Solving the "Resu-mess" - Applicant Processing Systems

For individuals in search of a new job career, it is as easy as Copy,

Paste, and Submit. Job opportunities abound for skilled workers.

Internet recruiting has progressing from simple resume emailing to

candidates submitting video resumes and podcasts. But as with many

technologies, convenience often drags along complexity.



Just like the neighbor attending an open house just to get a peek how

the people on the other side of the street live, an increasing number

of job candidates are just "shopping". Add those to the serious

candidates looking for better opportunities and hiring managers are

receiving a massive influx of resumes - an HR administrative nightmare I call the "resu-mess".



No longer do managers just receive a dozen or so of resumes mailed or

faxed from a single classified ad in the Sunday classifieds. They are

greeted daily with hundreds of emails clogging inboxes from Internet

job postings. After years of cutting back on the size of human

resource departments or just adding more and more responsibilities on

the shoulder of the HR generalists and recruiters, it is fair to say

that reviewing and processing these resumes is like having eight lanes of traffic exiting onto a two-lane side-street. This translates into a bottleneck at the hiring tollgate.



The bottleneck leads to two devastating business mistakes - cutting

back on advertising and poor response time



In order to manage the resu-mess, successful recruitment marketing

strategies are being derailed by the voluminous response of

applicants. Managers reduce the number of job boards and other media

outlets on which they advertise to better manage the number

applications. This strategy is tantamount to HR suicide. Considering

today's challenge of finding the right candidate in a shrinking talent pool, throwing out the widest net possible, not cutting back, is in the best interest of employers.



But more resumes isn't necessarily better without automating the

process. Few managers, human resource professionals and assistants

have the time to screen the applications, call the candidates, do the

the voice mail dance, complete phone interviews, schedule face-to-face interviews, check references, complete background checks and so on.



This leads to the second mistake. While managers and HR staff are

attempting to weed out the unqualified or disinterested applicants,

high-demand qualified candidates are being overlooked and turned off

by slow response times, cumbersome hiring hurdles, and inexperienced

interviewers.



If first impressions skew a top candidate's opinion of your company,

then the reputation of many organizations is abysmal. Administrative overload is creating backlogs and feeding the chief complaint of job seekers - poor communication and follow-up. Based on the 2007 Staffing.org survey of nearly 500,000 job seekers, ratings for communication and follow-up after applying for a job was a pitiful "1" (poor) out of a 5-point scale.



Managers are at a crossroads. Business wasn't always as complex as it

is today. But many organizations still insist on using the techniques

of yester-year to solve today's problem. Candidates hire professional

resume writers. They search the Internet for information about your

company. They download dozens and dozens of answers to the most

comment interview questions, just like fraternities and sororities

"prepped" their brothers and sisters for term papers and final exams.

Yet managers are still doing interviews on the fly, relying on gut

instinct and a suspicious resume to make the final hiring decisions.

What can an organization do to attract more candidates and simplify

the complexity of recruiting and hiring?



Simplify the application process.



Streamlining recruitment, hiring quickly, and selecting the right

people are no longer options but key growth strategies.



An effective applicant solution has many pieces, including applicant

tracking, screening, testing, interviewing, and background checks. All of these components must mesh with business processes and create an end-to-end solution.



To first attract and then actually hire the best talent, making the

entire application process as convenient as possible is critical.

Prospective employees should be able to fill out an application at a

Web site, and any tests or profiling tools should be available through the Web or by phone.



Clients of Success Performance Solutions have been using Total-APS, an online applicant processing system, comparable to those used by the Fortune 1000s but now affordable and easy-to-use for even the small business owner.



Total APS allows managers to create job specific filter questions

(such as "are you available to work weekends including Saturdays and

Sundays and have you completed a 2-year or four year degree) as well

as behavioral and competency based questions, allowing candidates to

self-qualify or disqualify themselves, avoiding many needless phone

calls to unqualified, unmotivated and uninterested candidates.



Total APS also automates follow-up responses to candidates who are

disqualified and reminders to qualified candidates who need to

complete personality assessments or provide additional information.



A well-designed applicant processing system is like the EZ-Pass of

human resources. It can help organizations filter and process résumés

quickly and provide a central repository for potential candidates.

When the system aligns with business processes, it's possible to

identify talent more quickly and reduce hiring time. The net result is that you can snatch talented individuals before your competitors do.