ERE.net » Alice Snell

Big Benefits for Smaller Companies

Alice Snell — Mon, 13 Feb 2006 19:00:00 +0000

Small- and medium-size enterprises have both differences and similarities to the operations of large companies. Although small- and medium-size enterprises do not manage their operations on the same scale as big companies, they share all of the same basic structures and business processes. The organization charts for all companies include departments for sales and marketing, administration, production, accounting and finance, human resources, and more. Large companies, however, have historically held the advantage in hiring. Their size provided larger budgets to afford big recruiting advertisements. Large organizations had the advantage of dedicated and substantial resources for their corporate websites, which included careers sections. They also allocated IT funding for acquisition and implementation of sophisticated back-end hiring management systems.

Times have changed. The good news for small- and medium-size enterprises today is the opportunity to gain the same advantages from many of the business process and technology improvements that were designed for large companies, and until recently, have only been available to large companies. With the combination of on demand availability, best practice processes, software-as-a service technology, and Internet connectivity, all companies are now only one click away from the same capabilities. In the area of human resources, small- and medium-size enterprises now can leverage technology and process improvements that can transform their talent management operations to be more effective and efficient. Two areas with low-hanging fruit for small- and medium-size enterprises are sourcing strategies and hiring management systems. The playing field is leveling.

Sourcing Strategies

The evolution from expensive newspaper recruitment advertising to online job boards represented a major shift in reach for candidate sourcing. For small- and medium-size enterprises, job board advertising rates were often too steep — and the geographic reach was broader than they needed. Hiring for small- and medium-size enterprises requires identifying external candidates, yet may not involve high-volume recruiting. Staffing is typically geographically limited. Sourcing strategies are often reactive: The need for a new hire occurs and advertising for that job opening is placed. Once the hire is made, sourcing for candidates halts. That method of candidate sourcing is expensive and misses out on the low-cost/high-yield opportunities presented on the Internet today.

Your Message Must Be True

To drive recruiting success in the future, small- and medium-size enterprises need to develop a good message and employment brand, and be poised to react to quality candidates quickly. The employee value proposition must ring true and be communicated in all media, including the corporate website and recruitment advertising. Low cost, local resources can help transmit the message and build a candidate pool. One example is using Craigslist, an online community with a wide range of classifieds and forums. Craigslist has sites covering 190 U.S. cities as well as 35 country sites. Job postings are easy and free at all sites except the San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York City sites. Rates for job postings at those sites are substantially less than major job boards. Craigslist was the number-one classified site according to comScore Media Metrix, with 8,236,000 unique visitors during October 2005. Also, watch for opportunities for job posting and candidate sourcing with Google Base, a massive classifieds database combining listings aggregated from other sites, along with postings which are currently free. DirectEmployers Association, a consortium of U.S. companies, has announced a partnership with Google. All member company jobs currently available through the DirectEmployers search engine and those located at JobCentral.com will be included in a new Google database. In addition, new online referral networks such as LinkedIn, Jobster and H3 provide opportunities for any web-savvy recruiter to engage in a “six degrees of separation” exercise and access a much larger network than a small or medium-size organization’s own employee referral program could deliver.

Software as a Service

A strong sourcing strategy produces numerous candidate applications and information, and requires filtering and assessing candidates to make the right hire. Up until now, managing the hiring process has created an administrative burden for small- and medium-size enterprises. Today, small- and medium-size enterprises can improve business performance by streamlining hiring processes with self-service talent management applications delivered on demand, known as “software as a service.” This software solution is designed specifically for web delivery and supported by a vendor as a service, only requires a standard browser and an Internet connection. It is subscription-based and easy to configure and deploy. This can be the platform for:

Requisition management

Job postings
Approval processes
Candidate management
Campaigns by email
Contact management
Prescreening and ranking
Interview management
Reference and background checks
Careers website management
Reporting and analysis
Employee referrals

In the past, only large organizations could afford the resources necessary to deploy enterprise applications. Using new, on-demand platforms for software delivered as a service essentially democratizes access for smaller companies to leading applications. They can leverage the years of development and refinement focused on large companies to meet their needs.

Labor Market Indicators and Staffing Strategy

Alice Snell — Mon, 01 Mar 2004 19:00:00 +0000

Hiring is in the news. Every day articles cover the current state of employment and unemployment along with analysis and predictions of future labor market trends. Curiously, the data and prognostications are not consistent among various publications and journalists. Here are some examples. BusinessWeek Online reported:

Some 25% of the executives on The Business Roundtable, an association of top CEOs who lead a combined workforce of more than 10 million, say they expect to bring people on in the first six months of 2004. (Another 25% said they still expect more bloodletting, while the remaining half said they expect no change in staffing levels.) Compare that with the beginning of last year, when a terrifying 60% of corporate big-wigs warned they would eliminate jobs in 2003 ó and then followed through on their predictions.

According to the Hudson Employment Index:

Data from the Hudson Employment Index, a monthly measure of employee attitudes on critical work issues, also reveals 31% of respondents predict their companies will be hiring more people, while only 16% expect layoffs. The gap between the two widened in January, rising to 15% from 12% the previous month.

Yet Reuters reported:

Indeed, even companies with quarterly profits soaring are shy about adding workers ó if they’re not laying people off. ‘We listened to over a hundred quarterly earnings conference calls and we have not heard from anybody who says they are picking up the pace of hiring,’ said Richard Yamarone, director of economic research at Argus Research. ‘Not one.’

Strategy from Trends Which prediction is correct? What data is accurate? What will the labor market look like by the end of 2004? The discrepancy in the forecasting of trends in hiring is frustrating. Without clear and consistent information, it may seem counterproductive to spend precious time deciphering all the disparate data cited by the journalists, economists and analysts. So why is it important to pay attention to employment indices, hiring forecasts and other employment trend indicators? Company business plans require skilled people for their execution. The ability to attract and retain a team of the right talent is a precondition of fulfilling any business plan. Company management relies on knowledge of factors affecting the ability to carry out a business plan, including the supply of talent. As a professional in a corporate staffing department, you are an expert in your company on the labor market. Executive management expects to turn to the staffing department for information on labor trends, to adjust business strategy accordingly. Supply and Demand A corporate staffing director needs to be able to answer the question “Can we get enough people, possessing the right skills, to accomplish our goals?” To answer this, you must know two things:

Demand, or the number of people possessing the required skills needed to fulfill business plans
Supply, or the number of people possessing these skills available in the labor market

The demand side of the equation ó the number of people needed to fulfill business plans ó may be calculated using proper workforce planning. Knowledge of labor supply, including available sources and market rates, is the second puzzle piece in aligning demand and supply. Select labor market indicators are aids to gauge trends in labor supply. Some labor market indicators are qualitative, such as the hiring outlook survey reported above by BusinessWeek Online. Others, such as help-wanted indices, are quantitative. The Bureau of Labor Statistics is a valuable resource for labor market data. It supplies volumes of information on unemployment rates, population demographics, wages and other key pieces of intelligence. Think Globally, Work Locally The availability of specific types of workers within your region can significantly impact your company’s business plans. For immediate, actionable knowledge, pay particular attention to data that reflects your region or industry, or data that is specific to the skills-sets or functions you require. Nonetheless, as you look to relevant regional labor trend indicators, stay informed on national and global trends. To some extent, all companies now function in a global business market. HR professionals must prepare to be called upon for information on trends in the labor market and to develop long-term forecasts. Different labor market indicators may give conflicting guidance. Find indicators that are most relevant to your region, industry or hiring activity. If indicators still conflict, formulate alternative scenarios and watch for signs that validate one scenario over another. Be conversant with macro-economic trends and analysis of employment issues. Hiring outlooks may not yet be a common topic on quarterly earnings calls, but undoubtedly will be, as workforce demographics and the supply and demand of labor are increasingly central to corporate results.

Redeploy for Productivity

Alice Snell — Mon, 15 Dec 2003 19:00:00 +0000

Many large companies shut down divisions and lay off workers while at the same time starting new business ventures. This firing-and-hiring trend seems to prevail regardless of the state of the economy. There is a perception among some that companies do not have the time for internal redeployment, so organizations turn to the external job market to fill the positions. However, the notion that external hiring is the most expeditious misses the fact that new external hires take longer to train and become productive. In reality, corporations must be nimble in assigning and reassigning talent to meet rapid product development cycles, accomplish project-based work, and otherwise respond to rapidly changing business environments. Redeploy Talent Companies in the midst of reorganization would do well to consider retaining top talent by redeploying them within the company. Corporations have long been motivated to identify and accommodate top performers to combat outside offers to key players. In periods of time when the company is both laying off in some divisions and hiring in others, internal redeployment avoids high staffing costs, the hidden costs of lowered morale, and a drain on organizational knowledge. The “Mellon Learning Curve Research Study” gives corporations compelling reasons to resist the urge to fire and hire. According to its findings, internal hires get up to speed at their new jobs one-and-one-half to two times faster than external hires for most job categories. Internal hires tend to reach a higher level of productivity more quickly, and have 50% fewer unproductive days during the ramp-up period. Though it may appear that pursuing a strategy weighted toward external hiring fulfills corporate goals fastest, the goal properly conceived is having a productive contributor, not a body on board. Recruiting speed alone isn’t enough ó it is productivity that counts. An internal candidate who is well matched to his or her position will contribute more, sooner. Internal Systems For certain, a company will not have the time to devote to internal redeployment if it does not have systems in place to know what skills and aspirations exist in its employee base prior to the need to hire. Without the right systems in place, this information can be time-consuming to gather and mine. An employee skills inventory database maintains profiles of employees, their skills, and abilities, for use in matching to internal opportunities. Self-service web-based staffing management solutions empower employees to create and update personal profiles and apply for career opportunities. Having a skills inventory database allows an organization to allocate resources optimally, redeploying employees as needed. Matching a skills database with a database of employee profiles enables strategic workforce planning, aligning existing talent assets to present and future requirements. As detailed in the iLogos report Internal Mobility, two-thirds (65%) of survey respondents consider an employee skills database to be important to the success of an initiative to redeploy internally. With a skills inventory database based on a robust technology platform, organizations can benefit from being able to mine a transparent internal labor pool and profit from a clear understanding of the human capital it controls. Just-In-Time Staffing The pace of today’s business cycle calls for just-in-time staffing. However, a staffing strategy that is driven purely by speed may mistake an intermediate milestone, the body on board, with the ultimate goal: a productive contributor. The desire to save time by hiring externally must be balanced by the longer time it takes for external hires to become productive. When companies are in a situation of having to let go of some employees while at the same time rapidly filling new positions, all talent sources should be an option: contingent hires, internal redeployment, or permanent external hires. The sourcing decision should be made on the basis of an accurate assessment of the skills needed and of the talent available that will become productive in the least amount of time. A decision made because of a perception of a lack of time may end up costing the company money in lost revenue due to delayed productivity.

