U. drops Crimson Solutions

the crash-prone Career Services software had frustrated many seniors in the job-search process. Katherine Hjerpe After weeks of aggravating computer system crashes, resume-formatting frustrations and the disappearance of big-name employers from the Career Services' World Wide Web site, officials in charge of Penn's on-campus recruiting decided yesterday that the best way to debug the Crimson Solutions software was to exterminate it. According to Career Services Director Patricia Rose, the University has officially severed its relationship with Crimson Solutions, the Boston-based company that provided the online resume-drop technology used by students since the beginning of the year. For the remainder of the recruiting season, students must turn in paper copies of their resumes during the pre-screening process. Career Services will then distribute the resumes to prospective employers. "We have zero-tolerance for problems," Rose said. "The bottom line is that, for Career Services, any level of student and employer dissatisfaction is not acceptable." Crimson Solutions did not return repeated calls for comment yesterday afternoon. Since the beginning of the semester, job-hungry seniors have been plagued by the lackluster Crimson Solutions system. In addition to the system's server crashing almost every week as resume submission deadlines loomed, students complained they had difficulties formatting their resume to meet the software's requirements and accessing important information about major corporate employers. "It's a terrible company," said Engineering senior Kevin Dreyer, who said she was relieved he would no longer have to deal with the crash-prone Crimson Solutions system. "They sell a product that doesn't work." Although the software functioned smoothly at Brown University last year, this year's Crimson Solutions system -- which is currently used by Harvard, Princeton and nearly 80 other universities -- has experienced a number of glitches. And while Rose conceded that technicians from Crimson Solutions worked hard to resolve the problems with Penn's software, she believes the company was in over its head with the almost 20,000 interviews Career Services expects to set up this year. "We hit their system hard," Rose said, pointing out that most other universities that use the Crimson Solutions software send out only one-third the resumes Penn distributes. "They were frankly a little surprised at our volume." But according to Rose, it was complaints from Penn's major recruiters that finally convinced Career Services to abandon the online resume-drop system. "Employers were complaining that it takes too long to print resumes with Crimson Solutions," she said. A few companies -- including financial services firms PriceWaterhouseCoopers and Goldman Sachs -- even called Career Services to request hard copies of student credentials after having problems with the electronic versions they received. "We could fix problems on the student end but not on the employer end," Rose added. Yet Ernst and Young campus recruiter Jennifer Keating affirmed that the Big 6 accounting firms generally prefers the electronic resumes, which they can enter easily into a searchable database. "We won't hold anything against hard copies," Keating said. But she noted that "in the future, we're trying to get everything electronic." Although Career Services will distribute only paper copies of resumes for the remainder of this recruiting season, officials are exploring other options to replace the Crimson Solutions system as early as this spring. In fact, Rose said that Career Services is already seeking another company to provide e-recruiting software, but she acknowledged that "right now there isn't a vendor that meets Penn's needs." As another alternative, Career Services is looking into developing its own software package to complement its Fortune system, which students currently use to bid for interview slots and access important recruiting information. Some students and employers said they are disappointed the resume drop system was taken off-line. "Standing in line really stinks," Wharton senior Rory Braithwaite said as he waited behind at least 50 other students to hand in paper copies of his resume before the 5 p.m. deadline yesterday. And when College senior Tara Modlin found out that the University had severed ties with Crimson Solutions, she was equally perturbed by the decision. "Can I sever my relationship with the University of Pennsylvania?" she asked.

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