A Flexible Web Tool For Ambitious Hiring - Brief Article

HR Magazine, March, 2001 by Jim Meade

Perhaps you feel that you're inundated with paper as you attempt to recruit job applicants. You want to respond to candidates right away, but you have a flood of letters scattered among numerous recruiters. You'd love to pinpoint hot candidates, but your slow, manual method of finding candidates is a stumbling block. As for equal employment opportunity reporting, you do it, but it's tough.

Internet-based HireSystems 3.75 from BrassRing Systems Inc. automates hiring, allowing you to "process without paper from start to finish," says one user, HR generalist Kara Pastorek at Borders Group Inc. in Ann Arbor, Mich. You can locate key candidates in minutes, not weeks, and do your EEO reporting automatically.

A Nifty Control Pad

Using your browser, you enter your user name and password. Then you see the handy HireSystems control pad on the left and a large working area on the right.

The control pad lets you point and click to do complete hiring--work with requisitions, post to job boards and other sources; handle candidate applications; screen and sort applicants; search candidates; market to potential candidates; and handle interviews, offers and acceptance letters.

To work with requisitions, for example, you click the jobs button on the control pad, then click job requisitions. A list of your requisitions fills the working area of the screen. Icons to the left of the requisitions allow you to go into detail and look at candidates for the job, managers who have access to the requisition, the requisition itself and options with Joboo--BrassRing's online job site, which this software uses to handle your corporate job site on the web.

HireSystems guides you through any activity. For almost every blank you have to fill, you can select an existing choice from a drop-down list box. As appropriate, HireSystems does things automatically in the background, such as e-mail every manager affected by a change in a job requisition.

Robert Barsik, a BrassRing salesperson, notes that if a candidate matches a minimum score according to pre-determined screening criteria, the candidate's name immediately goes to the inbox of the recruiter, an automated function that speeds hiring.

The program has more than 100 built-in reports, such as "Time to Fill" and "Cost Per Hire." Even better, a data export wizard allows you to export your data into a familiar reporting tool--such as Microsoft Excel or Crystal Reports--and work with data to your heart's content.

Getting Results

The biggest question for any recruiting software is, "Does it improve our recruiting?" For users, the answer seems to be yes. "We do it, to be effective, efficient. That overwhelms everything else," says David Vine, employment systems coordinator with Gateway Inc. in San Diego.

The interface is sweet. "In terms of user friendliness, it's there," says Pastorek. Also, the flow of the system, reflected on the control panel, can match the flow of the recruiting process at your own company.

The information technology folks and system administrators love the underlying design of the system. Importantly, HireSystems is web-native, not just adapted for the web. "I spend less than 10 percent of my time on it," says John Hickey, systems engineer for the Union Pacific Railroad Corp. in Omaha. With a previous, non-web system, he says, "Three and a half of us were trying to keep it living."

Engineers also find HireSystems open and flexible. "The biggest thing to me was having hands-on ability to monkey with their system," says Hickey. Vine concurs, tipping his hat to what he calls the system's "customizability." "HireSystems doesn't have a built-in workflow," Vine says approvingly. "It's developed by you."

Underlying this ambitious, detailed, end-to-end system is detailed, end-to-end support. As a whole, BrassRing is "very in tune" with clients' needs, says Pastorek.

Get Top Management's Blessings

Of course, a few cautions are in order. First, although the interface is intuitive, it is also quite a rich mix; plan on taking some training so you can exploit it properly.

Second, heed this advice from Patty Shanley, recruiting technology manager with Unisys in Blue Bell, Pa. "Put a lot into the implementation team to do it right the first time," she says. "Get a group together that includes recruiters, recruiter assistants, some IT--and senior management." And, she adds about senior management, "Get their blessing in the beginning so you implement it right the first time."

BrassRing's Barsik cautions implementers that forms are "a big deliverable." Provide your implementation team with forms for background checking, skills tests and whatever else you plan to do.

Workflow is key to the design, and you have to plan that yourself. For instance, when you change a requisition, HireSystems will send out e-mail to all affected managers. For it to do so, you have to have entered the correct lists of managers.

HireSystems 3.75 is ambitious software for ambitious recruiting. Set it up right and you can forget about manila folders, lost candidates, unforeseen delays and the general frustration of the hiring process. Setting it up right, though, is a serious undertaking.