New Protocol Crosses Language Barriers - Staffing Exchange Protocol

HR Magazine, Oct, 2001 by Bill Roberts

Collaboration--not competition--in HR-XML

Consortium nets early results.

Think there's no advantage in rushing to adopt new technology? Consider this: In less than two weeks, Enron Corp., the Houston-based energy trading and distribution company, engineered a software interface between its recruitment tracking application and the web site its employee-referral program vendor provided. How did it manage such a feat? By using the new Staffing Exchange Protocol (SEP).

Launched in March 2001 by the HR-XML Consortium Inc., of Raleigh, N.C., the protocol uses HR-XML, a form of Extensible Markup Language (XML). "Without HR-XML the interface would have been more difficult and taken longer," says Meg Wysatta, Enron's manager of recruitment technology. "We probably cut the time in half."

The HR-XML Consortium is a non-profit alliance of more than 125 corporations, HRMS developers, HR applications vendors, application service providers (ASPs), recruiting services and others (including the Society for Human Resource Management). The 2-year-old consortium is leading an industrywide effort to create data exchange standards for various HR processes. Its goal is to develop an entire vocabulary of HR specific XML-based data objects and schemas 50 HR technologists can exchange data using standard formats. SEP, for example, includes schemas for job requisition, job candidate and candidate feedback.

XML is a slimmer, web-compatible version of the Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML), a complex language for defining document formats. Unlike its cousin, HyperText Markup Language (HTML), XML can convey display instructions and describe the content of just about any type of file, including text, web pages, spreadsheets, database files and graphics. By describing content with great specificity, XML enables automated data exchange without custom programming.

Early adopters have used the technology to create applications that interface with thirdparty providers, track resumes and manage internal human capital. SEP is the first of several planned protocols. The consortium recently released an upgraded version of SEP and plans to release a benefits enrollment protocol later this year. The group also is developing time card, payroll and other protocols.

In a recent survey of 272 companies, Cutter Information Corp. of Arlington, Mass., found more than three-fourths used XML. To develop the language, there must be agreement on the specific object tags and data schemas. Many groups are working on standard XML tags and schemas for specific industries or cross-industry areas.

The HR-XML Consortium is the first group to build schemas and tags for HR. The consortium has working groups for recruiting, compensation and benefits, and payroll, as well as for objects required across domains. For example, almost every process will need a tag for the "person" object that must be consistent throughout. HR-XML released tags for "person/name" and other cross objects this summer. (For more details, see the consortium's web site at www.hr-xml.org.)

SEP is the first big push for HRXML. "We're still in the early adoption phase," says Chuck Allen, the consortium's director. "The rate of adoption and the amount of interest in implementing our specifications continues to grow."

Making a Good Site Better

Cisco Systems Inc. hires about half of its new employees from candidates recruited via its jobs page, which handles about 50,000 resumes and registers 3.5 million hits each month. The original system let the San Jose, Calif., networking company collect only a basic resume as plain text or word-processing file and put it in a resume database, says Todd Spain, Cisco's IT manager for workforce management systems. Resumes could be searched, but a manual intervention was needed to search for candidates based on detailed skill-set requirements.

"We're looking for very specific talent sets," Spain says. "We want to be able to mine our applicant pool for the top 5 to 10 percent of talent." The new SEP standard will help the company do that.

Cisco is designing a data model based on SEP, and it is also developing a resume builder that will enable applicants to create an XML-compliant resume at the web site. The resume builder will use discrete fields that map to the new data model. It also will accept resumes created off the site if they are based on the HR-XML staffing protocol.

Cisco, a member of the HR-XML Consortium, is encouraging others to adopt the new protocols, Spain says. The company asks new vendor candidates--recruiters, job sites and others--if they have adopted or plan to adopt HR-XML, Spain says. "We want to make sure they are planning to adopt it," he says. "We take this to heart. Having an industry agree on one interchange standard is just better for everybody."

An Internal Solution

Although the protocol was designed for recruitment data exchange, Accenture Ltd. of New York uses SEP to manage its internal consulting talent. The company's success relies on its ability to match the skills of 70,000 employees in 46 countries with its specialized consulting requirements, says Mohit Sahgal, a senior manager at Accenture.