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?

Which 'Breakthrough Technology' might actually break through?

Later on this year at the HR Florida Conference and Expo Trish McFarlane and I will be co-presenting a session titled "Thinking Outside the (In)box - What These ‘Big Trends’ Mean for HR and Recruiting", what will be (hopefully) a fun and challenging look at what some of the big tech, demographic, and economic trends will mean for HR and Talent Management.  I have been a big believer in the importance and need for HR and Talent pros to think more expansively about how things like wearable technology, the shrinking (and aging) workforce, and (see yesterday's post), massive and rising levels of student loan debt will impact their organizations and talent programs. So I'm always on the lookout for what's new, what's next, and trying to think about whether the latest piece of high-tech gadgetry might change the way we find, align, collaborate, and coach in the workplace.

Recently, the MIT Technology Review (thanks MIT!), posted it's list of '10 Breakthrough Technologies for 2013', an interesting collection of new and new-ish innovations that they think will move past niche status and enter (or at least approach) the mainstream in 2013. Some of the items on the list - Baxter the Industrial Robot, 3D printing, and smart watches are probably familiar sounding. But some of the others like memory implants or deep learning represent some of the latest in technology innovation. Taken together the 10 technologies will certainly have some impact on work and the workplace this year and beyond. The challenge is, as always, for you as a Talent pro to think about developments like these and try and assess which ones might matter for your organization and your approach to talent.

One way to make sense of these kinds of lists is to try and put the technolgies into buckets or categories - something to help you prioritize and allocate your already limited time and ability to even attempt to process these kinds of innovations. I like to use three buckets (see below), and I'll offer my shot on whether or not the 'breakthrough technologies' on the MIT list should be on your radar in 2013.

I'll save the rationale for these categorizations for now, but you can come hear Trish and I talk about them at HR Florida!

Get on it - These are potentially important right now - you should be not just aware of these trends, but should be actively assessing how they will change either the workplace, the nature of work, or how you will engage talent.

From the MIT List - Baxter, Big Data from Cheap Phones, Additive Manufacturing, Temporary Social Media

On the come - Probably not going to hit you in 2013, (or maybe even 2014), but if you have your act toghether enough to be able to talk about talent needs in say 2015 and beyond, then this trend will probably come into play. Only talk about these with the C-suite if you have some serious internal credibility.

From the MIT List - Deep Learning, Smart Watches, Ultra-Efficient Solar Power

Discovery Channel - These are fun to talk or think about, but you probably don't need to give them more than 5 seconds of consideration unles your business is directly related to the technology in question. If not, then be content with catching up on them on the Discovery Channel in a few years and re-evaluate then.

From the MIT List - Prenatal DNA Sequencing, Memory Implants, Supergrids

That's my take on this latest list, and how to attempt to evaluate whether or not you need to spend time thinking about and planning for any of these new technology innovations as they pop-up. I'd love to get your take on these, or any other potentially disruptive technologies that are going to or are already changing your workplace and your talent game.

Follow-up: Big Data for HR - what do you make of this?

Yesterday I took about 550 words to say essentially this : Once your CEO decides that 'Big Data' is the next big thing to upskill your organization's talent level it is on you as an HR or Talent pro to make that happen. (It was in the Times you know).

One of the ways, besides the more obvious ones like 'Invest in some new technology' or 'Take a statistics course' is to challenge yourself to starting thinking differently about information and data (and not the typical data you might be used to considering) and what it might or might not mean for your organization and your talent game.

Here's an example of what I mean pulled from a recent Business Insider piece on some data around student loan debt load and default rates by State, (and let's assume for the purposes of this exercise that college recruiting and hiring is an important part of your workforce planning).

Chart 1 - Average Student Loan Debt

Dang, that doesn't look good anywhwere, but student debt loads seem particularly high in certain states and regions. Let's take this one more step.

Chart 2 - Average Student Loan Delinquency Rates

Interesting - not perfect alignment between the states with the highest average student loan levels and the highest default rates. But nevertheless, there are some pretty large sections of the country with average default rates at 15% or more. So the exercise is this - what, if anything would or should you do with data like this, (incomplete as it is, bear with me, it's just an example to make us think).

What if you are recruiting college grads or soon-to-be grads in the parts of the country with the highest debt loads and default rates?

Would that change your approach at all to things like signing bonuses or retention schemes that have an element of student loan repayment built in?

Would you formulate a plan for more strategic counter-offers for your younger talent that is likely to be much more receptive to make a jump to a competitor for even a small bump in salary?

Would you consider overpaying in the first few years for the best college grads knowing that some or even most of them have pretty significant financial worries outside of work?

Would you make access to a financial planner or accountant part of your signing package?

Or would you do nothing at all?

The point to all this is not really the student loan data, but rather to raise just one possibility of the potential and challenge that big data holds for you as a Talent pro, and to try and illustrate that using data to your advantage is likely going to require not just technical skills, but the ability to think differently about what drives your business.

And like we established yesterday, since it hit the Times, you can't pretend it doesn't matter for much longer.

Big Data for hiring - now everyone knows, (including the CEO)

While it can be cool to say and think that old or traditional media is dead or at least dying, (witness CNN's Keystone Cops-like coverage of the Boston Bombings and their wall-to-wall coverage of the Carnival 'poop cruise', interesting only to the people on the actual ship), it is still pretty remarkable to witness, at least in our little HR and HR Tech corner of the world, the sheer power to drive conversation the big, mainstream outlets still wield.

