A look at software that can improve your chances of hiring a quality employee. Includes products that can help you determine staffing needs, identify promising resumes, and check references.
Techniques: Roundup
Great employees make great companies. Great hires make great employees. Here's how to make your hires great, with a little help from technology
Hiring is hell. Remarkably low unemployment has reduced the ranks of available candidates, and recruiters are just about doing handstands to attract qualified people. You can't afford to make mistakes.
Fortunately, you now can use a slew of software packages and high-tech services that address all stages of the hiring process. With a little technological assist, even people who have never sat on the question side of an interview can populate their companies with first-rate choices.
The Job Description
A hire can go wrong as early as the job posting. Managers formulating descriptions of a position often fail to enumerate the duties the job entails and give little thought to what kind of person would be best suited to those tasks. "Skip these first steps and you'll get a mismatch between the candidate and the job later on," warns Randy Abernathy, a human resources specialist in Folsom, Calif.
Abernathy recalls working with a computer consulting firm that aimed to expand its staff from 50 to 500 in less than five years. But in their frenzy to hire quickly, managers recruited an army of introverted geeks. Instead of attracting new business, the programmers were driving customers away, and "the firm was hemorrhaging cash," says Abernathy.
How technology can help: Several software packages can help you identify the specific staffing needs of your company.
Job Description ($495), from Workscience Corp., for example, will draw you a highly detailed picture of nearly 33,000 job titles. Say you need an assistant controller. You might begin by pulling up the Dictionary of Occupational Titles and selecting the numerical code for controller or by conducting a keyword search, typing in controller, comptroller, or financial manager. The software responds by enumerating the title's traditional responsibilities, ranking skills on a scale from 1 to 6, recommending training and education, and noting what sorts of temperaments do well in the job. When you're finished, you can import the search results into a word-processing document and distribute them to other staff members for comments.
Once you've created the perfect job description, you'll need to get it seen by the appropriate eyeballs. Several products electronically distribute those descriptions around your company and post them to on-line classified listings. TeamBuilder Online, from CareerBuilder Inc., for example, can be found at www.teambuilderonline.com. Go to the site and--after paying $150 per posting per month--pick up a password that establishes your billing record and gives you a job-description template. Fill out the template and then click on icons to E-mail the posting to your staff and to several on-line sites: CareerBuilder (the company's own), Digital City Classifieds on AOL, and Yahoo! Classifieds. TeamBuilder Online automatically files applicants' rÉsumÉs in your password-protected folder.
The RÉsumÉ
Employers who collect and read rÉsumÉs only when they have positions open can find themselves up a creek sans paddle when their companies are hit by an unanticipated resignation or a wave of rapid expansion. That situation cropped up at a family-owned steel manufacturer when the employee-training coordinator left after three years on the job, according to Carolyn B. Thompson, who runs Training Systems Inc., a customized-training and human-resources consulting firm in Frankfort, Ill. The task of hiring a new coordinator got passed from hand to hand, and no one worked very hard on it. Eventually it landed on the desk of an operations person, who anxiously placed ads in local newspapers. The subsequent deluge of inappropriate rÉsumÉs was so overwhelming that nine months later the position still remains vacant.
How technology can help: Some products can help you sift quickly through mailbags of rÉsumÉs to identify candidates worth consideration.
A number of products organize rÉsumÉs that are scanned in or imported from the Web in addition to creating a database you can consult. From that database, you can easily retrieve the rÉsumÉs of applicants whose skills and attributes match your specifications--proficiency in French, say, or an M.B.A. These smart databases can analyze words in context, too, recognizing the difference between, say, Harvard as a street and as a school.
Such programs don't come cheap, however. Restrac's Internet-based service, WebHire, will set you back at least $10,000, and companies typically spend twice that, based upon such variables as the number of users and the number of rÉsumÉs being processed. Restrac needs about a week to set up your password-accessible database at its Web site, stocking it with rÉsumÉs you send as hard copy or forward by E-mail. You can then query that database for candidates based on experience, skills, education, and other meaningful criteria. WebHire gives you a list of rÉsumÉs that best match your requirements; you can then print or download those you want to look at.
Even pricier are Greentree Employment System for Windows, from Greentree Systems Inc., and Personic Workflow, from Personic Software Inc. Greentree's product rings in at about $20,000 for one user, including a scanner and three days of on-site training. Personic Workflow, a complete rÉsumÉ- and applicant-tracking system, has a base price of $35,000. Both products help you build in-house databases, using the same principles as WebHire.
The Interview
It's much easier to interview people badly than to do it well. As a result, all sorts of unpleasant surprises can spring up after the new employee is already ensconced. Even a pro can sometimes let vital information slip through the cracks.
Recently, for example, Training Systems' Thompson bungled the hire of a project coordinator. Thompson felt she already knew the candidate, who had worked for her as a trainer. Although she thought she was conducting a thorough interview, in hindsight she realized she had neglected the usual barrage of probing questions: What qualifies you for this job? How are you with deadlines? Describe times when you've had to juggle several tasks at once. The job's myriad demands so taxed the new coordinator that six weeks after he started, Thompson discovered he hadn't done a stitch of work.
