A few weeks ago we put out a challenge to send us your best employment based tools; for job seekers, employers or both.  A few brave souls stepped into the ring and we will be rolling out our impressions in the next few days and weeks.

For our first review, we were delighted to be contacted by Claudia Faust and Alise Cortez of Improved Experience.  They are both experts in the industry and, in addition to having a firm understanding of challenges in the space, were a pleasure to speak with!

What we learned is that Improved Experience is a suite of business intelligence tools designed to help companies gather real time information on their recruiting process and practices in order to provide a better candidate experience.  Based on Claudia’s experience with companies such as T-Mobile, she and Alise developed the concept for this tool as a way to help companies show how the hiring process, good and bad, can impact their bottom line.

And why is this important?  Every company is driven by their profits and if you can show a data-driven overview of success and failure points at each step of the way AND benchmark those against the other corporations in your industry, you will have a much better chance of changing the way your executive leadership views staffing within your company.  As a result, your chances of getting funding for marketing and much needed tools and resources will increase.  Since this is a third party tool, you will also save money on outsourcing your candidate satisfaction surveys with the added bonus of receiving data interpreted by experts.

The one potential pitfall for employers in buying this tool is one that almost everyone faces when being part of a “cost center” – getting executive buyoff or even recognition that there is a recruiting problem in order to spend money to make changes.  At the same time companies that value talent as well as care about saving time and money in the long run on recruiting costs will line up in droves to be on Improved Experience’s client list.

The first offering that will be rolled out is called Get Better Hires.  However, they are in the planning phases of launching applications to address all phases of the recruiting lifecycle.  Basically, you’ll be able to find out what’s happening within the process from resume submittal to terminal conclusion with the company or candidate.

As Claudia and Alise walked us through Get Better Hires, we were very impressed.  What’s different about this application is that it provides a closed feedback loop to both employers and job seekers.  In fact, after completing the survey, job seekers have the opportunity to view data about their experience against others who have taken the survey for the same company.  I don’t know about you, but I would love to have information that I wasn’t the only one having a great or lousy interview experience with a company.

In the same vein, employers will have the opportunity to view their results benchmarked across several data points. The power in this is the ability to see how you might fair against others in your same industry or more globally, in attracting, hiring and interviewing talent overall.  This is great information to have readily available as you vie for budget dollars or to implement new programs.  While the tool customizable for each employer, it isn’t recommended to develop too many unique questions as this will skew your comparison data with other companies.  Plus there are plenty of free form dialogue boxes for job seekers to input anecdotal information about their experience in a number of areas. 

There are two key features of Get Better Hires that job seekers and employers should be aware of.  First, job seekers have the opportunity to chat live with support professional while filling out their questionnaire.  This is such a win/win feature for both getting accurate data and helping job seekers feel engaged.  Second, for employers Claudia and Alise provide expert interpretation of your data and follow up consulting services if needed so you aren’t left hanging either trying to figure out what the data means or what you should do next.

While the tool itself is intuitive and easy to use, if you are looking for a slick Web 2.0 user interface, you won’t find it here, but you also won’t miss it.  The proof is really in the power of the data, not necessarily the look of the tool. 

Claudia and Alise have truly thought through almost every aspect of developing this tool from privacy to accessibility to data integrity.  We’re bullish on their business and can’t wait to see how their launch and subsequent offerings are received in the industry.

The Facts:

• You can learn about Improved Experience here
• Pricing varies based on your business needs, but Claudia and Alise have worked hard to make this accessible to all business sizes