other applications.

As far as usage of your web service is concerned, what kind of “ statistics” will you provide?

The application will provide you the statistics about the how many searches a user in your company has conducted, how many resumes he has extracted, what is the cost of all these transactions, what is the balance money left in your account. This statistic could be seen online at any time.

Will you be using OUR resumes for any other purpose? If so, what purpose?

Your resumes are exclusively your property. We do not use your resumes for any purpose.

What kind of Technical support would you provide as a part of your web service?

Since your database resides on our webservers, we provide you the support to back up the database regularly and to fine tune it to optimise. Apart from that we provide free one time training either online or offline whichever is most convenient.

In what different ways can I make payments for the web service? Can I make “online” payment using credit-card?

Currently you can make the payment by cheque, Demand draft payable in Mumbai.
Soon you would be able to pay online using Credit Card.

How will I come to know that the “balance” in my subscription account is running low and that it is time to replenish it with fresh payment?

When your credit balance will reach to the 10% of what you had deposited, you will start getting emails alerts.

If I am an “individual” and not a “Corporate – body”, Can I still avail of your Web-service? Can I become your subscriber?

These webservices are more meant for the Corporates, but still an individual can avail these services on RecruitGuru’s discretion.

Instead of keeping our resume-database on your on your web server, can we keep it on our local server in our office and still be able t use your web service?

Yes you can do this, but it is not advisable. This arrangement will need the higher bandwidth (ideally higher than 512 KBPS)

What kind of hardware / software / telecom link will we need to be able to use your web service?

Being the webservice, you can use these application on a normal configuration computer. For using GuruSearch 56 KBPS internet speed is sufficient. But if you plan to upload the resumes in bulk then you require the higher bandwidth depending upon the total size of resumes in batch.

Do you have a provision whereby your web service can link-up with other web services (e.g : Online Testing of software engineers)

Yes. Typically a webservice is meant for that. But in doing this some customization may be needed.

GURUMINE

Dear Recruiter,

You are getting thousand of unstructured resumes against your job-advts, but these remain “unsearchable” because, these are unstructured. And you end-up advertising again & again for identical  vacancies !

What GuruMine does, is to convert these unstructured resumes into a structured database automatically, accurately, speedily. GuruMine "extracts" nearly 23  "fields"  from an unstructured resume ! So, anytime (now or in future), you can search this database, for

Name
Age
Experience
Educational
Qualification
City / Country
Function
Industry
Designation
Current Employer
Keywords
Address
Phones No. / Email-id

GuruMine even develops for each candidate, a “Functional Exposure Profile” graph, for top three functions, where his expertise lies. Not only does GuruMine "Score" each candidate’s knowledge/ skills, it even compare his “score” with thousands of similar candidates in the database and computers his “percentile” (his “standing” amongst pear group ). So, now you can decide, whom to call for interview – just by looking at the graph !


Key Features & Benefits

  • Extract key information from resumes automatically and stores into a structured database

  • Facilitates quick reading of incoming / existing resumes by highlighting important keywords found in the resume

  • Identifies keywords that are unique or uncommon amongst similar profiles
  •  
  • Helps in interviewing the candidate by displaying highlight of what is 
       mentioned in resume compared to an ideal profile 

  • Eliminates the manual entry of the data from the resume to the Application Tracking System
  •  
     
  • Reduces data entry errors, time consumed and duplicate storing of the resumes

  • Need not go through the entire resume manually in order to identify the core skill of the candidates. The “Function Exposure Profile” would enable the user to instantly identify the core areas of a candidates functional background.
  •  
     
  • Process Resumes of various formats such as Word Document, Email bodies, File folders, HTML documents etc.

IMAGE BUILDER


Version of resumes to their clients, who gain a distinct "Competitive Advantage". By delivering "Image Builder" resumes, they would be

  • Vastly reducing their client’s recruitment cycle and cost
  •  
  • Increasing the productivity and performance of the HR dept.

