Chris FieldsIf you search “all in one” online, you will see a lot of technology and office equipment listed under the results because those products simplify our lives. I remember the old school photocopier days when you could not print, scan and fax from one machine – thank goodness for innovation.
When you think about some of your favorite “life changing” gadgets, you think of your smartphone, right? That’s because smartphones are more than phones, actually we text, tweet, chat, and post on social media with them more than we actually talk on them. And what about the tablet, hailed as the 2nd greatest invention of the 21st Century by Oprah! If there is a product that can save time and enhance our lives then odds are we will love it.
In the world of work, there are lot of HR vendors and Tech companies who claim that they have a product that will simplify lives of the HR professional immensely. I get the solicitation emails and see the tweets from various start-up companies who say they have just what you need to order to be a more efficient. You’ve seen the acronyms ATS, CRM, TMS, TQM, ERM, and all of that other b.s.
Q: What’s the number one thing every company needs? A: Talent!
How do you find it (as in where are the talented workers)? How do you attract it? How do you compensate it? How do you engage it? How do you retain it?
It’s all about the talent. And many of the problems that companies have to deal with regarding talent can be solved during the candidate experience. That’s the very beginning of the relationship: the way you respond to their application, phone call, LinkedIn message, tweet, Facebook post or comment – however you interact with the potential candidate, that’s when the candidate experience begins. As soon as you contact them, they are assessing you as an employer, just as you are assessing them as a candidate. I like to call this the corporate courting phase because at this point both parties are excited but any little thing can mess it up, just like real life dating.
There are so many pieces to talent management that there needs to be an all-in-one system to help you track and manage all of these wonderful people. Recently I spoke to a group of HR and Recruiting friends about their systems. Most said that their systems did not match up well with the new social recruiting trends of today and unfortunately they were locked into contracts and could not upgrade. They also talked about the need to have a consistent view from one screen to the next when sharing profiles or applicant data.
It’s sad but there are still tens of thousands of companies who do not have a versatile and flexible system at all, many still use Excel. Then some companies have too many systems and what ends up happening is the boss uses one, while the rest of the team uses another.
Real recruiting is not about blasting jobs over all social networks and waiting for resumes to fall in. No, real recruiting takes skill and a strategy. Social media is a big part of recruiting with over 90% of companies reporting that they will use it in some fashion but understanding the demographics, strengths and weakness of the various platforms is equally as important. Recruiters rely heavily on analytics to be successful. They have to track and analyze the cost per hire, time to fill, advertising budget, hire rates and run reports.
How awesome would it be to have an all-in-one platform for that? You can, it’s called the Hiring Success Platform.
Lee Ann Prescott
Augusta Henning