Internal Mobility: Performance Measures

Alice Snell — Mon, 13 Oct 2003 19:00:00 +0000

To know whether an HR program such as internal mobility has met its objectives, the standards for measurement of the program performance must be defined. This article draws on the iLogos Research study Internal Mobility to explore current internal mobility processes in leading corporations and the metrics used to measure program effectiveness. Current Reporting Practices HR practitioners place high importance on metrics: 82% of survey respondents report metrics to be important (31%) or very important (51%) to the success of an internal mobility initiative, according to our survey. A large majority of respondents (83%) report using the “percent of positions filled internally” as the key metric to measure effectiveness of their internal mobility program. However, 13% of respondents did not know their percentage of open positions internally filled annually. C-Level Monitoring The iLogos Research study probed not only how HR managers measure the performance of an internal mobility initiative, but also how C-level executives (CEOs, CFOs or COOs) monitor the program. Here the results expose significant discrepancies. Only the metric “Percent of positions filled internally” garners attention from more than half of both groups, being monitored by just over (53%) half of C-level executives. HR practitioners and C-level executives use the metric for “cost of hire” roughly equally (29% and 27% respectively); however, “time to hire” is used more by the HR respondents (45%) than the C-level executives (27%). Using “Employee performance” and “Hiring manager satisfaction” as measures for the internal mobility program is approximately twice as prevalent among HR practitioners compared to C-level executives. Alignment of Goals and Metrics: A Disconnect? Obviously, metrics used to measure program effectiveness should be aligned with the overall purpose of the program. Surprisingly, though, many survey respondents who reported goals for their internal mobility program did not report using the corresponding metrics to track performance against those goals. Specifically, 76% cite the goal of improving retention rates, yet only 39% track turnover; 56% cite the goal of lowering staffing costs, yet only 29% track cost of hire. Moreover, 53% cite the goal of filling positions faster, yet only 45% track time-to-hire. Barriers to Metrics The apparent disconnect between internal mobility goals and metrics used to measure the performance of the program is in part attributable to the high barriers inhibiting accurate reporting and metrics. Most companies do not possess integrated systems, so gathering and analyzing metrics is a very manual, intensive process, which acts as an impediment to reporting and analyzing the information on a regular basis. Only one-third of respondents reported being satisfied (19%) or very satisfied (13%) with their current online internal mobility technology as it enables metrics and reporting. It is clear that reporting infrastructure must be adequate to providing reliable and timely data. To optimize the process, HR practitioners need to vigilantly track key performance measures, such as turnover rates and internal fill rates. However, these metrics are not ends in themselves, but instead are to be monitored as they relate to fulfilling the strategic goals of the program. Ultimately, corporate leaders need to know whether the program is fulfilling its business objectives.

Internal Mobility: Simultaneous or Staggered Posting?

Alice Snell — Mon, 29 Sep 2003 19:00:00 +0000

My last article, Internal Mobility: Process Design, discussed the overall structure of an internal mobility process and specific ways that the process is designed by leading staffing organizations. When constructing an internal mobility program, one decision facing staffing executives is whether to give the initiative a head start by giving internal candidates the chance to apply before external candidates may. Should the open position be posted simultaneously to the employees and the public, or should the public posting be delayed? The right strategy for your company depends on what the internal mobility initiative is intended to accomplish. Current Stats As reported in the study “Internal Mobility,” by iLogos Research, internal mobility is an important component of many companies’ overall staffing strategy:

62% of survey respondents (70+ large and global corporations) report that their organization turns to internal sources to fill an open job position at least three-quarters of the time.

Approximately one-quarter (27%) of companies always turn to internal sources.
Only five percent never source internally.
Internal mobility is clearly a very significant source for many organizations. The majority of respondents (61%) report internally filling 40% or more of open positions annually.

Timing of Internal and External Posting When posting open positions, the two choices are either to post simultaneously to internal and external sources, or to inform the internal candidate pool of the opportunity first and advertise externally later. The interval between internal and external posting may be a week, 30 days, or some other length of time. The period might even be dictated by a collective bargaining agreement. The choice of a simultaneous or delayed posting strategy depends on the overall goal of the internal mobility initiative. If your goal is to draw the best talent possible from the widest candidate pool, it is advisable to post simultaneously to both internal and external sources. Companies that have a history and culture of high rates of internal hiring and retention may choose to post simultaneously in an effort to stimulate the hiring of fresh talent. Conversely, delaying the external posting gives the internal mobility initiative time to react, which may be especially desirable if the goal is to lower staffing costs or increase retention. The internal mobility policy must also be clear on whether internal candidates enjoy more than just a temporal advantage, and have priority in the actual hiring itself. The survey results reflect disparate goals and practices: 47% of companies delay the posting of company job opportunities to external media sources at specific intervals to allow employees time to react to internal postings. On the other hand, 33% inform both internal and external talent pools simultaneously. Automating the Posting Process For optimum results, the internal mobility process must run smoothly, and here technology can help. Automating posting to electronic media happens instantaneously upon approval. For companies adding a delay between internal and external posting, sometimes on a very precise schedule, an automated posting system will increase accuracy, repeatability and scalability. Two-thirds of respondents to the iLogos Internal Mobility survey consider automated posting technology to be very important to the overall success of an internal mobility program. The business context of an internal mobility program varies considerably from company to company, depending on unique combinations of corporate culture, retention rates, company growth, and the presence of other human capital initiatives, such as employee development and career path planning. The tactical decision whether to stagger internal and external job postings must flow from the overall strategy or goal of the program. Once the program is aligned with corporate objectives, optimized processes and technologies support that goal.

Internal Mobility: Process Design

Alice Snell — Mon, 15 Sep 2003 19:00:00 +0000

Internal mobility ó the movement of employees from one position to another within a corporation ó is an efficient and cost-effective method of talent deployment and can be a significant component of a company’s staffing strategy. Making job opportunities available to the existing employee base leads to greater employee satisfaction and retention, while at the same time lowering staffing costs and filling positions much more quickly. To attain these benefits, the design of the internal mobility program must embody both communication excellence and processing efficiency. Internal Mobility Process Flow The structure of an internal mobility process flow has two halves: 1. Inform employees of internal opportunities. 2. Manage responses from interested internal candidates. In designing the specific steps of the process flow, the overall goal of the internal mobility initiative, as well as aspects of the policy and business rules governing it (e.g. eligibility requirements), must be taken into account. iLogos Research developed a report on internal mobility practices, entitled Internal Mobility, which presents results from a survey of more than 70 large and global corporations. Here is a selection of the findings and implementation recommendations from that report. Internal Job Notification Via Intranet The first function of an internal mobility process is to make employees aware of the opportunities. An effective communications plan promotes to employees the process of accessing opportunities. Most companies have moved the internal mobility program online. To inform employees of internal mobility opportunities, 96% of companies post to an intranet site. Moreover, 3 of the remaining 4% of companies currently not posting positions to an Intranet site plan on doing so. Companies use intranet technologies in such overwhelming numbers because of its speed and efficiency. Disseminating internal opportunities to the employee base in a timely manner is regarded as a key to a successful internal mobility initiative: 67% of survey respondents consider the automation of internal postings to be “very important” for the success of an internal mobility initiative. In complement, 71% of survey respondents report being satisfied (24%) or very satisfied (47%) with their current online internal mobility technology, as it enables intranet posting. Responses From Internal Candidates Once the employee base has been notified of internal opportunities, it is critical that the internal mobility process be designed to manage responses from interested candidates as efficiently as possible. To do so, 91% of companies allow employees to express interest in an internal position via the intranet site from either the PC at their workstation or a kiosk. Moreover, 9% of companies currently do not have an intranet-based job application form, but plan to in the future. Although email is a convenient method of communication, it is not the preferred format for accepting internal candidate applications since it lacks the process efficiencies of integrated intranet applications. Email is currently, though, a common medium through which employees (internal candidates) respond to internal opportunities: candidates may send an email to the HR department in more than half of companies. However, email responses are losing their appeal: 11% of companies plan on phasing out emails sent to the HR department; 8% of companies plan to phase out emails sent to the hiring manager; and 3% of companies plan on phasing out email job applications entirely. Paper still persists in the response channels of corporate internal mobility programs even though it is difficult to share across the enterprise (and hence is not scalable) and lacks a common format for assessment. Candidates may send a paper application, such as a resume, to the HR department or the hiring manager in 50% and 35% of companies, respectively. There is dissatisfaction with paper responses: 19% of companies plan on phasing out paper application forms directed to the HR department. Integrated Intranet Technologies Are Key It is clear that intranet technologies are the most favored platform for supporting an internal mobility process. An intranet site introduces multiple efficiencies, since it manages both the posting of opportunities and applications from employees, and is a self-service environment. In 89% of the companies surveyed, the intranet site is powered by back-end staffing automation technology. Optimizing a corporate internal mobility process for communication excellence and processing efficiency puts a company in an advantageous position to improve employee satisfaction and retention, lower staffing costs, and avoid losses in productivity due to unfilled positions.

