FOLLOW UP: How changing communication preferences are changing HR technologies

Last week on the blog I shared a chart on US teens' communication preferences which showed, (among a few other interesting things), that when it comes to interactions with their friends, email is this group's least preferred method/tool of choice. If you are a parent of a teen, or have ever just observed a teen for more than 10 minutes or so, you would notice them pretty furiously tapping away on their phones almost non-stop - with the vast majority of this activity being SMS messaging, (and to a lesser extent using SnapChat, WhatsApp, and social tools like Instagram). 

What they are almost certainly not doing is sending or replying to email. 

It might be hard for us crusty adults to want to deal with or accept, but anyone under about 25 or so did not grow up relying on email for anything, (save for possibly communications with 'grown ups').

Whenever I run a piece like the 'teens hate email' one, I usually get a few comments or replies on Twitter that more or less say the same thing - 'So what? Email isn't ever going away. When these teens enter the workforce they will simply have to adapt. Blah, blah, blah and get off of my lawn.'

Mostly, it seems, professional adults don't generally see any significant change to email's ubiquity and primacy as the 'professional' communication technology of choice, and fully expect teens and Gen Z types to have to just deal with it if and when they want to get (and keep), a real job.

But is it really that simple? Or asked differently, can us 'adults' really get away with thinking that way? Forever?

So after the 'teens hate email' piece ran last week I received an email from Kay Lucas, VP of Product Strategy at PeopleMatter. In case you are not familiar, PeopleMatter is a leading provider of workforce and talent management technology solutions, focusing primarily on retail, hospitality, and other service provider organizations. Think restaurant chains, convenience stores, hotels - that sort of thing.

The kinds of organizations that do high volume, rapid hiring. And, more importantly, the kinds of organizations that tend to employ lots of folks in their teens and twenties - the kinds of folks that tend to see email as their least preferred method or technology for communication.

So to get back to Kay, here is the full text of the email she sent over last week after my post ran:

Steve,

This past weekend we rolled out a new release and ditched email as being required for applicants for this reason. Just thought you’d be interested in knowing.

Thanks,

Kay

What?

Candidates can actually apply for a job without an email address? 

I had to know more, so I asked Kay for some additional background on this decision and she shared with me some more details (note, I checked with Kay and have her permission to share these emails here).

(Kay Lucas, PeopleMatter)

We decided to do this (allowing customers to make Email an optional field for candidates), because our customers felt like they were losing applicants because email was required. One very large casual dining customer in particular really thought that they were losing two whole groups of people: 1) the younger generation as you point out, 2) the non-tech generation – think of back of the house employees in restaurants and retail. It could be folks where English is not their first language and/or they just don’t care about email because they have no reason for it.

We also know that in our space (service industry), the majority of employees don’t have computers – their phone is their connection. So, texting and mobile friendly are key.

The release literally just happened this past Saturday morning. Here’s what we have already seen: 

On Sunday, the quantity of job applications increased by 5% from the prior Sunday. On Monday, the quantity of job applications increased by 22% from the prior Monday. Wow! We are already blown away and totally pumped we did this. Hats off to our clients and I love listening to them. Makes us so much smarter. They get it and we are so happy that we’ve made this change. The labor market is tight so this is a really big deal for them.

Ok, so I love this for a few different reasons. One, it gives us a direct, real-world example of how teens and others communication preferences, (essentially mobile phone driven, and SMS heavy), are being acknowledged and reflected in how organizations and HR technology providers are deploying HR tools. If your target applicant pool would prefer not to use email, (or simply can't use email), then provide a way for them to interact and apply with you using their desired method.Image courtesy PeopleMatter - click for a large version

Second, it shows really well how good my friends at PeopleMatter understand and react to their customers. Retail and food service are precisely the kinds of industries that would likely have plenty of candidates in the email hating teen to young adult cohort, and this 'email optional' update shows how well the technology can adapt to these needs.

And finally, it serves as a great reminder to all of us, HR leaders and HR technology providers alike, that just because us old farts that make all of the rules and all of the decisions are not that we are not always right, and that we need to be open minded enough to adapt to what today's 19 year olds think too. 

