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Internet’s changing recruiting practices

Posted on 12. Nov, 2005 by Bill in Employment News

Internet’s changing recruiting practices

It’s a radical concept, but it’s fast gaining credence: Resumes aren’t very useful. Sure, it’s nice to have a person’s life on one piece of paper, but how do you tell 10 Ivy League graduates with 10 years’ experience apart? How do you know if they really are all Ivy graduates?

Research has shown about one-quarter of resumes contain lies or errors, and a full one-third of resumes submitted for jobs paying $50,000 or more include false information, Allan Schweyer, executive director of the Human Capital Institute, told New England HR executives recently.

More important, Schweyer argued, the resume is “a very poor instrument” in identifying good job candidates. That’s why, overwhelmingly, companies tend to hire people referred by trusted sources, he said – the old “It’s not what you know. It’s who you know.”

But could the Internet change that?

Clearly, it’s on hiring managers’ minds: A talk by Schweyer and Russell Glass, vice president of products for Zoom Information, packed a room at the New England Human Resource Association’s “Extreme HR” convention, Nov. 2 to 4 at the Rhode Island Convention Center.

In the last decade, Schweyer said, online recruiting has become the norm – 90 percent of resumes come in that way; a 2003 survey found 89 percent of recruiters used the Internet. In terms of cost-effectiveness, the Web trounces paper costing about $377 per hire in 2004, versus $3,295 for paper, with wider exposure. Every day, more than 5 million people look for jobs online.

“But the truth is, most of us haven’t found the Internet to be as good as we thought for finding work,” Schweyer said. Just like paper resumes got lost in the pile before, he said, now they get lost in the even bigger online applicant pool.

Still, both Schweyer and Glass argued, the future is in online recruiting – but in smarter, more sophisticated recruiting that doesn’t just put job ads on the Web, but makes full use of online tools to attract better, more closely matched candidates for each job.

Some tools are geared to helping applicants: Enterprise Rent-A-Car, for example, uses enhanced job postings with a “day in the life” video to give applicants a sense of what working for the company would be like. MKT10.com, a job board, allows candidates to evaluate their viability for a specific job – and for which jobs they’d be most competitive.

Other sites, such as RedMatch.com and EPredicts.com, allow recruiters to pre-screen applicants automatically to ensure they have the skills and qualifications needed for a job. These services can add to the cost of recruitment, Glass warned, but “it comes back to the huge cost of hiring someone who doesn’t work out.”

Then there’s ZoomInfo.com, which Glass described as “sort of a Google for hiring.” Type in a name, and you’ll find a profile of every item found online that refers to that person – say, “Mike Smith at Fidelity Investments,” accompanied by press releases mentioning Smith, documents that he’s authored and posted online, his bio page at Fidelity, etc.

About 20 percent of Fortune 500 companies use ZoomInfo now, Glass said. Recruiters use it to check up on candidates, or to identify people they might want to seek out. Career-conscious individuals look up their own names to see what’s out there, and to correct any errors.

“I do warn people: ‘Watch out what you put out there,’” Glass said.

One of the best uses for online tools, Schweyer said, is to build “talent pools,” in-house and externally. Some corporate recruiting sites have millions of resumes on file, he noted, and for almost every job, for every successful candidate, there are five, 10 or 15 others who are “very worthwhile” to keep in touch with for future opportunities.

“One thing we all do is start a recruiting process from scratch every time,” Schweyer said. Imagine if instead, you went straight to the talent you already know – people who’ve already expressed an interest in you, whom you’ve already vetted?

The broader the pool of “passive” candidates a recruiter can assemble, Schweyer added, the better the chances of getting the best possible hires. The most desirable workers often aren’t actively searching for a job, he said – they’re employed but will seize the right opportunity. And if they haven’t sent out 50 applications, your chances with them are better, too.

“It’s the question of, how do you stop yourself from fishing in the same pond as everybody else?” he said. “You build a proprietary pond. It may be much smaller, but it’s your pond.” Internal talent pools can also make a huge impact, especially in high-demand areas, Schweyer said. NASA has used this approach successfully to identify workers who have the skills to take more advanced jobs. It may take some effort to build a good database, he said, but getting a “360-degree view” of your staff pays off. And if you sell it as a way to help them advance, he said, “it’ll have a major impact on engagement and retention.”

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Tags: Employment News