Benefits of Saved Candidate Profiles

Alice Snell — Mon, 10 Mar 2003 19:00:00 +0000

My last article discussed staffing solutions that are based on a candidate profile. A candidate profile is a file in the careers site database unique to a candidate, containing all of his or her personal information in a structured format. The previous article compared profile-based systems with more conventional resume-based systems and pointed out several advantages to the new paradigm of electronic recruiting. This article elaborates on further benefits of profile-based systems, arising out of the more efficient use of information. Let’s suppose a fictitious company posts open requisitions to a careers website in a searchable database and solicits resumes online in response to these posted positions. Data Volumes Even a careers site with moderate traffic can generate a lot of candidate data for the corporation to process. The volume of candidate data coming from the careers site is a function of the overall traffic and the propensity of those candidates to submit a resume in response to posted job positions. Some candidates spam resumes at any open requisition they see, while others are more selective. Each time a candidate submits a resume on the careers site, the company receives an electronic file or document. For instance, think in terms of the simplest form of careers site response mechanism: an email link to “jobs@xyz-corp.com” at the bottom of every job posting. There will be a new email message arriving in this one email inbox every time a candidate uses the link. The same basic idea applies to web forms, be they simple cut-and-paste forms or more elaborate resume builders. Each job application event creates an electronic document or record that the company must handle and process. The Problem of Duplication Careers site visitors often submit resumes to more than one open requisition, either during the course of one session on the careers site or on subsequent visits. If we think in terms of each individual electronic document or record spawned by a resume submission event, it is easy to see how a company will get many duplicate or near-duplicate versions of a particular candidate’s resume as it evolves over time. Just how many duplicate resumes a company can expect depends on the number of times a given candidate returns to a site and his or her inclination to submit a new resume copy in response to a posted job position. Since recruiters ultimately want to select candidates, not resumes, the data management problem posed by duplicate candidate information is to reconcile or match up multiple resumes belonging to the one candidate who submitted them. Only then can a master data file or application transaction history for a given candidate be compiled. Duplication of candidate information in a database is a costly and time-consuming problem. Audits by Fortune 500 companies of candidate databases have discovered duplication rates of 40% to 45%. With today’s candidate volumes, manual de-duplication is out of the question. Technological solutions to the problem of duplication typically involve elaborate but fallible computer algorithms, based on parsing names, dates and other keywords. Often, the algorithm requires a manual check for accuracy. Job Carts Some companies have implemented a “job cart” feature on the careers website, in part in an effort to reduce the number of duplicate records in the company’s candidate database. Only one new electronic document is created upon checking out a job cart, consisting of the candidate’s resume information and the job requisition numbers of the positions placed in the cart. A job cart avoids duplication of candidate records that would otherwise be created over the course of a single user session on the Careers site. However, a job cart is incapable of eliminating duplicate candidate records created over the space of several visits by the same jobseeker, since the data it stores vanishes the moment the visitor closes his or her browser. Candidate Profiles A profile-based careers website gives job seekers the ability to create an account or profile on the careers website that contains all of the candidate’s personal information. The candidate can access the profile and “attach” it to specific job positions as the opportunities arise. Applying to newly posted positions at a later date on the part of the candidate requires only his or her password. The “saved candidate profile” approach requires a web-enabled back-end candidate database to allow candidates to create new records and access them at a later date. A profile-based solution ensures a one-to-one ratio of database records to candidates. Current Practices The trend in the Fortune 500 clearly favors the candidate profile approach over job carts. As iLogos Research reported inValue Creation Through Corporate Careers Websites, in 2002, 31% of the companies in the Fortune 500 have saved candidate profiles on the careers website (for an annual growth rate increase of 80%), compared to just nine percent that only have job carts implemented. Further Benefits of Candidate Profiles There are several key differences between a job cart and the saved candidate profile approach:

Creating a personal profile on the careers site is a better user experience overall than using a job cart. A candidate returning at a later date to a careers website to apply with a job cart to additional job positions will have to re-key all of his or her personal information again. On the other hand, the saved candidate profile approach keeps the candidate’s personal information for his or her reuse in the course of future job-hunting sessions.

Saved candidate profiles are better suited to work in conjunction with the online pre-screening of candidates. The approach allows the opportunity to ask questions of the candidate that are specific to the requirements of the job position, one job position at a time. Asking candidates pre-screening questions specific to job positions is impractical in the context of a job cart feature, since the candidate would be faced with an overwhelming number of qualifying questions.
The saved candidate profile approach creates a complete application transaction record. All data gathered on past requisitions is available for future use, including answers to pre-screening questions, test scores, indications of work preferences, and more.
Saved candidate profiles are eminently suited to enabling best candidate-relationship-management practices. Imagine inviting all candidates in a database to apply to a particular job position that matches their interests, only to find out that some candidates received five or ten versions of the same email because they exist in your database several times. Rather than impressing the candidates in your database, you would create a negative impression that could impact your organization’s brand.
A profile-based solution ensures a one-to-one ratio of candidates to candidate files and guarantees accurate reporting. The ability to generate accurate reports is difficult in a non profile-based solution because there can be multiple versions of the same candidate record in the absence of a reliable de-duplication process.

Data volume and duplication, along with the candidate’s website experience, are important issues. The opportunity for centralizing an efficient recruiting process through the corporate careers website is motivating many companies to implement a staffing management solution. Key benefits of staffing management solutions include streamlined data management and the ability to report on key metrics. The implementation of saved candidate profiles functionality best provides efficiency for the corporation and an agreeable user experience for the candidate.

Profile-Based Recruiting

Alice Snell — Mon, 10 Feb 2003 19:00:00 +0000

What is a profile? In the broadest terms, a profile is any collection of information on an individual, stored in a structured database. Think of a profile on Yahoo! or Amazon. Profiles on these sites contain basic contact information, but also any other information required to carry out desired functions. In the case of Amazon, the profile maintains a history of the individual’s past buying behavior, which is crucial to the smooth functioning of the online auction. Each profile is unique to the user, secured with a password, and updateable. Profile-based Recruiting In the context of recruiting, a profile-based system is one in which each candidate has a unique file in the system containing all of his or her personal information. A profile-based system provides candidates with the ability to create and maintain a personal profile on the Careers website, which they can then access and “attach” to job positions in the future as the opportunities arise. This job application history also becomes part of the information contained in the record. The candidate profile is saved in the company’s candidate database, accessible via password through the Careers website interface. The password can also be used to modify and update the information on file. With profile-based recruiting, the corporate recruiter has the opportunity to pull structured data from candidates on any number of predefined topics for screening and matching candidates according to basic eligibility requirements for work with the corporation. Using a structured candidate profile, the data pulled from the candidate can better align with corporate hiring information needs. Profiles vs. Resumes In a non-profile-based system, a new record is created each time a candidate applies. Over time, the corporate database will have multiple records for a particular candidate. The information in a record in a resume-based system is determined by the conventions governing resume content, or is information the candidate considered to be relevant to the recruiter. There is little or no opportunity for the recruiter to pull truly relevant information from the candidate. The information in a resume-based record is fixed at the moment it is created; it does not get updated over time and so can only obsolesce thereafter. In a resume-based solution, each individual file needs to be reviewed before it can be determined if the applicant is a potential candidate for a role. Structured Data Structured data is more appropriate to automating the matching of supply and demand for talent. The corporation must first define in a structured way the skills, certifications, and interests required for a given position. By pulling data that matches the defined structure for each position from candidates into a profile, all candidates can then be matched and sorted against the criteria. The candidate profile contains, but is not limited to, information appearing in a conventional resume. The resume becomes a supplementary piece of information that may be reviewed when it is verified that the candidate has the correct skills. Advantages of Profile-based Systems A Careers website with saved candidate profiles makes the candidate, and not the resume, the fundamental unit of selection. This contributes to process savings by reducing wasted administrative time while creating more consistency in candidate records accessible across the enterprise. By building relationships, not gathering documents, staffing departments can respond to the needs of the corporation in a timely fashion. Through a continuous recruiting process dedicated to developing candidate relationships in advance of any identification of a hiring need, the staffing function is in a better position to identify quickly those candidates who possess the required skills, interests and motivations. A profile-based system can also support job agent functionality, which automatically sends email invitations to candidates inviting them to apply to jobs as they become available. Maintaining an ongoing relationship with a candidate requires updating and refreshing the candidate’s profile on an ongoing basis. A candidate relationship database system includes functionality that automatically identifies missing or out-of-date pieces of information, and requests them, through automated email, from candidates. Significant savings and process efficiency arise with the ability to find good candidates who now exist in your database without having to spend sourcing dollars on each new position you have. Other benefits of a candidate-profile-based system include accurate and swift searching of the candidate database, the ability to capture and retain a complete candidate history, and improved EEO reporting. The Future Is Profile-based Recruiting The Fortune 500 is increasingly turning to profile-driven Careers websites. iLogos Research found that allowing jobseekers to create and maintain a candidate profile on the Careers website increased in 2002 to 31% of Fortune 500 companies, up from 17% in the previous year, for a strong year-over-year growth of 80%. Given the tangible savings and benefits of profile-based recruiting, the rising growth rate in the Fortune 500 for the practice will continue in the years to come. In large part, this growth is being driven by the latest generation of web-based staffing management solutions, which incorporate a best practices front-end based on the candidate profile and a configurable, workflow-based back-end.

