iProfile In Oz

July 31, 2008

The UK-based online CV service iProfile looks set to catch some waves down-under as it secures deals with several leading Australian recruiters. Recruitment partners include Abraxas, Ambition, Finite and Paxus, who will provide the iProfile service to candidates at no charge.

We first spotted iProfile in July last year when they signed a partnership with UK job board Jobserve. At the time iProfile operated under the name SkillsMarket, but the company rebrand to the name of their flagship product in May.

To see how iProfile worked we signed up and took it for a spin. The first step was to upload an old CV and allow iProfile to import it. We had some reservations about how well this would work, but it was surprisingly effective.

The two-page Microsoft Word CV was converted into a structured online document broken down into logical sections. We could then modify the layout of the CV, edit items and hide items such as contact details. On the downside, you cannot import a profile from a service like LinkedIn, which would appeal to web savvy users.

We were impressed with iProfile’s methods for protecting a job seeker’s personal details. Phone Number Masking allocates a new 0843 phone number to the job seeker. This number is then published with the iProfile CV and employers wishing to contact the candidate call this number, which is automatically forwarded to the job seeker’s mobile or home phone. It’s a great way to protect job seeker’s private details and worked well when we trialed it. Phone calls are charged to the caller at 5p to landlines and 19.98p to mobiles.

Once an iProfile CV has been set-up, you can send the CV to other people for review. This process is not as smooth as we would have liked. Before someone else can view your CV they are forced to sign-up with iProfile. This seems an unnecessary step and we found it detracted from the overall experience and ease of use.

Back to the job seeker experience; the main iProfile dashboard allows you to track the progress of your CV creation, manage who has access to your CV and find agencies. It is also possible to download the iProfile CV in a Microsoft Word document format (either 2003+ or 97 – 2003). For recruiters, a special Recruiter View allows you to manage the iProfiles you have access to.

Finally, it’s not unlikely that at some stage a job seeker will want to remove their CV from the system, either because they no longer need it, it is out of date or they have moved on to a different service. iProfile provides a Delete iProfile option, but when we tried it the service returned an error and reported it could not process our request. We were able to delete a profile for a second account we set-up, which suggests this is not an issue for all users. We’ve referred it to iProfile technical support and will update this article when we have more details.

1 Comment »

1. […] in order to work with the rest of the recruitment community. Having said that, iProfile does have impressive features. It has been fairly successful in the UK . We will give it a closer look when the product launch in […]

   Pingback by Resume service provider doesn’t provide reprieve? | Destination Talent — August 10, 2008 @ 4:49 am

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