Digital Recruiting: Technology is great – but let’s not forget: it’s all about the HI!

HI? Of course an informal way to say hello (which I naturally extend to you), but in this instance I’m using it in the context of Human Interaction.

I spend a disproportionate amount of my life peering into this screen (mine as I write this, not yours as you read this – that would just be too Matrix!). Not as much as many I’m sure, but a damned sight more than is probably healthy. So as much as I can I try and force myself to think hard about the human aspect of things I’m involved in the delivery of – whether the candidate reading an advert / web page or navigating a site, an applicant completing a job application, a recruiters logical workflow whilst reviewing / processing response to a campaign etc etc etc. Unfortunately it’s all too easy in our world to look around and see glaring examples of where this hasn’t been considered at all – certainly not beyond a passing “and this is where on screen 8 of an undisclosed number of screens we’ll ask them to load a CV if they want to”.

But I heard a tale from an ex-colleague recently about a job application experience they had which just goes to prove that it’s as much a task for “Recruitment Professionals” to take on board as it is for a developer or web builder or creative or indeed anyone else in the recruitment communications industry.

Having applied to an ad with their CV to a recruitment consultant’s email address (as instructed) they waited. And waited. Nothing. Not a peep to even say the CV was there. An auto ack would have been simple and served a purpose (using technology to enrich the candidate experience whilst minimising the effort) – but that was clearly a step too far. So as the closing date neared they tried to call. Consultant not in (are they ever?), so left a message and sent an email asking just for confirmation that the CV had been received. A day passed. Then a weekend. Then another day or two – still nothing.

Anyway – I could go on, but am sure you get the picture. In the end having squeezed out a response that the CV had indeed been received and was being “considered”, there was then more of this silent treatment over the next week or two in terms of “thanks but no thanks”, “we’re still considering” or even “you’re crap – sod off”. It’s amazing and horrifying at the same time. Through all this process, managed by a consultant who would either be on a retainer for their “efforts” or else expecting a nice fat fee at the end of their “work”, the difference some Human Interaction, electronic based or personal, would have made would have been immense. And we’re not talking about a junior role here (perhaps for a £12k admin role this might be more excusable – although I personally think not).

So where am I going with this? Well just that in a career where I’ve been pretty lucky in having many of my career moves find me, this was a confirmation as to how job seeker experience, Employer Brand and Product Brand are inextricably linked. In short, this candidate certainly won’t be in a hurry to buy any of these guys financial products in the near future – and pretty unlikely to apply to them again.

Of course – this can always be fobbed off as a supplier delivering sub standard service etc etc, but if the HR / Resourcing team and the wider business truly appreciated the importance and impact of their Employer Brand then 1. why run down your internal team to the degree where you have to outsource in the first place 2. where are the checks to pick up how your activity is actually managed / the hard and fast SLAs that set out how a candidate should expect to be treated when being engaged by your brand?

I very much appreciate that it’s a full on board room battle to get Employer Brand and recruitment and retention the kind of business critical recognition it deserves – over an above the annual CEO statement that “people are our greatest asset”. I’d say today we’re in a better place than ever before to generate and track the MI (management information) to prove the bottom line impact and value of getting this part of the business right – but to do that you have to invest in the people who understand it and ensure that it penetrates every level of your business and recruitment process, with the technological investment to make this as efficient and effective as possible.

Cheap gets you employee churn (poor hiring decisions & poor retention of good people). Cheap gets you outsourced second rate service (which actually costs you more anyway). Cheap gets your business a greater marketing spend to try and repair the highly personal negative experience you delivered to disgruntled applicants. Cheap isn’t really cheap at all – and it can only ever be short term.

So next time you’re undertaking some recruitment activity, or planning it on behalf of a client – stop a moment, put yourself in the candidates’ shoes and think, “are we making sure that in this process we really do deliver HI?”