Consequences of Open Standards for HR Solution Strategies

Alice Snell — Mon, 13 Jan 2003 19:00:00 +0000

Integration is the systematic tying together of separate enterprise applications. Considerable work may be required for two enterprise applications to be integrated successfully. The software and data have to be made to mesh without any slippage or miscommunication. Accomplishing this requires an agreement about how the transaction or data exchange will be accomplished. Open Standards An “open” standard is an industry blueprint meant to ensure that competing products work together. An open standard is a published standard that is possessed by no one and used by all. Anyone can inspect, criticize, or suggest enhancements to an open standard, and any changes must be made by consensus. As more companies adopt an open industry standard, the easier it becomes for them to communicate, without the need for costly customized data interchanges. A proprietary standard, on the other hand, is typically owned by a corporation. Its internals cannot be inspected; its users must license it; and the owner of the standard can change it at will. In the past, companies that purchased enterprise software systems submitted to the data standard of that system for all its functions. Although companies were not in reality “locked in,” data exchange or migration was cumbersome and costly. Software solution assessment unfortunately became an extension of status quo solutions, instead of a true evaluation to identify the best solution available on the market. XML XML (eXtensible Markup Language) is a language that can be used to develop open standards. XML is a flexible way to define information formats, so that two information systems can share the data in a common, consistent way. XML allows a company to define a common language for the exchange of data between two systems, regardless of how the data is structured internally in each system. HR-XML HR-XML is an effort by a group of vendors and service providers to formulate an open standard for data communication between companies, to be adopted by the whole of the HR community. The mission of the HR-XML Consortium is to spare employers and vendors the risk and expense of having to negotiate and agree upon data interchange mechanisms on an ad-hoc basis. By developing and publishing open data exchange standards based on XML, the Consortium provides the means for any company to transact with other companies without having to establish, engineer, and implement many separate interchange mechanisms. The HR-XML initiative (www.hr-xml.org) is working towards an HR-specific vocabulary for the exchange of information between different human capital management systems (see my previous article detailing HR-XML). By developing an open standard based on XML, the HR-XML initiative will enable companies to move critical HR data without having to engineer costly and time-consuming ad-hoc interchange mechanisms. The emphasis in human capital management is shifting towards viewing HR processes as part of a supply-chain, linked together electronically. HR-XML increases the efficiency of information flow up and down this HR supply-chain. Integration A staffing management system does not function in isolation. For true end-to-end functionality, a staffing management system integrates with other Human Resource Information Systems (HRIS). Data gathered on new hires in the recruiting process flows into the employee system, handled by conventional HRIS applications such as Peoplesoft or SAP. Open Choices Open standards, such as HR-XML, enable different software systems to share data with relative ease. Data migration no longer needs to be the key driver for decisions on system choices. Single vendor solutions no longer keep their corporate customers tied to them because of trepidation about proprietary data formats, data transfer, and integration. The viable options for HR system choices include modules from large HRIS vendors alongside specialized offerings from best-of-breed solution providers. The true decision can then be made on benefits coming from functionalities and not from fear of heterogeneous dataflow. The keys to success in the future are universally agreed-upon standards such as HR-XML to increase the speed and reliability of integration. HR departments are free to choose expert solutions that best meets their needs and align with their corporate goals and vision, unencumbered by concerns about data integrity and integration into broad enterprise-wide systems.

Segmenting Your Careers Website Candidates

Alice Snell — Mon, 18 Nov 2002 19:00:00 +0000

Corporate staffing has become firmly established as an online activity, focusing around the corporate careers website. Competitive advantage no longer belongs to the company that uses a corporate website to fulfill staffing requirements. To separate itself from the pack, a company must segment its candidates. Successful website recruiting requires the application of some fundamental principles of successful marketing. A corporate recruiter must understand the company?s staffing needs and how the candidate population segments into distinct groups. With this knowledge, the message delivered to each candidate segment, and the information exchange between candidates in each segment and the corporation, can be customized. College Recruiting as Candidate Segmentation Most of the Fortune 500 already practice market segmentation on the corporate careers website, by dedicating a sub-section of the careers site to addressing the distinct information needs of the college recruit. The material in a college recruiting section typically includes a description of the company?s internship and training programs, career tracks, and possibility of advancement within the company. The image the company projects to college students is carefully tailored to appeal to them. More advanced college sections go beyond slick marketing, and pull information from potential recruits, with interactive forms that are designed to enhance the pre-screening function and begin a virtual relationship with the candidate. Since iLogos Research began tracking this website recruiting best practice, the percentage of Fortune 500 companies with a sub-section targeted at college students has grown from 42% in 2000, increasing to 46% in 2001, and reaching 52% for 2002. Candidate Segmentation Generalized What these Fortune 500 companies are doing to attract and recruit college students generalizes to other segments of the candidate population that are important to a company?s specific hiring needs: MBAs, engineers, drivers, mechanics, logistics specialists, even company alumnae. Important segments of the workforce vary from company to company. It is up to staffing analysts to review carefully the talent needs of a company, to segment the candidate stream into distinct segments, and then formulate a strategy for reaching and marketing to the segments identified, according to the unique needs and desires of each. Best Practices for Candidate Segmentation The careers website best practices that have been the subject of many of my past articles provide a framework to ensure that candidates in a valuable segment become a part of the overall corporate talent pool database. The iLogos best practices are organized around the three basic goals of a corporate Careers website:

Attract

Convince
Capture and process jobseekers

Attract Large companies are experiencing high traffic volumes to the careers website, from tens of thousands to upwards of 250,000 individuals per month and growing. This traffic arrives at the careers home in a largely undifferentiated stream. The challenge is to separate this traffic into one of your key candidate segmentations. Do so by having them self-select. Provide visitors with an immediate and obvious choice to follow a path to an area of content targeted to the candidate segment to which that visitor belongs. Web users scan for information, instead of reading. Provide clear visual cues to visitors with large graphics that link to the segmented areas of content. Many companies target critical segments of the workforce with an easily remembered URL that leads to content developed expressly for that audience (e.g., “mba.company.com”). One Fortune 500 company created two niche portals to attract tough-to-find talent and assigned each portal an easily remembered URL with which to drive pre-segmented traffic to the portal: “www.f500co.com/itcareers” and “www.f500co.com/salescareers.” The company promoted these two niche recruitment sites in print advertising, and in other targeted collateral marketing material. Before the launch of these niche portals, the number of candidates applying online in these two segments was in the single digits. Using an easily remembered URL to drive traffic from offline marketing material to the Web increased that number to 55%. Convince The marketing message you deliver to different candidate segmentations is critical. The message has to be tailored to address the issues that appeal to and motivate members of the target audience. For inspiration, look at the masters of market segmentation, Procter & Gamble. The company provides detailed and targeted career advice to minorities and people with disabilities. In another example, a major airline provides those interested in becoming a pilot for the company with copious material on how to become a successful candidate, including a bibliography of study guides. Be creative with content in order to engage candidates, but also look for opportunities to pre-screen for motivations, competencies, or cultural fit. Capture To capture key data on the careers website, anticipate the needs of each candidate segmentation and provide each with an online application process tailored to those needs. The information requirements for both candidates and recruiters vary across different candidate segmentations. For example, allowing candidates to preserve their anonymity in the initial stages of the hiring cycle may not be appropriate for all candidates, but it is very important to candidates seeking executive or professional positions. Data privacy requirements vary with geography. Make sure that your online application process is able to adjust dynamically to the context. Though a configurable online application process pulls different pieces of information from different candidates according to the context, it is important that the information in stored in a common, structured format, in a unified back-end database. Segment To Get Ahead Market segmentation is a key strategy in successful marketing. Recruiting shares many characteristics and challenges with marketing in general and can benefit from candidate segmentation. It is important to get to know how your candidate pool segments into distinct sub-populations and market to them with a customized message and a customized recruiting process. Designing the careers website to reflect the segmentation of your company’s talent pool provides an important competitive advantage. A careers website that addresses a segmented candidate stream will capture valuable candidates more efficiently, and bring them into a fully functioning candidate relationship management database, where true personalization and targeting of recruiting communication can begin.

