RecruitFest 2009

This week I am heading to RecruitFest 2009 in Toronto, Canada.

RecruitFest is a non-traditional event that is about building relationships and with a priority on face-to-face networking. It is focused on about taking your online relationships offline, which is certainly a good thing.

Technology plays such a key role in corporate recruiting today, and one of the main goals I have at RecruitFest is to try and get some insights on what the future holds in recruiting and especially in recruiting technology in these areas:

Candidate Experience

How can technology improve the candidate experience while also serving to support corporate initiatives? Most candidates revile the entire application process.  From arcane and lengthy online application processes, to lack of feedback, to a feeling that there are two different 'expert' answers to every job search question; candidates really are having a terrible time.

Corporate Data Analysis

What should companies be measuring when evaluating their recruiting efforts?  And what are the best technologies and strategies to make these measurements possible? Once you decide that 'Quality of Hire' is what you want to focus on, just what does a 'high quality' hire look like anyway? How much of little responsibility does recruiting have when a new hire does not work out?  And how do you pull all of this information together in a timely and understandable manner.

Impact of Social Recruiting

We all know that social networks and social media are influencing, altering, and perhaps fundamentally changing candidate job search and corporate job marketing. But to what extent is this really true? And is it really true only for the largest organizations with significant resources and massive budgets?  Can these tools and approaches really be utilized by small organizations and one or two person HR shops to try and level the playing field in the competition for the best talent.

While I expect to learn quite a bit at RecruitFest, the main reason I am attending is to meet in person so many great people I have interacted with online this year.  I think that is the real value of attending almost any event, and in particular one like RecruitFest.

I plan on posting from RecruitFest when I can and be sure to follow all the fun on Twitter under the #RecruitFest tag.

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?

Do you survey your Applicants?

Yesterday Willliam Uranga posted an interesting article on his Talent Alchemy blog that raised the following question :

'How much do you embrace what your candidates have to share?'

I thought it was an excellent question, and coincidentally ties in with some discussions (frustrating ones to be fair); I have had lately with some folks that see the corporate ATS as a system for internal users, and not truly as a customer-facing system.

The ATS, at least the job listing, and online application portions of it, really are more customer systems than internal corporate systems. What the applicants and visitors do with the system, how they interact with the pages, and overall how they evaluate your application process is critically important information, and should not only be gathered, but carefully analyzed and acted upon.

But as William suggests, do most organizations really listen to applicants and job site visitors? Do they formally, or even informally ask candidates what they really thought of the ATS, the process, the quality and frequency of communication, the complexity of the system, and their overall impressions of the application experience.

If you care to, please take a second to answer the poll question below, I am interested to know if my experiences fit with what you are seeing with your organization.

Make your own poll voting question with Poll Everywhere

The candidates are your customers.  You are trying to 'sell' them your company and your opportunities.  A part of the package that you are selling, and often their first meaningful interaction with your company is your corporate job site and your ATS.

Shouldn't we be asking them what they think?

'Company Name Jobs' - Search!

You are in HR or a hiring manager for the XYZ Company. When was the last time you did a simple Google search for 'XYZ Jobs' or 'XYZ Careers'? Don't lie, I will bet you have not done a search like that for quite a while.  If you haven't for some time, go ahead right now and do the search, I'll wait here until you get back.

Okay, good.  What did you find?  Hopefully for you, your corporate jobs site came back at the top, or at least in the first two or three results on the first page. If your site is nowhere to be found, or is buried in the list and not easily recognizable as your jobs site, you have already, perhaps quite unwittingly put up the first hurdle for your applicants. 

Here is a simple example of two really large organizations, FedEx and UPS, and how they rank with 'Company Name Jobs' searches.

First, take a look at what you find when searching for 'FedEx Jobs'

The link most job seekers are after, is the fifth result down, does not have much descriptive information to clue in the job seeker that it indeed, is the main corporate jobs page. It also has a long and confusing URL that has FedEx's ATS vendor's name (HodesIQ) embedded in the string. Altogether not intuitive and not applicant friendly.

Compare that result to the same search for one of FedEx's main competitors for business and for talent, UPS:

The main corporate job site is the first result, a simple tag line that makes it totally clear what the applicant will find there, and there are sub-links to important parts of the site clearly laid out (Application Center, Job Search).  This is exactly the result you are looking for with a simple Google search on 'Company Jobs'.

The interesting thing is after you find the main careers site for both of these companies, they are really very similar.  They both have the expected employee video testimonials, sections with 'Life at' content, reasonably simple search and application procedures.

They are pretty decent, save for the fact that one of them, UPS, is much, much easier to find quickly in Google search, and the other FedEx is not easy to find at all.

 If you are like most, you spend quite a bit of time on your Corporate Jobs pages, making sure your instructions are clear, your links to benefits information and job listings are working, and maybe even making sure you have some nice employee testimonials and perhaps some cool video.  You may have even partnered with a slick new ATS vendor that has enabled 'social sharing' so visitors to your site can easily share a job listing with their Facebook friends, or LinkedIn contacts, or maybe even send a Tweet with the listing out to everyone's favorite social network, Twitter.

But before you do all that, take a quick look at the simple Google search I described above.  You may be spending time, effort, and budget on sites and systems that many job seekers will have trouble finding.

And if your results are more like FedEx and less like UPS, then do another Google search, for 'Search Engine Optimization', don't worry, you will get tons of hits on that - I promise.