Achieving successful business growth: Finding the right person for the right job

After nearly a three-year 'forced vacation', the job market in many countries is making some slow and deliberate steps towards recovery. For those charged with recruiting and ushering candidates through the hiring process, the knife cuts both ways in that when the going is good, attracting the best can be challenging. Conversely, when the hunting grounds are teeming with candidates, finding the right person can be equally difficult.

Worse still, after the hiring cycle ends and the offer is accepted, you may realize you've taken on the wrong person for the job. The domino effect of a poor hiring decision is going to affect your deliverables, your budget, and, ultimately, organizational goals.

As might be expected, the Internet is playing a major role in the hiring process. The Internet continues to impact nearly every facet of how corporations identify, interview, hire, enroll and manage new employees - and it will only become more prevalent.

According to a report released by the Pew Internet Project, on an average day, more than 4 million people search out new job opportunities online, which is 33 percent higher than the daily job-search traffic two years ago.

Timing Is Everything, Isn't It?
Recruiting cycles are not insignificant and it takes time before you can evaluate whether or not you made the right decision. Some companies attempt to curb the potential losses in the form of 90-day 'expectation reviews.'

Still, recognizing an incorrect hiring decision and reaching a mutually agreeable separation package can be complicated and costly, particularly because at that point in time you've already invested significant time and money in achieving productivity from an individual and their role. Investing more time and money to recruit a new candidate puts you even further behind your immediate and long-term project goals.

Once you've traveled so far down the path, the questions extend beyond 'how crucial is that person to the particular job?' or 'do I have open head count to replace that person?' At that stage-the stage where many companies find themselves today-you need to be asking yourself if you really have the correct automated processes in place to find, recruit, and retain the right people? And, am I putting my company's best face forward with a Website that both pushes out and pulls back information about jobs and recruits?

Territorial Trappings
Traditional recruiting practices (cabinet-recruiting) have long been hampered by the inability to share information and documents between recruiters.

In the past, many recruiters were forced to keep a set of resumes in their filing cabinets, providing zero visibility and sharing between one another - resulting in redundant hires, forgotten candidates, missed opportunities, and inefficiencies. Companies have learned over the years that gaining a centralized view will never be possible if they don't focus on introducing a systematic and centralized approach to recruiting.

Pulling Back On a Push Technology
There's no doubt that in the 15 or so years since the Internet has taken on mass appeal, the process of hiring has shifted dramatically. Job hunters expect employers to be putting their best face forward in the form of a Website with updated job postings and content, and resume management capabilities.

Popularity amongst the masses doesn't always translate into stealth in business processes, and certainly many HR professionals can relate to the intense frustration caused by attempting to fit contemporary demands into outdated hiring practices.

Mitigating The Risks of Mindfulness
While the Internet was gaining momentum, advanced systems were being introduced for providing quasi artificial intelligence capabilities with matching candidates to positions. These tools have proven useful for increasing the speed of reviewing high volume submissions of resumes, but they haven't proven quite as useful in keeping up with the real intelligence of job seekers.

Through reading and research, people are now wise to the various 'flavors' of language that act as wrappers for preferred skill sets. While the scanning process is rapid, the pile flagged for call backs may be sub-par in that candidates who, on paper, appear to be the right fit may, after being invited in, prove to have very limited experience in core skill areas.

Getting Out From Beneath The Paper-Chase
Joe Tonn, HRMS Manager at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU), characterizes how, not long ago, the university and the handful of administrators handling the paper chase of hiring were, as Tonn puts it 'struggling to get out of a tangled mass of paper and filing cabinets.' Located in Portland, OHSU serves as the state's only health and research university, as well as the fourth largest employer, with over 11,000 employees.

Shortly after rolling out an Internet-based Human Resources Management System (HRMS) from Oracle at OHSU nearly three years ago, the job market in the Portland area plummeted. 'At that point we were 100 percent paper based in our applications and we were handling a volume of approximately 4,000 applications per month for 300-400 active job listings,' says Tonn.

The manual requirements for inputting the influx of applications into the HRMS tracking system had the university running a minimum of 6 months behind schedule. 'The filing cabinets were literally overflowing with applications,' explains Tonn. 'You can imagine the impact on our business processes as well as our ability to locate applications when we needed to find one.'

OHSU's situation was and is further complicated because, as a federal contractor, they need to maintain demographic data for regulatory reporting. 'We knew we wanted to utilize Web technology and we knew we wanted to be able to make requisition updates immediately available, which was impossible in our paper-based environment.'