The Changing Role of the Corporate Recruiter

Alice Snell — Mon, 07 Oct 2002 19:00:00 +0000

Recruiters are under pressure. Third-party recruiters are feeling the pressure of the current economy, as corporate clients are cutting back on use of their services. This lean period is forcing many to reevaluate their role and to reflect on what the market wants of them. Amid the development of recruiting technologies, this period of retrenchment may even bring about a change in the services that third-party recruiters bring to the market. Corporate recruiters are also feeling the pressure brought on by the current hiring environment. Budgets are being scrutinized, staffing department headcount has shrunk, and new skill sets are in demand. Challenges abound ó but opportunity does as well. It is time for corporate recruiters to take a global view of their role and the services they provide to the corporation. Taking Stock This is the first downturn in the business cycle of the Internet age. Any reexamination of the recruiter’s role within a corporation would be incomplete without reference to the Internet. E-recruiting introduced new concepts, tools, and techniques to the corporate recruiter’s daily activities. Corporate recruiters were called upon to be advisors on Internet sources and experts on the relative efficacy of different job boards or such obscure matters as flip-searching. The staffing departments of many large corporations adopted a division of labor that reflected some of the new roles and skills, with recruiters dedicated to active Internet sourcing, others concentrating on multi-posting, and still others handling interviewing and closing. Those who mastered these new concepts and techniques were often able to provide superior service to their internal corporate customers. E-recruiting is no longer an esoteric skill, but an intrinsic part of the staffing toolbox. Internet sourcing is now part of the mainstream mix of media. Key demographics of the Internet population ó such as age, gender, income and education ó are converging with the demographics of the population as a whole. The majority of companies are in a position where virtually all candidates are on the Web. Candidate quantity is high. The focus now is on identifying quality. The Impact of Technology The second major trend in recruiting since the last business cycle is the increasing role of recruitment automation technology. A reexamination of the role of a corporate recruiter within an organization has to come to terms with the fact that staffing automation systems have moved a significant proportion of the administrative tasks away from the recruiter’s desk. Non-value-added administrative tasks typically involve moving information from one place to another, without any change in the nature or value of the information. End-to-end staffing management solutions automate the flow of information within the recruiting process, particularly where there is no change in the intrinsic nature of the information. Pushing requisition data to the corporate website, job boards, and other sources does not involve any change to the format or value of the information, and so was an early candidate for automation and integration. It is no longer part of a corporate recruiter’s core function to match up resumes to requisitions, since this wholly administrative task has largely been automated. Giving hiring managers self-service access to short-listed candidates’ credentials removes yet another non-value-added task from a corporate recruiter’s hands. Value-Added Services With non-value-added administrative tasks removed, what is the key for recruiters? A recruiter’s true value-added role is not to be the holder of arcane e-recruiting knowledge, nor to be an operator of a recruitment automation system. Recruiters add value for corporations when they build relationships with candidates. The tools for forming relationships with candidates have evolved over time as technology has improved. The Internet has become one among many other sources of new relationships. By removing or reducing the administrative burden on a recruiter, staffing technology increases productivity. It also forces recruiters to focus on being value-added contributors. It is important for corporate recruiters to understand recruitment technology and know where it is merely relieving administrative tasks and where it can assist with value-added tasks, such as matching quality candidates to hiring needs. The appropriate response of a corporate recruiter to e-recruiting recruitment technology is to hone skills in the use of the technology and focus on value-added uses of the technology. Corporate recruiters need to meet the challenges of learning about new technologies and embrace these as opportunities. Proficiency in the use of technology tools that streamline recruiter’s value-added tasks is the key to the corporate recruiter’s future career.

Low Employment Is Good For Strategic Staffing

Alice Snell — Mon, 12 Aug 2002 19:00:00 +0000

As the economic forces of the new millennium continue to take shape, large companies are revising corporate staffing department budgets with a view towards cutting costs and realigning goals. The overheated “find talent anywhere” environment of recent years has reversed. Corporate staffing departments have less job positions open, and more candidates applying for them. For many organizations hiring new employees has lost its priority-one status. Without the pressure from high-volume hiring needs, recruiting staff has been cut ó in some organizations severely. Yet regardless of the economic climate, the goal for corporations remains the same: employ the highest quality talent, those who best fit a job position and are the strongest performers. As is standard for all business processes, a quality staffing process should be accomplished quickly, efficiently, and at the lowest cost. Let’s focus on one of the cost factors ó candidate database development ó and look at it in terms of demand and supply. Demand/Supply Equation Costs may be lowered in a number of ways. Creating a strategy for lowering costs while achieving corporate staffing goals requires knowledge, data, and vision. One way to reduce cost is to diminish the need for product or services. Another way is to increase efficiency in dealing with supply. In staffing this can translate into low demand for new hires. But low demand does not equal no demand. Although down from peak levels of a few years ago, there are still many positions open. iLogos Research found 75,000 positions listed on the corporate Careers sites of Fortune 500 companies in a survey detailed in the report, “Where The Jobs Are.” In fact, that survey found that Fortune 500 companies posted an average of 184 jobs on the corporate site. Now let’s take a look at supply, specifically the quantity of jobseekers on the Internet. The Pew Internet Project found that 52 million Americans have looked online for information about jobs (a more than 60% jump in the number of online job hunters from March 2000), and more than four million do so on a typical day. This is high volume and indicates a growing supply. Challenge Managing this candidate volume presents a significant challenge for corporate staffing to provide quality services to hiring managers and meet corporate goals. Ongoing communication with job seekers is important to sustain strong and positive employer branding. Also, we can see from this data that large corporations have ongoing hiring needs which are of interest and accessible online by an unprecedented number of job seekers. Quality candidates need to be identified and cultivated. This again pressures the corporate staffing department. Where then is the opportunity? Opportunity The opportunity exists today for large corporations to optimize the staffing process and build a large database of quality potential employees very cheaply. Companies utilizing the corporate careers site for job posting are already leveraging a low-cost/high-exposure media. Those companies can post any number of job positions without incurring incremental additional costs. At times of high demand (i.e. high number of job positions), candidates are more difficult to find and sourcing costs are high. At present, with the supply of candidates high because of both the economic climate and enthusiastic adoption of the Internet for job seeking, sourcing costs can be reduced. This is the opportunity for large corporations to build dynamic proprietary candidate databases at significantly reduced cost. Corporate staffing departments without robust systems in place are burdened by low headcount with high workload, and are struggling to perform as an efficient business unit for the corporation. But corporations with systems to handle the volume are well positioned not only to meet the needs of the company today, but also to reduce costs in future budgets by developing an in-house candidate database at low cost, to draw on whenever needed. Strategic staffing is about managing a skills inventory efficiently to match the demand with the best quality supply, while maintaining a favorable relationship with the market to support good branding. It should not be an urgent transactional activity, functioning reactively simply to address demand. Strategic staffing is instead a quality-centric approach that builds towards an important outcome. Today, the economy gives corporations a wonderful opportunity to proactively pursue one strategic result-ownership of a large, quality candidate database-at low cost.

Best of Breed vs. Just Good Enough

Alice Snell — Mon, 10 Jun 2002 19:00:00 +0000

Is your current staffing automation technology just getting you by? Sometimes burning platforms only smolder. Without a major catastrophe, there is little incentive to find a better solution. But don’t become too complacent in accepting the status quo, or just accepting the CIO’s default choice of upgrade, when there may be a staffing platform that operates at an even higher level still. Just Good Enough Listen to this tale of a fictional company. Ira Lotte is the director of staffing at “Conduco,” a large Midwest Fortune 1000 corporation. Times were tough during the economic retraction, but Ira considers the staffing department to be lucky. Hiring continued during the slowdown, although at not quite the same torrid pace, and the organization came through relatively unscathed. The company is emerging from its hibernation. While still remaining cautious, Ira is projecting 85 new hires and more than 200 internal reassignments over the next two quarters. Before the downturn, Ira pushed the company to upgrade a much older, much-despised applicant tracking system. The upgraded system has eliminated some serious impediments to productivity and is fairly reliable, so there are no longer prolonged periods of downtime. Searches on candidates’ resumes, which used to be scheduled to run overnight, now return results with the same speed as a Google search, albeit sometimes with the same degree of inaccuracy or irrelevance. A longstanding company goal was to increase the proportion of candidates sourced on the corporate website. Ira’s team selected a web-enabled system, giving the database a candidate-facing front-end on the Careers site. As it stands now, the site has a passable job search engine, allowing candidates to find suitable positions without much difficulty. The database automatically populates the Careers site with the details pertaining to a requisition-job title, description, location, and contact information. It certainly is an improvement over the time when job postings had to go through the bottleneck of the corporate Webmaster. A so-called “Resume Builder” form imports a candidate’s personal information directly into the database. What’s Missing Ira is pleased with the updated solution. Candidate volume is up noticeably, with no major crashes. Grumbling from within the staffing department has become quiet, though there are still some nagging doubts about adoption and usability. Ira suspects that many recruiters are simply paying lip service to the idea of using the recruiting solution, and are often going outside the system to perform tasks on paper. There may be some recruiters, particularly among the more experienced ones, whom Ira feels will never come around. Training by the new vendor focused mainly on screens and buttons, without any discussion of overhauling the recruiting process. Though HR management considers Conduco to be in a good position to benefit from Internet recruiting, the truth is that current levels of functionality at the company are at a bare minimum. Certain key best practices are missing, both on the front-end and the back-end. Front-end Best Practices Visitors to the Conduco Careers site cannot send a job description to a friend’s email address, so the company misses out on the additional exposure to potentially qualified, pre-screened candidates. The Careers site also lacks a Job Agent, which would help establish connections with passive candidates. Without a Job Agent, it is unlikely a passive candidate will ever return to the site. The fields in the Resume Builder form merely mirror the structure and content of a conventional resume: contact information, education, work history, and so on. During implementation, the vendor sold the company on the idea of dissecting the resume into ever more fine levels of detail, which lead to numerous fields in the candidate database: fields for dates (month and year) for each degree; fields for the beginning and ending month and year for each past position; and so on. To populate these fields in the database with data, many of the corresponding fields in the Resume Builder on the Conduco Careers Site are mandatory. However, the candidate must fill out the unwieldy Resume Builder form with the same basic information, for every requisition applied to. Moreover, no thought was paid to how Conduco could exploit the interactive nature of the Web, to pull from the candidate pieces of information that lie outside the bounds of the traditional resume, but that nevertheless are much more pertinent and telling about the candidate. The company would get a much more rounded picture of a candidate if it asked about skills, career goals and interests, or work/life balance issues. Back-end Best Practices Back-end functionality at Conduco is barely adequate, and is truly holding recruiters back. The lack of automated pre-screening capabilities on the front-end leads to trouble in the back-end process. Conduco’s limited technology leaves the entire screening up to keyword searches on resume fields. As any recruiter who has been down that road will tell you, searching for keywords in resume fields is not a scalable screening practice: it takes considerable time to match candidates, and the amount of time it takes rises in linear proportion to the total volume of information being screened. Also, Conduco lacks a true workflow. A configurable workflow would enable the department to route the process differently by functions or locations. Best of Breed In the fictitious example above, key pieces of front-end and back-end functionality were missing. Though the company thought it had furnished the staffing function with the right tools, best-of-breed functionality would bring new levels of efficiency and quality. The technology used at Conduco merely automates an older process: it takes the same, resume-based process, and makes it just a bit faster. As an overall approach, this is more of an impediment to attaining an efficient staffing function at Conduco than missing any particular best practice. Although it is difficult to know when the status quo is in fact holding you back, be aware of the opportunities for improvement provided by best of breed vendors. It could make the difference between being just good enough to being a leader in your organization, utilizing a best-of-breed solution to deliver an efficient, quality process and greater ROI.

