Problem:
An information technology recruiting firm has been growing rapidly over the past few years. The number of clients over the past year has quadrupled, and the number of employees has doubled. As a result, the firm is moving to a new, larger office complex. When the company moves, it would like to update the data storage systems. It currently stores all of its records in manual files. What advice would you give the managers of this company? What would be the best storage system for their needs and why? Be sure to include the following information:
-Advice given to managers
-The storage system that best fits the needs of the company
-Reasons why this is the best storage system
Solution:
I would suggest that the information technology recruiting firm should take a step towards migration of their entire system to a Relational Database Management System (RDMS). Introduction of RDMS will simplify their recruitment processes by optimizing whatever data and procedure they might already have in their current repository and make their database much to match more with the need of their clients. Database management system will enable an easier and faster approach to extract the information related to a potential candidate based on parameters like skills, experience, preferences etc. rather than trying to look it up manually. As the recruitment firm has grown to a good size, record keeping and searching through massive data can become a matter of seconds Vs. hours and for any business, time is directly proportional to money. Therefore, the managers of the firm should focus on making an intelligent choice. The market is flooded with several database management systems but most of them tend to vary immensely in price. The crux of the requirement of the recruitment firm in question here does not highlight any of their need to be on an enterprise level. Therefore, a simple inexpensive solution should be considered for this technology recruiting firm. One such tempting option can be Microsoft Access 2010 or above.
Microsoft Access can be used to improve and simplify the administration, organization of necessary documents, enable a comprehensive search for resumes by automating the whole process of communication with the job candidates using some pre-designed email templates and computerized SMS facility. With the use of proper tables, queries and report build with aptly defined relationships among them, it can serve as a great aid for recruiters to quickly find out and manage information about their candidates, vacancies and numerous clients.
Microsoft Access is also an ideal choice because it is not only a desktop based system, but can also be integrated with other sever applications to leverage its architecture. As it comes as part of Microsoft Office suit, there is a lot of common interface and support options available thus making employees feel comfortable with it at the very place. It is significantly cheaper than Oracle or SQL Server or any other of its counterparts. The most important thing is that it is a matter of days that a development team can migrate the existing system to MS-Access with little downtime, if there is any.
As the need grows further for the company, the managers may also consider leveraging their database to a cloud-based web enabled system where their database and front-end programs get hosted by an internet service provider. The system can then be accessed remotely, either from home or at a remote office or even from their client’s location. As a range of data gets available to everyone everywhere, new candidates added to the system can be made available to all the recruiters immediately and it speeds up the entire recruitment process.