The working earth harnesses power of the web with Progress System

Johannesburg — 08 Dec 2006 — The Working Earth, an e-recruitment provider, has streamlined its processes with the implementation of an application developed by Progress partner Telesis Interactive, a company that delivers Web-enabled products and services to a diverse range of businesses via the Internet.

As an online automated electronic screening facility, The Working Earth publishes recruitment advertisements on behalf of its clients and handles all responses, providing the clients with a final shortlist of suitable candidates. The company wanted to implement a solution that would fully automate all its processes via the Internet.

"Applicants used to submit their CVs via e-mail or fax, and handling the huge volumes of responses in a professional and fair manner, and in accordance with labour legislation, was a costly and time-consuming exercise," says Anne-Marie Stanisavljevic, marketing director of The Working Earth. "What we wanted was a technology-based solution that would enable us to leverage the power of the Internet to handle responses and create shortlists for our clients.

"Telesis's solution has streamlined our workload and made the recruitment process entirely paperless, both for us and the clients we represent. A thousand applications for one advertised position is not unusual; the solution has reduced our turnaround time and made our volumes far more manageable."

Using the Web as its medium, Telesis Interactive specialises in technologies and services which lower the cost of delivering applications and communication tools. As a Progress development house Telesis developed a solution for The Working Earth using Progress's WebSpeed, an environment for developing and deploying highly scalable, Web-based Internet transaction processing (ITP) applications, which support real-time data access and data management.

Stanisavljevic says the biggest benefit of the Telesis solution is the fact that it can take over 1 000 applications for a position and produce a shortlist of the top 20 eligible candidates. "We can also create shortlists based on race and gender, which is an important factor given the employment equity drive of most major employers."

In terms of good corporate image, all job applicants should receive a response from the company they have applied to, regardless of whether they are accepted or rejected as potential candidates. With the solution developed for The Working Earth, all applicants automatically receive an e-mail informing them of whether or not they have made the shortlist. "This is another major advantage for us and our clients, in terms of saving us time while ensuring that we meet legal requirements," says Stanisavljevic.

The company has over 60 clients, including the South African Revenue Service (SARS), Sun International, Nedbank, Liberty Life and Avroy Shlain Cosmetics. The screening processes are tailored according to the requirements of each client, some of whom may have more stringent criteria than others. The Working Earth can provide URL-based branded versions of its website to clients to integrate with their intranet or their Web site.

"Some clients have strict rules about the look and feel of their career section," says Stanisavljevic. "Our ability to offer them branded Web sites is a major differentiator for us, and it gives clients the ability to advertise their positions internally as well, while providing internal applicants with a sense of familiarity."

The application has proved to be so successful that Telesis recently duplicated it and is hosting it under a separate URL for The Working Earth's Australian site.

"Progress WebSpeed is the best integrated development environment for building and deploying highly scalable, e-business applications that process large volumes of transactions like The Working Earth's," says Rick Parry, MD of Progress Software South Africa. "WebSpeed has proved itself time and again in several different market sectors in terms of its high throughput, sub-second transaction times, and dynamic load balancing, all of which provide the scalability to handle thousands of simultaneous users."

About Progress Software South Africa

Progress Software South Africa is a subsidiary of US-based Progress Software Corporation, the world leader in the embedded database market. The company provides the underlying software technology and services required for successfully developing, deploying, integrating, and managing e-business solutions. Progress actively pursues innovative technologies and new business opportunities that allow companies to make an effective transition to true e-business environments. Progress's OpenEdge platform enables its partners to deliver lowest cost-of-ownership applications that are rapidly implemented and easily integrated within and across the extended enterprise. The company's extensive partner base includes more than 2 000 application partners and application service providers who supply more than $5 billion in Progress-based applications and services annually. Over 50 000 organisations across 100 countries — including 70% of the Fortune 100 — rely on Progress technology.

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