  • Increasing the “throughout”

  • Improving the “decision-making”

  • Enhancing the “quality” of appointments

Such a "Value-Added-Service" on the part of placement agencies and jobsites, would be greatly appreciated by their corporate clients, which, in turn, would bring for them, more clients, and more revenue.

B. Jobseekers

RecruitGuru’s vehicle for serving millions of jobseekers is

World-Wide-Jobs.com

Through WWJ, RecruitGuru plans to deliver latest / relevant job-alerts to jobseekers, as SMS on their mobiles. RecruitGuru’s brand for this is

JAM- Job Alert on Mobile

Not only that, WWJ will enable a jobseeker to "Apply Online" against any such SMS, directly from his mobile and  from wherever he happens to be, WITHOUT NEEDING A PC / INTERNET !

“Supply- Chain”

WWJ is downloading thousands of job-advts everyday (only those posted during last 24  hours) from dozens of jobsites.

By "aggregating" job-advts. from dozens of jobsites, WWJ has neatly solved its "supply-chain" logistics, and completely automated the process.

In long-term, WWJ will enter into "Strategic Alliances" with major jobsites, under a UNIQUE, data exchange program.

Delivery /Distribution

For delivering job-alerts to candidates, WWJ is in the process of tieing-up with all the mobile service provides (MSP) of India. The job-alerts SMS will get delivered through MSPs, who will charge their subscribers, for MO (mobile-originated) as well as  MT (mobile terminated) SMS.

MSPs will share their revenue with WWJ.

Since MSPs are keeping for themselves, a major share of the JAM SMS revenue, they will, on their own, carryout, all marketing / selling / promotional activities. WWJ will not be required to spend anything on these activities.

MSPs will also take care of all accounting/ billing / payment collection activities for this Value-Added-Service to their mobile subscribers. This means WWJ will not be burdened by these and will not need to spend any effort / money on these activities.

In course of time, we plan to extend WWJ/ JAM activity to other English speaking countries, such as USA/UK/Canada/ Australia etc. by tieing up with the mobile service providers of those countries.

At present, India has a mobile subscriber base of 50 million. By end of 2007, this figure is expected to cross 200 million.

It is also very clear that, in the next 5 years, a smart mobile phone, will be very common and will become THE DEVICE OF CHOCE for a consumer for conducting all of his e-commerce transactions. Mobile phone will make deep inroads into “Comparison Shopping” for not only goods bur also for services.

For a jobseeker, SMS job-alerts are a kind of “Comparison Shopping” and the ultimate convenience to be able to “ Apply Online” from mobile, is bound t  make the traditional jobsearches ( on dozens of jobsite ) DEAD!

For million of jobseekers, WWJ / JAM will become their

BUSINESS MODEL / REVENUE MODEL


RecruitGuru proposes to adopt following business model:

A. Corporates , Placement Agencies and Jobsites

RecruitGuru will make available to corporate (end-employers),placement agencies ( middlemen) and to jobsites, its GuruMine / GuruSearch software/ applications through a licensing agreement.

These software /applications will be installed on the local servers of “Licensees”.

For use of these software / applications, licensees will pay to RecruitGuru (the licensor) a certain amount for each resume processed / extracted using GuruMine, subject to a minimum monthly charge. Once-a-month, each licensee will upload onto RecruitGuru’s  webserver, the "Counter-statistics", of the no. of resume processed during the month, based on which, RecruitGuru will invoice the concerned licensee.

This arrangement, being a “pay-per-use” and “pay-when-use” is ideally suited for small / medium enterprises, which are most reluctant to make a heavy upfront investment (often running into lakhs of rupees), for a software application whose utility / usefulness/ benefits are vague and unknown at the time of purchase.

In our case, there is no upfront payment for these software (except for a small installation / activation charge). He pays only if he uses these software. And he is certainly not going to use these, unless he sees / feels clear benefits in using !

Again, a licensee only pays for extraction (i.e. GuruMine ) of each resume.
A licensee gets to use Guru Search (search software) absolutely FREE! So, even if he stops using GuruMine, he still gets to use GuruSearch, absolutely FREE.