The latest example? The NY Times piece over the weekend titled How Big Data is Playing Recruiter for Specialized Workers, that did admittedly a fine job of covering some HR Tech startups like Gild, TalentBin, and Entelo, and how data, algorithms, and smart machine learning are combining with traditional sourcing methods in attempts to help organizations make better hires faster, and less expensively than in the past.Robert Rauschenberg, Yoicks 1953

It is a good piece and I recommend you checking it out, if you follow this space at all chances are you have already read the article, as it seemed to me over the weekend everyone Tweeted out the link (I did too). Even though these solutions have been out for some time - I just wrote about Gild myself here - once news like this hits the mainstream, you can bet you'll have some explaining to do back in your office about how you and the HR organization plans to leverage this kind of data in hiring and talent management decisions. Let's face it - even though people like me have written about these new technologies, and some of them have been featured at the HR Tech Conference, it's still the rare CEO or COO that has heard about them.  

But drop a feature about these cool new technologies in the Times, on the weekend no less, when Mr. or Ms. CEO is kicking back over brunch with their iPad and has a few minutes to read and think about a piece like this - well some of you are getting an email (maybe it already arrived, 'sent from my iPad') from the CEO with the link and a question along the lines of 'What can we do with this? or 'Are we using Big Data in hiring?'

It is pretty fun to stay on top of the latest trends and catch demos or webinars from the coolest new technologies. It is also fun to be sort of 'in the know', to be the only one in your office or in your local HR community to have some insight and savvy about the latest solutions and tools. You (mostly) get respect and cred from just knowing about them. 

But that position of 'person who knows all about the technology' will only take you so far once everyone else starts catching on too - especially the C-suite types that really only take notice of something until it hits the Times of the Wall St. Journal.  And that is happening my friends.

We're coming up fast to the point where 'awareness' is simply the ante that lets you play in the game. Your bluff is about to be called, by a CEO in a fancy suit, and iPad, and a link to the Times article.

Stay thirsty my friends... 

Differential advantage via technology? It's hard to find that on a shelf

One of the most widespread and influential technologies of the last 40 years that has not only improved business but actually helped create entirely new businesses is the seemingly mundane shipment tracking number.

That crazy-long string of 15 or 20 letters and numbers that somehow, as if by magic, allows you to determine the location and stage in the shipment process of all the crap essential items you order from Zappos, Amazon, or Warby Parker. If you are old enough to remember what ordering goods from catalogs or mail-order was really like before the days of tracking numbers then I think you'll agree how dramatic an improvement it is, and how it enables businesses to make commitments and consumers to make plans.

FedEx who recently celebrated their 40th anniversary, created the tracking number and invented scores of related technologies and processes that surround the tracking number which remains the core of their shipment process today. It is a fascinating story of innovation that you can read about in this recent piece on Wired.com, Tracking 40 Years of FedEx Technology.

The tracking number, and the associated network, communications, applications, and database technologies that make the number accessible and intelligent to the shipper, retailer, and consumer alike truly represents an amazing story of technological innovation. But it is a kind of innovation that sometimes we lose sight of, particularly those of us who talk about things like 'enterprise' software - systems like ERP or Supply-chain, or even HCM solutions. 

The vast majority of these enterprise systems, and the ones that people (mostly) spent time talking about, are commercial off the shelf solutions. A software company has built these solutions, usually with the insights of customers, partners, and their own internal teams of experts, and then attempts to sell what normally is the same exact system to as many customers as they can.  That's the software business, essentially, and it makes tons of sense for both the customer and the vendor. 

For the vendor, developing, marketing, maintaining, and updating one main version of the solution is simpler, more efficient, and over time, allows them to spend more time and R&D on building new features and capabilities, which potentially benefit all customers. And for the customer, having to not be in the business of creating their own custom solutions for things like Payroll, Accounts Payable, collecting job applications, and asset tracking is a huge boon as well. For only a very few specialized companies, none of these things are fundamental to their core business models.

But having these types of enterprise off the shelf systems in place, configured, and deployed can only do so much for an organization when you factor in the these two elements - that the same solutions are available to everyone in the market, including their competitors, and mostly the processes they support are not core to their differentiating value proposition. Or said differently, a dozen of your competitors probably run the same ATS as you, that looks and feels kind of the same, and candidates hate theirs as much as they hate yours. No advantage gained, (or ceded, admittedly). Yes you can do a 'better' implementation of generally available solutions, and that might make you a little faster to process an applications or more efficient at taking payment discounts than the other guys, but these kinds of advantages are mostly tangential to whatever your 'real' business is about.

So if true technological competitive advantage is hard to come by simply from commercial off the shelf software, then where can it come from?

Let's go back to the FedEx example. Here's some idea of where from the Wired.com piece:

FedEx’s 40-year history is about far more than an unimaginable number of overnight deliveries. It’s a case study in creating a service, then pushing technology forward to ensure that service actually works on a large scale. When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight, you need powerful technology. And sometimes you have to create it.

In its relentless pursuit of efficiency, FedEx has pioneered and developed technologies later embraced by everything from cellular industry to online retailing and distributed computing.

“On a day to day basis, shipping 10 million packages, you have to have technology,” (FedEx CIO) Carter said. Even if that means creating it yourself.

The advantage comes from technology that surrounds the essence of the business model - the fast, reliable delivery of customer shipments. The technology that enables that mission, that others can't easily duplicate, is where and how technology helps lead to real success. And all of it had to be created from nothing.

The FedEx technology story really is quite amazing and a great reminder that many of the real innovations in technology, and the differential competitive advantage that can be derived from them, usually starts from a blank sheet of paper, and almost never can be found on any vendor's shelf.