That is if we want to remain relevant once that 19 year old becomes out 26 year old boss in a few years.

Thanks again to Kay Lucas at PeopleMatter for sharing the information on their approach to this issue and if you are an HR leader from retail or food service or hospitality be sure to check out what PeopleMatter is up to.

Have a great week!

The Applicant Tracking Number

Last week I had a post about the limited differential and competitive advantage that most companies can realize from the implementation of commercial off the shelf software solutions that are readily available (and often implemented) by their rivals as well. The premise was (and still is) that if and when all the largest firms in an industry segment implement the same ERP or Supply Chain or Applicant Tracking System, then it is generally likely that none of them will have executed so much better than their competitors that they gain a meaningful advantage.  What would an application history look like?

The point of the piece was that real and lasting advantage and long-term value comes from actually using technology to create something entirely new and not easily reproducible by competitors or by the software companies themselves, that would just try and sell this innovation to all the firms in the space. The example I used to try and make this point was the FedEx shipment tracking number - the concept, the associated software and hardware, and the popularization as both an internally and externally valuable data point that was pioneered by the shipping firm over the last few decades. With the package tracking number suddenly the shipping business was transformed - every concerned stakeholder could know the current status and history of every package at all times. Amazing.

Why revisit last week's post? 

Because in the comments the Recruiting Animal made a tremendous observation, (repeated below)

Steve, are you saying that big companies should give applicants a tracking number for their resumes? Sounds like a great idea.

I actually wasn't thinking about a tracking number for applicants, similar to the FedEx shipment tracking number, but it is an obviously great idea from Animal. Sure, most ATS at this point provide a way for applicants to log in and get a 'status' about the state of their application, and some even provide email notifications about status changes, but these are almost never as detailed and informative as they could be. They will let an applicant now their application is 'received' or they are in 'first interview' status or if it is 'no longer being considered', but those statuses or stages can be pretty broad and vague.

But what actually happens to an application is much more rich, detailed, and nuanced. Applicants are screened, they are reviewed by potentially a dozen people, and for varying amounts of time. Their details are forwarded, they are classified or tagged. Then if they interview, notes are taken about them and shared. References may be called and a background check might be done. These processes will sometimes kick off more notes, tags, and internal conversations. An offer could be extended, a counter offer made, and additional data points created.  You get the idea, in an active and thorough process lots more data is created than what is shared (and not even always shared), with applicants.

But if as Recruiting Animal suggests, a job application had a tracking number similar to the FedEx shipment number, and the organization was brave enough to make the applicant tracking data visible and available to applicants, then questions, doubt, and the basics of candidate feedback would be solved. Just like you know where your books from Amazon are at any point in the process, and who participated in the process, and how long it took for each step, an applicant tracking number could let the applicant know when their resume was opened and reviewed and forwarded. The applicant would now truly know how long from the time of resume submission to when their credentials were even assessed, and how long after that the first critical 'Yes/No' decision was taken by the recruiter.

Remember the famous 'recruiters look at a resume for 6 seconds' story? Well with an applicant tracking number potentially we'd really know how true that was.

They would know just about everything they would want to about the process. And all it would take would be a clever application of a new kind of tracking number technology - meant for candidates and not just stuff bought online.

What do you think? Does anyone actually do something like this today?

Or is it too transparent for most organizations to consider?

Zoho Recruit - Small Business Applicant Tracking

Last month the online productivity applications vendor Zoho launched yet another new service meant to continue to build out its offerings for the small business market with the introduction of Zoho Recruit, a solution for Applicant Tracking and Resume Management.

Zoho Recruit is targeted to small business as well as small third-pary agency recruiting firms that need a simple, inexpensive, and flexible solution for the management of job postings, applicants, and resumes.

Standard and expected features like job posting creation, applicant management, interview scheduling, and ability to add individual notes to jobs and candidates are included. Additionally, resume parsing and import using the Resume Grabber product from eGrabber. Companies can also leverage Zoho's forms configuration capability to add/change/enhance forms and processes in the application to better align the solution with their specific requirements.