Tonn understood that leveraging internet technology was the way to go partly because the reach outwards to candidates was so great and also because job seekers at every level-from maintenance staff to management level administrators-had grown accustomed to and expected the ability to apply for a job online.

OHSU selected a new iRecruitment application and it immediately helped the university shave time off the front end of the hiring process for administrative positions.

'We were averaging 7 weeks to fill our general openings. After we installed the application we were able to drop that down to just over 4 weeks.' The university has also realized a 65 percent increase in resumes. 'Not only have we shortened the hiring cycle, we're attracting a much larger pool of candidates because we're filling the demand to apply online.'

Tonn affirms that they've really only begun to scratch the surface of where Internet-based recruiting can take OHSU. 'Right now when I talk about the 4,000 applications per month we receive, most applications are for administrative and vocational positions, it doesn't include our research specialists or teaching faculty.' Later this year, OHSU plans to streamline filling the high level professional positions with a similar process.

Paying Dividends Through Smarter Hiring Practices
Technology still moves at lightening speed and companies are beginning to mitigate the risks and costs of bringing in the wrong candidates by moving towards a model which allows companies to assess the skill sets that an individual has prior to inviting them in to interview.

So, for example, if somebody presents as being a Java expert or a DBA of Unix systems, you can automate the process of pre-screening by making a prove-your-skill set test a part of the online application process.

The next wave in the smart hiring process will come in the form of integrated ERP systems that are geared towards helping companies maximize their current mind share and use it to pave the way for expanding the pool of top performers.

In other words, by closely examining and profiling the characteristics of the people you currently have on board today, integrated systems can pull together critical workforce information into one repository for creating a profile that clearly map out the skills sets critical to your organization.

Before you recoil from the slightly Orwellian overtones, consider that most companies have been compiling this type of profile information as a standard practice in the form of basic employee information (educational background, employment history) and through performance appraisals. It's about crafting a talent management model of where you need to be recruiting going forward.

All Eyes On iRecruitment
Most companies are behind the curve on recognizing the value of talent management because their systems simply don't support it.

It points back to the arcane systems companies are still using which force organizational departments to operate in separate silos with fragmented processes that make it impossible for companies to understand even the most basic HR information, such as total number of employees.

When focusing on talent management, companies require systems that can help them grow and keep track of employee capabilities, skills, strengths and weaknesses.

As employees aspire to new positions with new responsibilities, HR applications should support this progress and provide the framework for growth-at the inception of employment.

The good news is the slumbering giant of the 'status quo mindsets' is beginning to awaken and as attitudes are shifting, so are the capabilities of HR applications. Companies now understand the importance of implementing systems that seamlessly integrate all parts of HR operations - including recruiting, payroll, time and labor, benefits administration and training - and using secure, single repositories for all workforce, and company, data.

Effective iRecruitment applications must be built on a single data repository, because it allows all HR departments, regardless of location, to use the same pool of information for making critical hiring decisions.

Now, when a new hire is entered in the system, a chain reaction occurs that (1) informs all recruiters and hiring managers that the position has been filled, (2) inserts the new employee's information into the system for benefits administration, payroll, facilities, IT, etc. (3) provides the estimated start date and appropriate new hire information to the new employee's manager to ensure a smooth entry into the organization.

What can iRecruitment technology do today? How can it help recruiters and hiring managers perform their jobs more effectively? Before you dig in and get yourself overwhelmed in comparing product details, keep a short list of must-have attributes and make sure it includes questions such as:


• Does the solution provide a true end-to-end Recruitment solution?


• Does the solution offer skills assessment in the selection process?


• Does the solution include functionality for integrated background checks and resume extraction?


• Does the tool allow you to establish a manager-candidate-recruiter relationship?


• Does it manage control and processes in your organization for regulatory compliance?


• Does it effectively manage your recruitment processes in real-time to eliminate costly delays


• Does the system effectively manage worldwide privacy and local regulation?

Paying attention to a set of good baseline questions will help you in determining whether or not the vendor's offering truly is designed to assist managers with tasks such as identifying headcount needs and for processing and posting requests for job openings. It will also help you determine whether or not recruiting teams and candidates can collaborate and communicate from requisition through creation and presentation of offers.

Online All The Time
The Internet has impacted recruiting more so than any other aspect of HR. The right person for the job is out there. Leveraging the Internet to become more visible and having an integrated company-facing page that integrates to your backend recruitment processes is definitely going to give you the edge on finding the right person for the job, regardless of whether they're in the next county or in another country.