Total Cost of Ownership of Staffing Management Solutions

Alice Snell — Mon, 06 May 2002 19:00:00 +0000

“Total Cost of Ownership,” or TCO, is a concept used to represent the true costs of owning enterprise software. TCO seeks to measure all of the expenses, both human and technical, behind a given technology initiative. It includes all costs related to the technology lifecycle, including procurement, deployment, maintenance, and support. Thinking in terms of TCO helps in the understanding and management of the budgeted, unbudgeted, direct, and indirect costs incurred in acquiring, maintaining, and using an enterprise computing application. A TCO analysis is useful for budgeting purposes or for choosing between alternative technologies. A TCO analysis performs calculations on extended costs for any purchase, generally referred to as “fully burdened costs.” When contemplating an IT purchase, the reality is that the number on the invoice is not the real cost an organization will end up paying out down the road. The fear of unforeseen costs has prompted many companies to employ TCO tools to determine the true impact of buying and maintaining technology solutions over time. It is a formulaic process to minimize risk, especially when budgets are tight and priority lists shortened. However, it is not appropriate to evaluate potential solutions based on TCO alone, ahead of considerations such as the ability of the software to perform the critical business function. A TCO analysis is to be used only when all other things are equal. With budgets and spending under scrutiny and astronomical costs associated with enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementations, calculating TCO has become increasingly significant, especially for CIOs and CFOs. Computing TCO The full lifecycle of an enterprise application must be considered when assessing TCO, from acquisition and implementation, through ongoing support, to eventual upgrade. Costs breakdown into direct and indirect costs. Direct, budgeted expenditures relating to the solution itself include costs for the software. In some cases, there will be substantial additional costs for the hardware and IT infrastructure necessary to run the application. A staffing management solution from an application service provider (ASP) simplifies a TCO analysis greatly, since it does not require the purchase of hardware or upgrades to a typical company IT infrastructure. In essence, the company does not “own” the software, it just pays a usage fee ó though many such providers will place the source code in escrow if requested. If you do not license the application from an ASP (which generally provides technical support), be prepared for stiff charge-backs from the IT department to support and maintain the hardware infrastructure necessary to run the application behind your company firewall. The second component of direct costs is labor, which includes consulting, technical support, operations, and administration. Support and training make the system work for users, and the price of those services must be factored into the TCO. Indirect costs are a more difficult aspect to quantify, but they can often add significantly to the TCO. Indirect costs include unproductive end-user time, troubleshooting, and system downtime. Indirect costs can also be reduced by benefits accrued after implementation ó the opposite of incurring costs for delay (see my past article, The Cost of Delay). TCO for Staffing Management Solutions A recent study by the META Group found that 80% of companies in the midst of enterprise computing initiatives could not compute the TCO for the project. But don’t be in the dark when it comes to your staffing management solution. Examine every area of cost or effort at every key milestone in the lifecycle of the solution. For instance, indirect costs also include the opportunity cost to the corporation of not filling positions in real time. For direct costs, it is helpful to break the TCO analysis into initial and ongoing costs. 1. Initial costs:

Software licensing fees

Hardware costs*
IT infrastructure costs*
Professional services for configuration
Internal staff costs for implementation
Internal staff costs for IT support*
Integration
Initial user training
Data conversion
Add-on software licensing fees

(*if applicable) 2. Ongoing costs:

Software maintenance fees
Major upgrade costs
Operating costs, per transaction
Internal staff costs for IT support*
Ongoing training
Hardware and IT infrastructure maintenance, upgrades*
Tech support
System administration labor costs

(*if applicable) Conclusion In sum, the best way to avoid mistakes in technology evaluation and implementation is to consider the total cost of ownership and plan accordingly. In addition, it is important to assess the value that technology can have for your internal operations and programs. The TCO has to be compared to the total benefits of ownership to determine the viability of the purchase. Combining the financial and human resources necessary to run and support the business application will give you a sense of the TCO for a particular staffing management solution. Just as all staffing management solutions do not have identical functionality, they also do not necessarily have equivalent costs nor provide comparable value.

Resume Volume: Can You Handle It?

Alice Snell — Mon, 08 Apr 2002 19:00:00 +0000

Lately, I have been meeting corporate recruiters whose sourcing strategy has been shaped by negative conditioning. Sheer volumes of responses have conditioned them to avoid exposure for their job positions. These recruiters have retreated from the major national-brand job board, and are beginning to shrink back even from posting to the corporate website. But is narrowing candidate sourcing venues the right response? Does that best serve the recruiters’ goals? What forces have converged to create the sheer volume of resumes? The demographics of the current and future workforce, use of the Internet, unemployment, and turnover rates have all contributed to the ease of, and the motivation for, jobseekers to apply online. Workforce Demographics Forecasts by the Bureau of Labor Statistics suggest that the fastest-growing occupational groups are to be found in industries in which the major product is knowledge itself (such as software, computer hardware, and biotechnology) as well as those industries that manage or convey information (such as telecommunications, banking, insurance, law, advertising, education, and medicine). The BLS projects that professional occupations will grow 27% by 2008; technicians and related support personnel will grow 22% in the same time period; executive, administrative, and managerial workers by 16% and marketing and sales occupations by 15%. These knowledge workers are precisely the people who are using the Internet in greater numbers and are also in high demand. Limiting the size of this candidate pool is not a prudent practice. Internet Use Internet penetration in the United States is approaching 60%. Internet use is even spreading to segments of the population hitherto underrepresented: the fastest growing workforce segment of the Internet population is blue-collar workers. Interacting with this group via the Internet presents an opportunity for greater efficiency and lower cost. Unemployment and Turnover Unemployment, although fluctuating in the current economy, remains at historically low rates. In addition, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, average employment tenure in the U.S. has declined over the past three decades and now stands at roughly 3.6 years. Estimates place tenure in IT as low as 12 to 18 months. Consequently, an estimated 30 million people change jobs every year. The high rate of job churn has placed pressure on corporations’ abilities to qualify the revolving and growing pool of candidates. Ease of Applying The Internet has made it very easy to create a resume and then transmit it effortlessly and instantaneously to dozens of companies. A determined jobseeker could probably distribute several hundred copies of her resume in a good evening. On the corporate side, great attention has been paid to making the corporate careers website user friendly, with convenient ways for candidates to send in their qualifications through resume builders, file-upload buttons, profile builders, job carts, and more. Since 2000, iLogos Research has been tracking use by the Fortune 500 of these interactive careers website features and, as reported in iLogos’s report Trends in Fortune 500 Careers Web Site Recruiting, all trends are sharply up. Paying attention to user-friendliness is important, but unless you have the systems in place to handle the increased volumes it encourages, you have created more problems than solutions. Dealing With Increasing Volumes The growing candidate pool brought about by increased Internet use and the rise of online sourcing efforts dramatically highlights the need for improved efficiencies in the recruiting process. Quantity is anathema to quality, particularly when it comes to recruiting. Many companies have turned to recruitment automation systems to help deal with increasing candidate volumes. The first generation of so-called applicant tracking systems relied upon keyword searches as the sorting mechanism for separating the qualified from the unqualified. However, the applicant tracking system vendors supplied tip sheets, telling candidates how to beat the system, and even encouraged their corporate users to publish the tips on the corporate careers site. This led to an even greater flood of resumes architected to maximize keyword searches, regardless of their accuracy for a position fit. Keyword searches are not scalable, since the recruiter has to take the time to read and consciously assess each resume document identified by the results of the keyword search. Online Pre-screening The next generation of recruitment automation tools is moving away from the time-trap inherent in traditional resume-based recruiting to the more efficient process of online pre-screening. A simple online questionnaire makes it easier than ever before to obtain skill sets from applicants. The recruiters can tailor the online questionnaires to detect the required skills, to meet the exact needs of a company, position, or requisition. The Web allows the recruiter to get the information required for prescreening directly from the candidate, without the mediation of the convention-bound traditional resume document. Instead of the candidate pushing information to the recruiter in a resume document, web-based pre-screening allows the recruiter to pull information from the candidate. Conclusion Should you shrink back from sourcing on the Internet? Recruiters can ill-afford to ignore the Internet, since it is the largest single source of candidates. Careful media planning will help identify the places on the Internet beyond the corporate Careers Web site with which to source. Recruiters moreover can ill-afford to ignore the growing problem of resume overload. The Internet has been a boon to recruiting, but the floodgates are only now beginning to open. It will be important for recruiters to adopt tools that will stem the tide of rising candidate volumes. A more efficient sorting and screening process means that recruiters can welcome greater candidate volumes, since there will not be a concomitant drain on resources. Leading web-based solutions incorporate automatic prescreening to identify quality candidates quickly and precisely and empower recruiters to identify quality regardless of the quantity.