The video below provides a quick overview of Zoho Recruit, additionally there are detailed screenshots and feature descriptions on the Zoho Recruit site.

Zoho Recruit offers a Free Plan for an individual recruiter, and it's Standard Edition is priced at $12 per recruiter/month.  Meaning if you had 5 recruiters using Zoho, the license fee would be $60/month.  A separate license with Resume Grabber is needed to enable the automatic parsing and import of resumes from Outlook, Social Networks, Google Search, etc. into Zoho Recruit, and that cost is approximately $500 yearly.

With the emergence in the last year or so of a number of simple and low-cost ATS solutions for small business (The Resumator, Choosy, Simplicant, etc.), there is almost no reason why even the smallest, least technically capable organizations and HR departments can't take advantage of at least some level of automation to better manage the recruiting process. 

Zoho Recruit is definitely worth a look for small business with these needs, and in particular if the organization is interested in leveraging some of the other online productivity tools Zoho offers (CRM, Documents, Project Management, Wiki, etc.).

Still accepting all your resumes via e-mail attachments and storing them locally, or on a shared network drive?  Maybe it is time to consider a better way.

All candidates are equal, some just a little more equal

We are in the (seemingly perpetual) process of trying to re-design our University career site to make it more user-friendly, more engaging, and to make it better articulate and communicate why we think our school is a great place to work.

Very important goals, and I do think eventually I can convince the organization to move beyond Web 1.0 and embrace the modern world of technology and recruiting, (maybe).Flickr -Jenny Downing

But one issue that keeps coming up is the notion of having separate application processes for Faculty jobs compared to Staff and Administration jobs.  It actually is fairly common still in higher education to have applicants for Staff jobs follow an online application process via whatever ATS the school uses, and have faculty applicants simply e-mail CVs and other documents directly to search committee chairs, bypassing the ATS if not entirely, at least initially.  As you would expect, anecdotal evidence from Faculty candidates clearly indicates they prefer this method of applying.

The 'logic' behind this is that since in general applicants for faculty positions dislike the online application process, many feel it is 'beneath' them, most ATS (including ours) don't do a great job handling all the different files required for many faculty applications, and lastly and perhaps most importantly, the search committees (which are almost completely made up of current faculty) hate the ATS for reviewing applicants and documents. Let's see, the candidates just want to e-mail their information and the hiring managers hate using the ATS and want to keep the candidates happy. So, should we 'let' applicants for these positions simply revert to this 'old-school' method of applying?

Personally, I am torn between designing a system and a process based on anecdotal evidence or perceptions of what our target candidates want, and a coherent and consistent design for our career site and application process that certainly benefits the 'back-office' as well and supports any possibility we have of building a 'talent community'. We can't capture centrally all the candidate information that is sitting in 50 different search committee chair's e-mail inboxes. We will not have a way to systematically reach out to this community if in fact, we make no attempts to aggregate and centralize this information residing in e-mail inboxes and paper files.

So here is the question : Should we have 'different' application processes for different constituencies? Or should we design a system and process to the best of our ability and require that all applicants to comply?

Why is it so hard to apply?

I was not planning to write another post on online application processes and Applicant Tracking Systems, but yesterday a post by Laurie Ruettimann at PunkRockHR (and the ensuing comments) on applicant frustration with online corporate application processes I thought calls for a more lengthy comment than I cared to place on PunkRockHR.

Besides, I did not want to cloud up the lively debate going on about which place was worse to work for Taco Bell or Del Taco. Flickr - Majiscup - Drink for Design

The gist of the issue is candidate frustration with the tedious online application processes of most companies, and the fact that in a wide-ranging job search, the job-seeker is frustrated entering more or less the same information over and over again (in slightly different formats) on numerous corporate job sites.

Laurie expressed the desire for a sort of 'universal candidate profile' that job-seekers could set up once, and leverage throughout most online application processes, perhaps using Facebook Connect or LinkedIn in some fashion for authentication.

