Glimpse into the Future of Recruitment Technology

Recruiting in a nut shell

Millions of people across the Globe are working around the clock in a multi billion dollar market. Their target – help a Recruiter meet the right Candidate!

Sounds simple, but we in the recruiting market know what is in store for us.

The Past

Recruitment has undergone a spate of technology growth since Computer and internet have come into the market.We migrated from Rack and file to email and computer folders, then moved on to Job boards and ATS, in the near past we have started exploiting Web 2.0 in our Recruiting effort.

What is in store for us in Recruitment in the future?

Being a Recruitment Technologist, I always dream of creating various products, services and tools to help simplify recruiters’ task. Here are some of my ideas which will surely turn into reality. Who ever brings them out – recruitment community will surely benefit.

Web Interviewing: With travel cost escalating by the day, Web interviewing is going to be part of the Recruiters toolkit in the future. Already a few players have got into this market. We will soon see more players and better tools in Online interviewing area.

Candidate Profiling: With Candidates today networking and sharing information in the web in different platforms and websites, in the near future, we can expect to have a one point profiling solution which will accumulate information about Candidates from various Social networking sites and technical forums & provide us a comprehensive overview about the Candidate.

Mobile based recruiting: Our current ATS will start provide a Mobile plug-in for communication to all recruitment stakeholders. This will ensure instant communication. This plug-in will evolve into a complete Mobile based recruitment system. Soon Mobile phones and PDA will be part and parcel of recruiting.

Intra ATS plug-ins: How easy will it be if you are able to shortlist a set of Candidates and automatically submit them to Clients ATS and receive communication and status updates through your ATS directly? I hope we will see some solution in this area soon.

Organization mapping service: A very useful tool for head hunters, organization mapping services will provide comprehensive information about an organization and its structure including who is who in the company.

Prediction and Pipelining: With current demands & past history of recruitment, smart and intelligent tools will come into the market which will pre-identify possible openings and pre-source resume and candidates for the position. Now recruiters have to just screen the resume and start the hiring process.

Certified Candidates: I hope someone will bring out a website where candidates can submit their text, video and audio resume. Interview them, understand their skills and do a back ground check. Then offer a certification which can be accepted by multiple Corporations. So once you see the certification, you can start processing the candidates without actually doing a due diligence of Candidate. This helps save enormous time & money here. Candidates are also happier since they don’t have to undergo the process with every company they apply to.

There are definitely many more ideas out there. Please share them here.

I would love to hear your comments.

Start up City - 2009, Bangalore - Lots of HR exhibitors!

Start up City at Bangalore

Start up City 2009 has some very interesting exhibitors. I have listed a set of HR and Recruitment Products and Services. If you are at Bangalore in 6-June-09, don’t miss this event. Sanjeev Bikhchandani, Founder & CEO of Naukri.com is addressing the event.

RecruitPro
Intuitive, Interactive & Social Web 2.0 Recruitment Software

Job-a-Fair
Is a pioneer of futuristic multipurpose job portals that seek to effectively meet the complex demand and supply of human resources to industry verticals and also serve as networking platform

Sharma Infotech
Offers varied solutions like ecommerce, job boards, customer relationship management, content management systems, social networking, real estate management and customized web solutions.

Jobs mill
Jobsmill.com is a free placement site for job seekers where they can place their resumes and search for job vacancies that suit there requirements the best. The employers can post vacancies as well search for resumes.

Grey Tip
Greytip Software is a focused HR & Payroll software solutions company.

iVirtual
iVirtual is a video based, virtual interview program that transforms the way Employers, Recruiters and Job Seekers interact.
Hope to meet you at the Event. Pl leave a Comment below if you are planning to visit Startup City.

Shankar
RecruitPro

Cost per telephone call – Rs.1825/-

The other day, I had a vacancy for .net programmer, as usual I went to a Job site, Searched for the keywords, filtered it further and got 15 resume which I found good. It took me couple of hours through this process.

I decided to call these 15 candidates to see if they are interested in the position.

This is the result of the telephone calls

Ø 5 numbers not in use
Ø 3 persons did not pick up the phone for the 10th time
Ø 2 profiles did not match the requirement – in fact they had put wrong info in their resume
Ø 4 people yelled at me – how many times will you call me
Ø 1 person was INTERESTED!

When I checked up my old excels, I found that I have in-fact called the 4 candidates who yelled at me. Though I am fuming being yelled at, I accept the fact that it will be as irritating receiving unsolicited calls as it was for me.

I started calculating the cost spent through out this exercise…
2 hour for Search
3 hours for Calling these candidates
2 hour preparation time etc
My entire day!

Now my salary is 15000/- a month & I work 20 days a month
That is Rs.750 per day
Over heads for my workstation, EB, welfare etc adds to another Rs.1000
The telephone cost – Rs.75/-
Well it actually cost me Rs.1825/-
That is Rs. 250 approximately per call which went through
& Rs.1825 is the cost of reaching out to one Candidate.

This is the cost of my telephone call friends! A recruitment call isn’t just the amount we pay to our telephone service. It is much more. The worst of all is that by calling a Candidate many times, our image and the Companies value will be down.

