Funny Jason Ferrara, VP of Corporate Marketing at CareerBuilder.com, should talk about how data-driven recommendation engines change our lives, because the sudden disappearance of the “recommended for you” feature on my iTunes store homepage seems to have completely disrupted mine.

In the past few months, I’ve come to rely very heavily on this feature for quick, easy help with everything from creating party mixes to adding a little variety to my workout playlist.  It was like having a music-savvy friend – there when I needed it, always with a list of new music it knows I’ll like – only better because I could download the music right away, and I know it can never judge me for owning the occasional Miley Cyrus song.

But now it’s gone. Inexplicably, gut-wrenchingly gone. I know I should exercise more patience when not so long ago I didn’t even know about this feature, but now that I’ve seen it and experienced how easy it makes my life, taking the time and effort to ask friends for recommendations or (heaven forbid) searching for music myself suddenly seems like so much…work.

While crawling the Web in the midst of my temper tantrum mounting frustration, I found something that made me recall something else about Jason’s post – this recent survey by The Recruiting Roundtable estimating that 50 percent of all hiring decisions are wrong.  (Fifty percent!?  I mean, I knew the number was up there, but…) And that’s not a mistake businesses can exactly afford to make right now.

Anyway, in his post, Jason mentioned how, in the recruiting world, recommendations can streamline the hiring process.  After seeing the survey, and knowing that employers already feel they can’t find enough qualified candidates, I wonder if part of the problem is that people making hiring decisions are too often overwhelmed by the pressure to quickly get a warm body through the door, forcing them to make decisions before they’ve had the chance to thoroughly sort through the most qualified applications.

That, it seems, is where the exclusive recommendation technology that Jason mentioned comes into play.  Hiring managers and recruiters benefit from saving time with a streamlined process for pinpointing ideal candidates, just like Recommended Resume (R2) aims to do.  Now is the time to get smarter and more innovative about the way you hire, and with the CareerBuilder.com patent-pending technology out there to help, there’s no reason not to take advantage of it.

Using R2 is easy and, dare I say, revolutionary. For those of you with Resume Database access who aren’t using R2 recommendations, or those who just need a refresher, I’ve got a recommendation for you. Watch this three minute “how to” video and quickly advance your capability to locate the best candidate for your open position. I guarantee you’ll wish everyone had this game changing technology. But lucky for us, they don’t. And while you may not know what to do with the freed up hours you typically take manually seaching through resumes, give yourself some extra time getting to know candidates face to face. You’ll drastically reduce your probability of making a costly hiring mistake.

Alreay an R2 user? Let us know what you think or tell us what we can do to make your resume seach experience even better.