December 2011 - Issue #14
Job search software engineered for success
Story by Liz Porter
View articles in related topics: Business & Workplace, Information Technology, Alumni
If you’ve applied for a job with the Australian Tax Office, Australia Post or any one of 200 government or corporate entities, you will have used one of Mike Giuffrida’s human resources software programs, such as eRecruit.
The program helps applicants build their CVs online and allows them to apply for advertised positions.
Conversely, employers use the system to manage everything from job vacancy listings, applications and interview evaluations, to appointments and inductions.
A Swinburne mechanical engineering graduate, Mr Giuffrida, now 42, could never have foreseen his future career of running a web-based HR software-development company. He graduated from Swinburne in 1994, when the internet was solely the playground of technophiles.
“But the beautiful thing about the engineering course is that it gives you a great foundation for just about anything,” he says.
A computer program is born
Looking back, Mr Giuffrida realises that several years of working on-site in the oil and gas industry (at Mobil’s Altona refinery and at Woodside’s North West Shelf Project) had also provided him with skills in project methodology and coordination.
These were invaluable in 1997 when he and fellow Swinburne engineering graduate, the late Will Spensley, decided to set up an online résumé builder and searchable résumé database to help connect engineering graduates with the far-flung companies who needed them. At the time, engineering companies found employees by going to careers fairs, advertising in papers and working through thousands of paper résumés.
Mr Giuffrida recalls software companies telling the two would-be entrepreneurs that it wasn’t possible to build a résumé using an internet-based software program.
“When we found a company prepared to help, our engineering background meant we were able to write the specifications for the software, manage the tender process and contain the budget,” he says
The duo first set up business in Perth, where Will Spensley was working. In March 1998, Mr Giuffrida flew back east to set up a Melbourne office for their product, which they had already adapted for use by companies wanting to do their own résumé searching online.
By mid-to-late 1999, they had 50 per cent of all graduates in Australia on their database and several dozen government agencies and corporations had signed up. In 2001, when the company had 25 staff, Mr Spensley left to pursue other opportunities. He died in 2003.
Worldwide connection
Today the company, NGA.NET – winner of the 2011 The Age Business Award in the IT and business services category – has more than 60 staff in its South Melbourne office and another 10 in the Sydney CBD. With sales of over $13 million, the company made corporate headlines last year when it opened an office in Washington DC to target the lucrative US federal government HR market. A pilot program is now underway with one US federal agency and negotiations have started with another.
NGA.NET’s eRecruit software is used by corporate clients ranging from major retailers such as David Jones to the giant mining company Xstrata, with its chain of international outposts. The company also has other tools: ‘ePerform’, a performance-management tool used by nearly 30 organisations; ‘360’, used to survey staff and management views of each other; and ‘Talent’, which measures staff engagement.
As Mr Giuffrida proudly explains, the company’s internet-based software can also be managed from mobile devices such iPhones. This was illustrated recently when one of his on-call staff was out on a Friday night and took a call from an Xstrata staffer in London who urgently needed another user account to be set up before walking into a meeting.
“He stepped away from the party he was at and was able to set up the account then and there.”
As with most successful innovations, client convenience is a powerful drawcard.
