A good place to start
Start with a needs analysis, that focuses on the following core areas:
- Degree of automation required - this should be based on sound ROI analysis. Some companies can benefit from automating and electronically integrating the entire hiring process. Others only really need to automate a portion of it.
- The types of recruitment you want your system to handle - eg: graduate, experienced hire, temp, blue collar, white collar. Often you may want to consider deploying more than one system for graduates or for locations with specific (cultural or legal) requirements.
- Your ideal candidate experience - ideally, how does a candidate find out about your opportunities, apply for them, and what communication and touch points occur during the hiring process?
- Your current application process - by defining how things work across departments currently, you can document requirements that will help identify what you will need in the future. Start at the request for a hire, right through to the actual on-boarding process.
- Your e-recruitment application process - From your current process, you can begin to map out a future process, and understand how things might change. This allows you to consider issues and make decisions early on, for example, do you still need to accept paper-based applications? How will that work?
- Success Metrics - Exactly how will you measure success?
- Technology Audit - How will your users access the new system, and do they have the correct software and Internet access? Will the system need to integrate with an ERP or CRM system? This will define the technology environment and constraints.
- Reporting - What kind of reports will you need vs what you have now?
- Your users - Who will need to use the system? Do you have a recruitment team, or do line managers handle recruitment directly? Will finance need access?
- Functionality - The points above will let you define what you actually require the system to do, which functions are the most important, and begin to evaluate vendors.
And ensure you have someone on your selection team who has experience with e-recruitment. Someone who understand both the technology and HR best practices.
Key questions to ask
The most critical questions will help you assess the capacity, flexibility and reliability of the system...
What types of recruitment does this system handle?
eg graduate, experienced hires, blue collar, etc).
Who are your existing clients, and for how long have they been using your system?
and ask to speak to some of their clients in your sector.
If we use this system, how can we accept paper CVs?
Ask to see the system read in a CV (which you should supply).
How does this system accommodate disabled users?
Again, ask them to show you how this works/looks in practice.
How many job boards does your system allow us to post to?
You will doubtless already have key jobs boards you use for different roles, so here you want to make sure you will still have access to them.
How does your system track application status?
This is to establish whether the system allows you to monitor the effectiveness of your ad spend and response and educate your staff on trends. PeopleBank seem to have one of the best reporting methods for this showing which candidates have responded from which sources and how far they reached in the hiring process.
If we change our process, can the system adapt? If so, how?
This tells you if the system will adapt to your processes, and how much this might cost in terms of extra investment and extra time, or you are stuck with their system's processes. A similar question is 'can the system handle the variations in our hiring process across divisions?'
How much will customisation cost?
Beyond this obvious cost, you should also establish what the ongoing costs will be, and whether there's an additional maintenance cost.
Will the system integrate with my existing ERP system?
Whatever existing internal HR systems you are using, now is the time to put it on the table. Don't settle for a mere 'yes, of course' answer - ask them to demonstrate how.
How long will the system take to implement?
and what are the specific milestones of that implementation?
Can I get a demo account?
so that you can play with the system and explore it for yourself as part of the decision-making process.
What kind of training and support do you offer?
This is where to want to find out how 'on-call' and 'in person' the support will be, or if 'support' is a systems CD...
Is this system offered as an ASP (outsourced) solution only, or can we deploy it on our own servers?
This is a crucial question, as it will tell you if they will be managing it, or if you will be able to manage it in-house either from the outset or further down the line.
Does/ will your system support the XR-XML standard?
From HTML to XML
XML stands for 'eXtended Mark-up Language'. It's a successor to HTML (the programming language for web pages) and an emerging standard for
communication between systems. It will create standard formats for CVs, job descriptions, etc, and will allow your online recruitment system to communicate
with job boards or ERP systems without custom interfaces. While it's still too early for this to be a requirement, it's important to understand if your vendor plans to conform to it.
Criteria to look for
This is really dependent upon the requirements the business has. For example, some businesses have a problem with candidate attraction, so job-posting functionality, allowing
you to advertise your positions on your site and other job boards, would be crucial. Other companies have issues of huge candidate volume, so need strong filtering functionality. In
general, however, the top five features to look for include:
1. usability: if the system is not highly intuitive and easy to use, then it simply won’t be utilised by your staff or by your candidates.
2. look and feel: should represent your corporate and employer brand, and be integrated seamlessly into your careers site. For example, job posting and descriptions should be able to display branding elements.
3. easy candidate application customisation: including the facility to add role-specific questions that can then be scored and ranked will save recruiters time in the short-listing process.
4. bulk processing: eg the ability to send out an e-mail to hundreds of candidates based upon one template, or move dozens to another stage in the hiring process with two or three clicks rather then hundreds.
5. support for HR-XML: While it’s still too early for this to be a current requirement, it's important to understand if your vendor plans to conform to it, since it is set to become a future standard.
Mistakes to avoid
Many of the most common errors come from insufficient planning or rushing decisions at the early stages...
- Failing to take the candidate experience into account - You need to think about what the experience you are defining means to the candidate. They will judge the company by its hiring experience and make lifelong impressions about your employer brand.
- Not securing executive sponsorship - Don't underestimate the amount of resources and management support you will need. You will secure this by developing a proper business case developing success metrics and demonstrating the measurable ROI.
- Lack of Effective Change management - Careful budgeting and planning for change management (education, training, incentives, and internal marketing) is required for successful rollout and user acceptance.
- Selecting a system that simply automates your old process - To deliver real savings in time and costs go for a system that can accommodate and improve on your existing requirements and processes rather than just replicate them.
- Poor planning - Make sure you develop a project board with representatives from HR, Recruitment, Finance, IT, legal and functional departments.
- Setting overly high expectations about implementation - Don't forget to factor in areas affecting rollout such as the types of features you need, the level of customisation, integration with existing systems, custom reporting, process re-engineering, and training.
- Analysis paralysis - Don't spend so long evaluating systems that, by the time you've decided, the assumptions on which you have based your decisions are no longer true, and the vendors have moved on and upgraded their systems and added new features.
- Selecting a solution based on name recognition - or because a friend at another company purchased one. Pick one on its ability to meet your specific business challenges, based upon a through evaluation of your business requirements and a study that can determine your ROI.
- Deviating from your employer brand - from the key differentiators and values your company stands for to the messages you want the system to help communicate to candidates about your opportunities, and the system's look and feel.
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