Even if I had, say 5 people through out the day, with an average of 1:50 getting placed with my client, the recruiting cost seems to be Rs. 18250/- + job site subscription + management cost + etc + etc almost amounting to Rs. 25000/-

Don’t believe me… just ask your boss (if you are in a small consulting firm) the total expense & the total number of candidates placed last year. Divide the Expense by number of Candidate placed – You will know the cost per hire.

Source Chaos

It all went pretty smooth. We posted the Jobs in Jobsites, put it up for Employee Referral & hired couple of consultants too. The position was critical & we wanted to have the best of Candidates.

We interviewed 10 Candidates, shortlisted 2 & had sent out an offer to the best of Candidates. The Candidate, Rajesh, had just finished the Joining formality & I have introduced him to his Peers, Boss & Subordinates.

I was sure my boss is going to be happy. May be this will also reflect in my appraisal.

Just then, the phone rang…

It was from one of the Consultants we had hired for the assignment.

I said, “Hi, how are you…”

“Great, came the reply… and has Rajesh joined today. We just wanted to raise the bill for him”
I got confused; I thought we had received the application directly from Rajesh through some job site.

I said, “Hey, I thought I had received the application from a Job site”

The consultant said, “We have forwarded the resume to you 15 days back. In fact I also have your acknowledgement for the same”

I said, “Okay, let me check up” & hung up

After going through my email records, I found that I have received the Resume from both the consultant and through the Job site. I had forwarded the resume from Job site to the department people. But the resume from the Consultant had come in earlier.

I decided to talk to my Boss and give the Credit to the Consultant.

When I started to go meet my Boss, another call came in…

“Hi, this is Aditya from IT department. Rajesh has joined today & seemed really happy with the Job offer. In fact he is here with me & promised a treat today for referring him to our Company. By the way, when will you credit my Employee Referral account for him?”

There goes my perfect Day…

PS: This is an imaginative story. But I am sure you would have experienced a similar situation in your company as well.

- Maintaining a Duplicate free Resume Database helps you a lot.

The Head Hunting Story

We decided to hire a Technical Manager. This was a critical position & we did not want to take any chances. So we decided that money should not be a factor. We decided to give a Newspaper advertisement, publish the Jobs in Job boards, and allocate the assignment to Talent Search Partners.

We received 100’s of resume. After a pain staking shortlisting process, we identified 5 people who were promising. We had a telephonic & called them for Interview.

After the interview, we were buoyant that we identified the ideal fit for the position. It has cost us dearly and took almost 45 days going through the process. But still, we were all happy of the outcome. We had the ideal Candidate for the position who will fit into the position exactly.

I called him up to discuss the offer & make him comfortable with our Company & its policies. After going through the entire formality – I said, “You know, we have spent $30000/- to find you. Our company stops at nothing to get the right Candidate”. Our next Technical Manager was impressed.

But what he told me stunned me, “All you had to do is go through your email box couple of months back. I had applied for a vacancy with the company”

PS: This is an imaginative story. But I am sure you will understand the underlying fact behind the story.

- Maintaining a Searchable Resume database will surely help you recruit faster & cheaper!

Thanks for your time folks, the story is over… go back to sleep, psst, I am sorry… go back to work!

Forget Passive Candidates... get Smart Candidates instead!

Passive Candidates are not looking for Jobs. They are happy in the existing company. It is not because of salary (which they will never be satisfied with). It is more because of the culture, the responsibility, the challenge & their ability to deliver in a particular company that make them not look out for Jobs.

Are we right going behind them? Will they actually gel into your company ecosystem?

Smart candidates out there are open to Jobs offers. But they are not into Job hunting. They are not distributing their resume across. They are not going to Job sites searching for Jobs and they may not submit their resume in common places.

But they have made their profile available through Social media. They have subscribed to Job feeds; they know that those who are keen to recruit them will prefer reaching out to them. These candidates are most smart & will surely be productive.

How can you reach out to these smart candidates who are tech savvy, socially active online & available?

The answer – through Web 2.0

Reach out to them through Web 2.0 Job marketing. Have your Jobs available for them in their Social Network, book marks, personal pages and other places they visit. Let them know about your Jobs at their place of comfort. If they feel they fit in to your requirement & the position will enhance their Career prospect, they will make available their Candidature.

Where are your Jobs..? Where are the Candidates???

I’ve seen them on Job sites...
Few consultants have called me up with your Job vacancy...
In fact, I have also seen a few Advertisements of your Jobs in Newspapers...

But, when I visit your website, all I find is Couple of pages informing about how great it is to work with you & asking me to send my Resume to an email id.

Aren’t we missing something here?

Candidates want to know what they are applying for & what the status of their Resume is. It is very important today to have your Job online & give candidates an online to view them and apply for them. It is also essential that they be given feedback about their application status.

Without our knowledge, we have been losing money on Candidates who would have, if provided an opportunity, applied directly to you rather than through your Talent partners & Print advertisements.

Job sites are not promoting your Jobs, in fact you are promoting their site – if a Candidate who is not registered with a Job site wants to apply for your Job, they have to register with the Job site first. The instant the candidate registers, he will start getting offers from multiple companies & before you even finish your shortlist, he will be having a few interview calls. In fact, you are promoting the Job site at your cost!
Start promoting your own Jobs & Employer Brand today!

Please forward your comments and opinions on this article
Regards,
Shankar Srinivasan
RecruitPro