You think you've got a lot to do? Your HR manager has to find talented people, hire them, train them, and ultimately keep them happy. "What we're seeing is that the role of human resources is shifting to making more strategic contributions," says Kathryn Bartol, a professor at the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland.
"Technology is very helpful in allowing human resources to make a more direct bottom-line impact. Also, it's freeing up time so HR can spend more time on nonroutine kinds of problems." Bartol is currently researching the effect of technology on the human resources profession.
In the past, HR applications have been huge systems that relied on proprietary software, which put them out of reach for most small to midsize companies. But the latest Web-based offerings are less expensive, easier to set up, and available anywhere. Some of the newest HR tools are even tailored to address the needs of the smallest organizationsââ,¬"companies with 50 employees or fewerââ,¬"which may not have a dedicated HR manager on staff.
Hunt for New Blood
The new economy's now-infamous talent war rages on, andââ,¬"despite the recent spate of high-tech layoffsââ,¬"finding good people is still a time-consuming task. Online recruiting is one of the best ways to reach as many candidates as possible. HR professionals are expected to increase their online recruitment spending more than 50 percent by 2004, according to Forrester Research. But they won't be paying to simply post jobs at sites like Monster.com or HotJobs.com. Job hunters report that they're often dissatisfied with the results of such job boards. Many find the quality of listings to be below average, and posting résumés at these sites didn't generate the response they were looking for, according to a recent Forrester report. Such complaints have given rise to a new breed of Web recruiting services.
These new offerings, including Hire.com, Lawson e-Recruiting Service (formerly iJob.com), and Webhire, do a lot more than standard job sites. They help employers generate job listings, broadcast those listings to top job boards, match the listings against a pool of their own registered candidates, and even prescreen qualified applicants.
Take the way Hire.com approaches recruiting. Instead of posting an ad whenever a client position becomes available, its e-recruiting program regularly culls prospects who have expressed interest in a particular company. It then builds talent pools of actively looking candidates and passive job hunters. Hire.com helps employers maintain relationships with these people, and keep tabs on their status. When an opening becomes available, employers don't have to look any farther than their own prescreened résumé pool for qualified possibilities. The service starts at around US$8,000 per month, but varies according to company size and extra services.
"We were basically trying to narrow down the people we were targeting, because we do have somewhat of a niche," says Gene Grev, HR director for Swales Aerospace, who primarily recruits engineers to work on government contracts. "Hire.com was able to meet all of our needs for building a pool of people that only we had access to, that we knew were interested in our company, and that had the skills we were looking for."
Since Swales started using Hire.com last June, the small aerospace company has grown its talent pool to 1,400 candidates. "We're not a big-name company like Lockheed or GE, so we're really happy with that," adds Grev. "Plus it gave us a real edge over our competitors. When we do proposals, we often have to say how we're going to get the people to do the work."
When it comes to filling temporary or specialised openings, companies often require even more help. Not only do they need to find qualified candidates, they need to do it quickly, and they need to make sure the appropriate parties sign off on the request. To help with the hiring process, HR managers can use Web-based tools such as those from Enthusian, a joint venture between HR consultancy Spherion and general consultancy Accenture. Enthusian's solution, called TalentAxis, aims to speed up the hiring processââ,¬" replacing your company's old paper-based system with a fully automated one.
