New trends in HR technology

Human resource strategy is the result of a set of decisions a company makes about the humans with whom it does business. HR technology of Visage Ventures offers employers and job seekers the chance to find suitable candidates and employment opportunities. HR executives, like other business professionals, are increasingly seeking to utilize the power of computing and the internet to improve process effectiveness. A new generation of products has evolved which can, in tandem, address all steps within the recruitment process.

Many companies fail to adequately plan and precisely define their requirements before they begin the recruitment process. Much recruiting is reactive, i.e. to replace resignations or terminations or the sudden emergence of projects which should have been notified months before.

Often information given to recruiters is based upon a top-down process. We contend that a proactive, bottom-up process is also beneficial where there is a real involvement of the workplace in determining the required skills and competencies, and making or at least validating a precise description and tenure statement.

The first step in hiring approval is to ensure the job is properly defined and meets the needs of the hirer. Applications should include libraries of job competencies and skills preferably extracted from the existing employee base.

The next step in hiring approval is to submit the completed description together with costs, tenure, and other requirements to approvers. This limits ‘maverick’ hires and provides a measure of spend control.

Technology supplements but does not replace the ‘art’ of recruitment, the cornerstone of which is human contact, relationships and the ability to motivate people to opportunity and change. The application of this art is the main activity of staffing companies where technology is only an enabler, with success arising from their specialist knowledge of the candidate market, individual candidates, and their ability to attract, motivate and broker applicants with employers.

Another technology coming of age is the deployment of software that does intelligent matching, based on the extraction and evaluation of skills and other attributes from the candidate resume. Complex but powerful, this software uses probabilistic algorithms and natural language processing techniques.

The interview is an important component of the recruitment process. A number of hiring systems include standard interview questions and provision for post interview scoring.Most hiring systems include provision for interview scheduling, which may be integrated with corporate diary systems such as Outlook or Notes. Hiring systems may also include a standard ‘letter of offer’ and customizable ‘rejection letters’. Hiring systems may also record short-listed but rejected candidates for later contact and automate periodic contact management and tracking.

Information about the successful applicant(s) must be processed and incorporated into the company HRIS and payroll systems. Company intranets may also be used to announce the new appointment and starting date. Letters of offer, contracts with mutual obligations, salary and benefit information are initiated as required. Hiring systems may incorporate or be integrated into email systems and provide email and documents properly stored and indexed for future retrieval.

By POST A RESUME (www.postaresume.co.in)