Everytime Recruitguru, introduces, a new version of GuruMine/ GuruSearch, it will intimate the licensee, who can then download the latest version from RecruitGuru.com upon payment of a nominal “UPGRADE” charge.

Since, a licensee’s resume database, reside on his own local server, he has no worry / fear of unauthorized ‘access’ from a third party. He can install his own Data Security measures. This will vastly increase the acceptance-level of GuruMine / GuruSearch amongst the licensees.

Once again, by making our revenue-model “pay-per-use”, at a very nominal charge (per resume extracted), - by not having any upfront fee/ charge-we plan to increase its acceptance amongst a large no of small / medium size companies, whose daily processing may be 100 / 150 resumes. Even they would find it very economical to install / use GuruMine / GuruSearch.

We believe, GuruMine / GuruSearch will be of considerable importance to placement Agencies and Jobsites, who are constantly on look- out for better ways to satisfy their corporate clients.

In relation to Placement Agencies and jobsites, which deliver to their corporate clients, plain text / unstructured / unsearchable resumes, those placement agencies / jobsites which deliver

SOLUTIONS



To solve the problems (listed under “Problem statement”), RecruitGuru (a sister-concern of 3P Consultants) have come-up with following solutions:

A. RecruitGuru.com

An AI software hosted on this “Webservice” (website), creates a structured database from millions of plan text resumes and renders these (resumes) "Searchable"

The software also automatically creates graphical "Function Profile" for each resume/candidates- something that no commercially available extraction software, is able to do !

GuruMine and Gurusearch are the main components of this  "pay-per-use"

A. World-wide-jobs.com

A few jobsites do send job-alerts to registered candidates, as emails.

However, these emails alerts suffer from following “disadvantages”:

  • A jobseeker must find a PC and log onto internet, to be able to “access” these emails IDs from their offices and can access their email job-alerts only from home or from a cyber cafĂ©-a great inconvenience.

  • A jobseeker must register with large no. of jobsites to receive email job-alerts, to ensure that he does not miss-out on interesting jobs. But then, all jobsites do ZNOT offer email job-alert feature!

  • From an email job-alert, a candidate cannot “Apply Online” so, once again, he must log into all those jobsites, one-by-one!

  • Most jobsites match a job-advt against a candidate’s resume and throw-up “irrelevant” job-alerts. These jobsites have no mechanism to match jobs against a jobseeker’s “Preferences”

  • Many job-alerts are against “Old/ obsolete/stale” jobs, which are already filled-up, longtime back! So jobseeker’s time/ effort are wasted.

World-Wide-Jobs.com overcomes all these limitation/disadvantages and delivers to a candidate,

  • Relevant job-alerts
               (matched with his job preferences)

  • Fresh job-alerts
               (against job-advt posted on jobsites during last 24 hours)

  • Many job-alerts
               (by aggregating job advts from many jobsites)

  • Fast job-alerts
               (within hours of posting)

  • Convenient job-alerts
               (by delivering as  SMS on their mobile phones, wherever    candidate    happens to be)

  • Facility to "Apply Online"
               ( directly from his mobile-phone, with a single “send” click)

PROBLEM STATEMENT



Recruitment problem consist of:

  • Matching the RIGHT candidates with jobs which are RELEAVANT to their skill/functional competency

  • Doing this “match-making” not only very fast ( to shorten the recruitment cycletime to a matter of few days), but to do it,

  • Accurately

  • Automatically

  • Reliably

  • Consistently


  • Delivering the Relevant job-alerts to the Right candidates, as soon as vacancies arises (job-broadcasting in real-time) and not passively wait for candidates to conduct “jobsearches” on jobsites, to perhaps “chance-upon” a relevant job!

Any “product/services” that can carry-out the above-mentioned tasks efficiently/ electronically/ automatically, would be in high demand and wholeheartedly embraced/ adopted by both

  • Jobseekers

  • Recruiters