Where is the problem with computer screening programs?
Gone are the days when recruitment staff would sit with piles of paper CVs on their desks, trying to uncover the gems. It was sheer experience which taught HR professionals that some CVs looked good at first glance, and that some gem employees were masked behind poor CVs.
The advantage of the manual system came from having experienced HR business partners applying the wisdom to the important screening process.
Prof. Peter Cappelli, director of the Centre for Human Resources at the Wharton School of Business, pointed a finger, in his book Why Good People Can’t Get Jobs, at “an over-reliance on software programs that screen out many qualified candidates."
Today, we have some great software solutions which have changed the recruiting landscape. Especially for an under-resourced HR department that measures the time taken to hire, these systems are a godsend. However, we still encounter some negative feedback from employers and applicants alike, so it would appear that our industry has some way to go before we can say that we have really optimised the technologies.
Why do people experience problems with these software programs?
Part of the problem which the software vendors identify is when organisations apply software solutions to already flawed or inadequate selection processes. Remember the old IT saying: GIGO (garbage in, garbage out.) Let’s have a look at what many of us are asking the software to do.
1. Let’s start with what the employer puts into the system – the job specification. Very often, these are over-inflated, the by-product of the grading system. Line managers have pumped up the job description, so that they can get the job graded highly and pay adequately enough to get a good person (sound familiar?). A useful test to weed out this flaw is to see if the outgoing job incumbent would have made it through the software screening process to get their own job. Try it!
2. Sure, you might like to appoint someone with 10 years’ experience, but is it critical to the job requirement, or just a crude way to lift the bar on the assumption that you will get fewer but stronger applicants getting through? The same with qualifications. Could Steve Jobs have gotten a job with Apple today without qualifications? The good screening solutions can be set to sift against a range of parameters, not just one or two.
Of course, this takes more work on our side – just stating ‘industry experience’ is easier than specifying other related environments from where some interesting talent might come. There have been some spectacular CEO appointments recently where the leader is drawn from another industry entirely, and yet we restrict ourselves at lower levels! Guaranteed that these out-of-profile candidates would not have been sourced by regular recruitment software…
3. The other side of the match is in interpreting the candidate’s profile. Most systems ask for a CV upload as well as requesting the individual to complete various fields. This process can be frustratingly time-consuming for the applicant, and you need to think carefully about the ‘employer brand’ message you are sending if you shoe-horn all applicants through a user-unfriendly online process, just because it suits your screening process. Perhaps junior level people will put up with the hoops we make them jump through, but will the skills shortage hotshots who you are competing for also do this?
At the same time, it is really useful to gather as much relevant information as possible from the candidate so that you can build a comprehensive picture as you screen for potential interviewees. Of course, there are always the legal concerns relating to the potentially discriminatory information you are not supposed to consider. But our screening objective should be far less about demographics than experiences, skills, competencies and aptitudes to do the job.
4. Screen-out questions should ideally be department or even job specific, but most of us go for company-wide criteria, which possibly exclude some really good people. The default should perhaps be to rely on the software to inspect the clearly unqualified candidates, but still to require the time and wisdom of a good recruiter and a committed line manager to put in the time necessary to evaluate the ‘possibles’ who should be interviewed.
A more recent trend is to only require more advanced online questionnaires to be completed by the shortlist, accompanied with Skype interviews. A good development.
We’re getting better at this, but most HR departments are far from integrating hi-tech and hi-touch optimally when it comes to recruitment screening.