The Cost of Delay

Alice Snell — Mon, 11 Mar 2002 19:00:00 +0000

Discussions about the choice of an enterprise-wide staffing management solution have increasingly included the calculation of return on investment, or ROI. Assessment of ROI on a system implementation reflects favorably on the HR staff. It shows that the recruiters and other key HR stakeholders who comprise the selection committee realize the importance of carefully evaluating each strategic business decision. They understand, like members of all other departments in the company, the need to carefully analyze the expenses they authorize. They are thinking in business terms, and recognize that the solution they choose will have a direct effect on the achievement of corporate-wide goals including bottom-line results. They make the translation from the reduction in administrative effort, the decrease in hiring cycle time, and the benefits of process improvement into tangible payoffs. Take Action In some cases, though, the choice and implementation of a new staffing management system may be perceived as optional. In those corporate HR departments, inaction, procrastination, and delay are acceptable business practice. There is a lack of awareness that standing still is unacceptable in the competitive world of business; that companies thrive from acting, getting feedback, learning and adapting; and that continuous improvement is not just a theory applicable to manufacturing. They are not only missing the opportunity to realize the ROI of a new system – their inaction or delay is actually costing their company real dollars! Postponing action may seem to be a passive, no-risk approach. But when a company postpones the implementation of a staffing management solution, it is actively risking corporate assets. The competition is moving forward. The company may lose top recruiters who are demoralized by the lack of leading technology and vision. Dissatisfied hiring managers may perceive their HR department and recruiters as ineffective, old-school-technology laggards. The erosion of competitive advantage also extends to the loss of outstanding candidates due to the cumbersome existing recruiting process. In addition, direct costs for advertising, use of third-party recruiters, resume scanning, and processing will remain high. Make the Case So what are the economics of delay? What is the downstream cost of not implementing? In a sense, the cost of delay is the flipside of the ROI calculation. Every month you wait costs the enterprise the value of the delayed benefits for that month. Multiply by 12, and adjust for the cost of capital, and you can estimate your annual cost of delay. The numbers may be staggering, and will certainly go a long way towards convincing any skeptics that deferring a staffing management solution implementation is an expensive decision. In other words, inaction is a costly action. Some selection committees find themselves blocked. They’ve done a thorough evaluation and have chosen the best solution for their company, yet cannot get approval from the final decision maker. In that case, it’s important to understand the source of the resistance. Is there lack of buy-in? Is the ROI calculation and business case sufficient and clear? Are the cost/benefit factors well outlined? Are organizational power shifts in play? Is there fear of failure or apprehension about the success of a large project? Communicate the Benefits…and the Costs To obtain full buy-in and approval, it’s important to present the staffing management business case in language each audience responds well to. Recruiters will focus on tactical considerations, their current pain points. How will implementing this system improve their daily work? Illustrations of recruiting metrics and budgets, recruiter productivity and cycle times will resonate well with mid-level management. For C-level executives, talk in terms of the ROI of a skilled workforce and other top-level/bottom-line payoffs. Make the case that excellence in the hiring and deployment of human capital assets is key to corporate success and tied to the goal of the chosen solution. Articulate the ROI of your staffing management solution choice…and communicate the cost of delaying its implementation. At best, ROI analysis is considered as a key component of the selection process, not merely as an afterthought. It is an integral aspect of the overall business case – applicable to all levels of the organization. The cost of delaying the choice and implementation of a staffing management solution should be a significant consideration in the strategic assessment of your company’s staffing management future.

Online Candidates’ Expectations: Content and Tools

Alice Snell — Mon, 12 Nov 2001 19:00:00 +0000

Visitors to your corporate careers website are a demanding bunch. They are the ones holding the mouse. To get them to commit to becoming a candidate, you need to provide them with the right information and tools. What do recruitment managers need to know about the expectations of careers website visitors? iLogos Research found out in a recent poll of more than 1,500 visitors to the corporate careers Web sites of Fortune 500 companies. A corporate careers website is an instrument to communicate with online candidates. In any communication, the key is to communicate the right information in a way that has the greatest impact on the targeted audience. Topics that jobseekers expect to see addressed on the careers website include the company’s employment culture, benefits, and salary information. Culture Survey results reported in Perception vs. Reality: Jobseeker Behavior Online show 58% of survey respondents indicated that a depiction of a company’s culture is either “important” or “very important.” However, survey respondents were nearly equally divided on whether they consider testimonials from current employees to be important (36%), neutral (30%), or unimportant (34%). Opinions also diverged on the importance of video or virtual tours of a company’s facilities and offices, with the opinion that such practices are not important (38%) narrowly prevailing over the view that virtual tours are important (29%). Although there is no single magic bullet when it comes to developing content, jobseekers appreciate its availability. Topics that could be developed further include: HR awards the company has received, the company’s management style, its views on the work-life balance, its initiatives in training and development, and the possibilities for advancement within the company. Benefits Online jobseekers are unequivocal in their interest in information on a company’s benefits package. The iLogos survey results show that nearly half of all jobseekers (49%) consider it “very important” to have benefits information available on a company’s careers website. A further one third (33%) consider benefits information to be “important.” For benefits information, the content should be well adapted to the online medium rather than duplicating material from the company’s orientation package and other printed material. The information may be presented in a self-service structure, with links to follow for in-depth information concerning coverage, deductibles, eligibility, dates when coverage begins, or matching contributions. Salary Another expectation of online jobseekers is to be informed in job postings of the salary range for the position. Forty-five percent of respondents to the consider a salary range to be “very important” information; 35% consider it “important” information. For their part, 61% of candidates are willing to provide their salary requirements. Although providing salary range information has not always been common practice, the proliferation of online salary surveys and sites has made compensation data easily accessible – and heightened jobseeker’s expectations. Tools Once the casual job surfer is ready to become a serious prospect, the right tools must draw that candidate into an ongoing relationship with the company. These tools include a well-designed job search feature, and an easy to use job application interface.

Job search. The job search feature is a core component of a careers website, shouldering one of the major “front-end” functions: to help the job seeker quickly and efficiently identify a suitable job position. The survey found a clear preference among jobseekers for simple and intuitive searches. When asked to indicate how they prefer to review job listings, 58% of respondents indicated “by job category”; 56% selected “by job location.” Conversely, a very small minority (19%) indicated a preference for constructing keyword searches. To align the careers website with jobseekers’ expectations, companies should at a minimum provide tools for filtering a database of open positions by selecting from a predetermined list of job functions and locations, where the results represent the conjunction of the two criteria. To meet this requirement, the back-end requisition database must be structured to reflect the occupation, location, and function of each job position in the organization.

Applying online. E-recruitment managers, very familiar with their sites’ navigation and functionality, can easily assume that using the careers website is intuitively obvious to all jobseekers. Though the goal of website design is to have a user-friendly and intuitive interface, it is important not to neglect clear instructions, tips to new users, and FAQ pages. The iLogos survey found that 88% of online candidates want instructions available on how to apply. Since submitting a job application through a careers website is potentially the first step in a multi-step process, the instructions and details provided online should be much broader than simply how to use the site. Use the opportunity to describe the company’s overall recruiting process and inform candidates on what to expect.
Communication. Candidates’ expectations extend beyond the careers website. Nearly every candidate (99%) expects some form of follow-up communication from the company after applying online to a job position. However, the iLogos study found differing expectations on the nature of the follow-up. Two-thirds (68%) of candidates expect the next step of the recruiting process to be an email acknowledgement; personalized email is favored over an automated response by a factor of two to one. Twenty-two percent of candidates expect a follow-up from a recruiter by phone. Only 9% expect a letter by postal mail. These results clearly show that candidates expect two things: speed and personalization. These two criteria are in some ways antithetical to one another, because satisfying one comes at the expense of satisfying the other. The challenge for recruiters is to meet both of these criteria at once, through automated but personalized communication.

Conclusion The overall message is clear: online jobseekers expect high-quality content, good usability, and consistent communication. The careers website is a tool for communicating with candidates. Optimizing its role should be done with knowledge of the specific expectations and preferences of its target audience.

