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Cornerstone²'s AOL Yellow Pages Hiring Blitz

Interview Exchange Client: Cornerstone² is a division of Cornerstone Knowledge Group, of Columbus, OH, a leading provider of outsourced services that effectively link businesses and sales prospects.

The Challenge: Rapidly hire up to 100 highly efficient inside sales professionals ready to hit the ground running for a new Cornerstone² strategic client: the fast-growing Internet Yellow Pages division of AOL Time Warner.

Not surprisingly, ad sales of the ubiquitous Yellow Pages phone book are going the way of newspaper and other print advertising. Namely, spending for Yellow Pages print ads, whose origin goes as far back as 1878, is plummeting by close to 5% a year. Meanwhile, Internet-based Yellow Pages directories are expected to surge from about $7 million last year, to $21 million this year, and more than $100 million in 2004.

Thus the urgency with which AOL is leaping at the emerging Internet Yellow Pages business opportunity. Clickable from various AOL properties, including MapQuest.com, Netscape and, of course, AOL.com itself, AOL's Yellow Pages enterprise is growing rapidly. So rapidly, in fact, that management needed an immediate influx of up to 100 seasoned, highly capable inside ad sales professionals to handle the tide of new and repeat business in AOL's Columbus, OH, telesales center.

The Solution: According to Jonathan Kirschman, who heads the Cornerstone² recruiting staff, the firm's contract with AOL required hiring roughly 10 highly qualified inside ad sales reps a week for up to 10 weeks - pronto!

"By using IE's COREquisites screening questionnaire," Kirschman says, "it's a fast, simple process to identify applicants who possess the basic as well as nice-to-have requirements for this job," such as sales experience, education and availability.

"The system is really effective at quickly showing me a short list of applicants I can consider further," he adds. "Knowing these applicants are 'qualified,' I can quickly and confidently select finalists to interview, where the focus shifts to things like interpersonal skills, a must-have attribute in any sales environment. And the system lets me store every applicant's resume online, so I can search Cornerstone²'s private IE database at any time as our future hiring dictates."

In addition, Kirschman says the ability of the Interview Exchange to screen applicants from multiple job boards simultaneously is a big plus. "We're posting on Monster, HotJobs and ColumbusJobs.com for the AOL hiring," he says. "Not only did the folks at IE handle the actual posting of our jobs on these three sites - literally overnight - but the system shows me a consolidated view of applicants sourced through them. Without this capability, we'd have to log into our account on each board individually to view applicant traffic. IE is saving me a huge amount of time - 10 hours a week at least."

Perhaps best of all, Kirschman observes, IE enables him to see which job boards are generating the most qualified applicants and thus the relative returns on his job board investments.

He says he'll soon be using IE's new RECREWT hiring collaboration tools, such as the ability to dynamically post and share applicant comments online with other staffing and hiring colleagues and hiring managers.

And Kirschman offers high praise for the Interview Exchange commitment to customer service. "Very professional, available 24/7," he says. "And even over the phone, I can sense 'service with a smile' is more than merely a marketing slogan."