It is a great concept, and I'd like to offer a few reasons why a 'universal profile' does not yet exist. By the way, I do know about ResumePal, which does appear to have most of the features that were discussed, but has not really gained much headway in the market.

Barriers to the Universal Candidate Profile

1. It already exists, it's called LinkedIn

LinkedIn has about 21 Million US based profiles. How could a new 'Universal Profile' platform get very far competing with what LinkedIn already offers job seekers.  Free access, ability to connect with thousands of recruiters and HR professionals, (the Boolean Black Belt says 5% of all US profiles are recruiters or HR), networking with affinity groups, and lots of job opportunities listed throughout. Every recruiter I know uses LinkedIn to source and research candidates.  I am not saying LinkedIn is perfect, or even easy for a less tech-savvy candidate to navigate, but it has enormous size and influence certainly scaring off potential competitors. 

LinkedIn certainly has the muscle to get behind initiatives to build out its profile to support more of the concepts of the Universal Profile, but that may not really be in their strategic plans.  One commented on the PunkRockHR post correctly pointed out the ATS vendor JobVite does allow candidates to include their LinkedIn profile on their job application, but that is only a benefit if you are lucky enought to be applying for a job with a JobVite customer. And, the company still will typically require a resume, cover letter and other fields above and beyond the LinkedIn profile.

2. Attracting enough candidates to a new Universal Profile

Face it we are all pretty much overwhelmed with online accounts, networks, user names and passwords. Without an incredibly compelling argument, (one click to find a job listing, two clicks to apply to any company), a new Universal Profile System is going to have major problems attracting enough candidates to survive. No candidate will want to invest much time and energy creating and maintaining another online profile without a realistic expectation of some unique benefits.

3. Integration with corporate Applicant Tracking Systems

This may be the single largest barrier to widespread adoption of a Universal Candidate Profile.  There may be 150 - 200 different ATS on the market.  Granted, the Fortune 1000 probably cluster around the largest 10 or so vendors (Taleo, PeopleSoft, SAP, Kenexa, Oracle, etc.), but realistically a small percentage of job seekers target only super large firms.  As Meg Bear pointed out in a comment to the original post, HR-XML standards have been developed to facilitate this process, but for numerous reasons have not really gained much momentum in this area.

Corporate ATS range from really, really simple and straightforward, to incredibly complex.  Developing a standard methodology to allow all these disparate ATS to connect to the Universal Profile and have the Profile automatically populate the necessary information on the Corporate ATS is a daunting proposition. Again, ResumePal seeks to solve this, but as yet has not seemed to grab the attention of the market.

4. Corporate Motivation

This is closely related to Reason 3.  Essentially, the vast majority of corporations would not place 'Modify or upgrade the ATS to support the Universal Profile' very high on a list of HR Technology initiatives. In a labor market where applicants for most positions are plentiful, many HR, recruiters, and hiring managers are already drowning in resumes.  Projects that can be partially interpreted as leading to even more applications, are not likely to be well received in corporations. In fact, I have heard more than a few hiring managers profess that they like to keep the online application process cumbersome, as applicants that 'stick it out' and complete the process demonstrate some level of commitment or desire to want to work for the company.  In a way, the difficult application process is the first (and sometimes only) pre-screening that takes place. Until the economy improves, I would not expect corporations to be all that interested in the Universal Profile.

 5. Compliance Reporting

This may seem like a minor issue, (and one that candidates certainly don't care about), but almost all US companies have strict EEO and affirmative action related compliance reports that must be fild periodically. Applications that flow from the Universal Profile to the corporate ATS would likely to be augmented or enhanced in some manner to facilitate the preparation of these reports.  And that is not really something candidates would want to do, they have already completed the profile, they would be unlikely to then go to the ATS to fill in yet more data.

These are just a few of the reasons that came to mind today when reading the original post and comments.

I will have to write a follow-up post that attempts to describe what I think might be a better way forward for applicants and corporations alike, but honestly with the complexity and sheer number of ATS on the market, and the above described corporate barriers, there are no simple answers.

Do you have any ideas to improve the experience at the macro level for applicants and corporations?