It Takes All Kinds

Alice Snell — Mon, 08 Oct 2001 19:00:00 +0000

As a medium, the Internet has grown faster than any other technology in history, including the telephone, radio, TV, and cable. Traffic to corporate websites, and hence to adjunct corporate careers websites, is ever increasing. As the Internet matures, its demographics shed the homogeneity of its early days and become increasingly diverse. The volume and diversity of the Internet users brings attention to the importance of knowing your audience. It is essential that you take active steps not only to find out what is important to your audience, but also to ensure that your corporate careers website reflects what you have learned about this large potential candidate pool. Recently, iLogos Research polled more than 1,500 visitors to the corporate careers websites of four Fortune 500 companies. As described in iLogos’ Perception vs. Reality: Jobseeker Behavior Online report, a careful examination of the demographic results of the survey yields some valuable action items: among them, that the online candidate population can be segmented into various demographic profiles, each with unique interests and needs that must be addressed in a “Best Practices” careers website. High School or Technical Education Visitors to corporate careers websites show a wide range of education levels. Twenty-five percent of survey respondents do not have any education beyond high school. Twenty-two percent have completed a two-year college degree. Eighty percent of respondents with these two levels of education are currently in the workforce. In light of this data, the action to take is to post jobs of all types to the corporate careers website, including trade positions. Education level is not a barrier for Internet use. University Students College students have always been well represented among Internet users. In the iLogos survey, 11% of all respondents indicated they were still in college. College students in particular are looking for information that is tailored to their specific concerns and interests. Seventy-seven percent of those who responded as “still in college” ranked a section of information on college or entry-level recruiting as “Important” (29%) or “Very Important” (48%) in a corporate careers website. Clearly, this is a group that corporations want to cultivate. So develop content for the distinct student audience, to increase your reach, impact, and image with them. Experienced Candidates The iLogos Research survey found that 23% of respondents have five to nine years of work experience, and 44% have been in the workforce for ten years or more. With 67% of visitors having more than five years of work experience, there is a significant body of experience represented by corporate careers website visitors. The iLogos survey found a very strong correlation between a candidate’s work experience and the seniority of the position being sought, from entry-level staff positions to management and senior management. Thirty-fove percent of survey respondents indicated that they were seeking mid-management positions. Once again, this shows the broad experience range contained in the visitor traffic. Accordingly, post job positions for all levels of seniority and work experience. Professionals Eight percent of online candidates are seeking director or executive-level positions. A further analysis of the survey data from this group reveals, not surprisingly, that these candidates are highly educated and experienced. Though relatively small in number, this group of candidates does visit corporate careers websites. This data refutes the long-standing impression that no senior executives are perusing job opportunities online (and could only be sought through pricey third-party executive search services). The iLogos survey also found that one in ten executive-level candidates are concerned about anonymity, so include provisions allowing candidates to identify themselves only with an email address from Hotmail or Yahoo! Mail. Go ahead and post executive-level job positions to the careers website, and allow candidates to remain anonymous in the early stages of the recruiting process. Know Your Corporate Careers Website Visitors Use of the Internet has now become mainstream; users permeate all segments of the general population. Today’s careers website visitors range widely, from those with the least experience to the highest. With an understanding of the variety represented in the careers website candidate pool, corporations can provide employment information that addresses all audiences and post job positions that reflect the full organizational chart. Find out about your corporate careers website visitors. As survey data analyzed in the Perception vs. Reality: Jobseeker Behavior Online report shows, they are neither all homogeneous nor all unemployed. Fine-tune the message and functions of the careers website to reflect what you have learned about your audience. Use Web recruiting best practices to gather information on candidates’ level of education, work experience, and other career and lifestyle circumstances. With this information, and proper data management tools, corporate recruiting can start to engage in one-on-one relationships with candidates.

Careers Website Visitors: Just the Facts

Alice Snell — Mon, 10 Sep 2001 19:00:00 +0000

The purpose of the corporate website careers section is to promote the company’s employment openings. It would seem likely then, that visitors to the Careers section of corporate websites would be actively looking for new employment ? i.e., they are “active” jobseekers. Not only might you think they are active jobseekers, you might also suppose they are mostly unemployed ? or at least unhappily employed. The perception is that only this highly motivated group will spend significant amounts of time online submitting job application information to pursue a new opportunity. And if this is accurate, it would follow that it is only active jobseekers who would be willing to expend the effort to answer prescreening questions. The Fact Is… The fact is, an iLogos survey of more than 1,500 visitors to the corporate website careers section of four Fortune 500 companies found that 72% of corporate careers website visitors are employed, and 21% are happily employed! Happily employed careers website visitors represent the elusive and highly desirable “passive” jobseekers. Great emphasis has been placed on methods to find them, including active Internet search techniques and the use of third-party recruiters. Survey results show that a significant percentage of the overall traffic to corporate career websites is made up of this sought-after group. The survey data discussed in the iLogos report Perception vs. Reality: Jobseeker Behavior Online also reveals that 58% of passive jobseekers are willing to spend more than 15 minutes applying to a job of high interest. To cultivate these desirable passive jobseekers, corporations can use best practices to attract them, convince them once on site, and efficiently capture and process their information. Apply the Best Practices Further data analysis from the iLogos survey shows that 40% of happily employed visitors (compared to 30% in the general population) arrive at the careers section via a link from the corporate website homepage or elsewhere within the site. Knowing this is all the more reason to follow the best practice to link the careers section from the corporate website homepage, and cross link to the careers section from other pages within the corporate website. In addition, a higher percentage of passive jobseekers (ten percent compared to three percent for active jobseekers) are also browsing the careers section for their friends. The best practice of having an “Email to a friend” feature available clearly applies here. It is also wise to engage passive jobseekers with an ongoing interaction such as an email subscription to a news update, or a jobs bulletin. Twenty-four percent of happily employed careers website visitors do not have an up-to-date resume ready. So don’t require all careers website visitors to be resume-ready to submit an application. Offer alternative means of capturing their information. Responses to prescreening questions alone can serve as a way of expressing interest in a job. Turn Visitors into Candidates Large companies are experiencing high traffic volumes to the careers sections, upwards of 250,000 individuals per month and growing. Certainly, a percentage of careers website visitors are anxiously pursuing a new job opportunity, and will take the time and make the effort to provide information requested by the employer. But in actuality, this is not fully representative of the demographics of careers website visitors. Understanding who is visiting is key to optimizing the communication and transactional exchange between potential candidate and corporate recruiter. Best practices provide a framework to ensure that these valuable visitors become candidates in the corporate candidate database pool. Corporate actions based on reality will generate success.

Online Screening: The Reality of Jobseeker Behavior

Alice Snell — Mon, 27 Aug 2001 19:00:00 +0000

It is interesting that prescreening has been the focus of much recent discussion. While not a new concept, the active examination of prescreening’s advantages and tools presuppose three basic tenets:

Automated prescreening occurs through the careers section of the corporate website. Therefore, this discussion acknowledges that the corporate website can and should be the center for recruiting and candidate data-gathering activities.

Regardless of whether it is “scientific” or “non-scientific,” prescreening automated through the corporate careers website can supplant an inefficient traditional recruiting process with a more efficient, effective practice enabled by the power of new technologies.
To effectively utilize prescreening, it takes front-end features that are tightly integrated with robust back-end data-processing functionality.

But even with well-elucidated coverage of prescreening’s potential, there are still skeptics among us. Reservations about adoption stem from a variety of concerns – including a lingering, generalized discomfort with technology, a poor understanding of the applicability and advantages of automated prescreening in a recruiting process, and a lack of confidence in jobseeker acceptance of a recruiter-driven, question-based process. Perception of Jobseeker Behavior To date, conversation has revolved around the corporate recruiter’s practices. Implementation issues such as configuration have dominated. Indeed, the recruiter’s platform must be understood and education around it is both needed and welcome. But still, commentary has not covered the issues around jobseeker behavior that are equally significant. After all, the jobseekers are the first users; their buy-in is essential in order for automated prescreening to succeed. Let’s take a look at the jobseeker’s side of this. A common inquiry is, “Will jobseekers answer skills-based questions?” In fact, this is often posed with a negative perception already in place. The expectation seems to be that jobseekers will not be participants in their share of the automated prescreening equation. This perception has caused hesitation among some who are considering automated prescreening. It has also provided an excuse for those who are not enthusiastic about automated prescreening practices either because of deficiency in their technology tools, or limited vision. Survey Says… This perception is a misperception! In a survey of more than 1,500 visitors to the careers websites of four Fortune 500 companies, iLogos Research found that the reality is a large majority (88%) of jobseekers are willing to answer questions and provide information about their skills. Jobseekers, it seems, welcome the opportunity to embrace the expanded functionality of new Internet recruiting technology to improve communication with corporate recruiters. They want to utilize self-service Internet resources to hasten the process of matching themselves with the right job opportunity. Time to Apply A frequent corollary to the issue of whether jobseekers will answer questions is, “How much time will candidates spend to apply online?” The implied concern here is that the Web is a “click and go on” medium and careers website visitors will be repelled when applications call for detailed and lengthy responses. Here again, the survey data is unequivocal. According to the iLogos Research study “Perception vs. Reality: Jobseeker Behavior Online,” 92% of candidates are willing to spend more than six minutes applying online to a job of high interest. Sixty percent of candidates are willing to spend more than 15 minutes applying online to a job of high interest! (Perhaps those who are deterred are not serious candidates to begin with?) Know the Reality To fully understand and make decisions about the use of recruiting technologies, it is imperative to be educated about the realities that impact implementation and application viability. In the case of automated prescreening through the corporate careers website, both the practices of the corporate recruiter and the jobseeker must be considered. Decisions should be based in realities – on primary data, high-quality information, and a clear view of all aspects. The reality of survey data cited here provides a strong case for not underestimating corporate careers website jobseekers. Their willingness to engage in a prescreening process, in conjunction with the advantages of automated prescreening for the corporation, should encourage all corporate recruiters to closely examine the application of prescreening to their recruiting process. Make sure the corporate careers website is optimized to use Internet recruiting technology to achieve the most efficient and effective recruiting…based on reality, not on perception.