PowerMatch™ – Next Generation Hiring Process Technology

Web-based job boards, newspapers and recruiters have dramatically changed the hiring process. Despite what these recruitment services advertise, finding the perfect employee hasn't necessarily become that much easier. Online resources have the capability to deliver massive amounts of resumes without a process for effectively managing them. Candidates are responding to job listings at Internet speed, however hiring managers are responding much the same way they have for years. Keyword and other types of search and interpretation technologies fail to address the root problem in resume management and accurate candidate identification. These technologies are inadequate for quickly identifying, matching and ranking the best candidates based on the requirements of the job.

The window of availability for the best-qualified candidates is very narrow. According to Bruce Culver CEO of IdealHire Technologies, “The best candidates are available for the shortest period of time.” Why, because everyone wishes to hire them. Here is where having the right technology can provide a significant advantage by addressing two key performance improvement factors. The two primary factors for improving the quality of new hires are accuracy and speed.

Other than demographic and/or compensation considerations, there are two primary qualifications to achieve a best fit candidate for any specific job. Most important; can they do the job? In other words, do they have the appropriate education, skills training and experience for the position? If this answer is affirmative, then, do they have the appropriate behavior, motivation, and personality for the position? The nature of a job determines which of these two considerations is most important. The discussion here centers on the process to determine the best skills and experience qualifications match for a job. Once that has been determined then the type of position may dictate further qualification with behavioral or psychometric tests.

Imagine a job has been posted and within seconds, you are made aware that a candidate has met the matching/ranking criteria for your job. In fact you are able to numerically see how well this person is matched. Now imagine that an email is automatically sent to the job seeker informing them of your interest. Further imagine that you could contact them before they got up from their computer. Sound a bit idealistic, now it’s reality, if you have the right technology which has been designed specifically for the hiring process. Just as the internet is moving to the next generation, frequently dubbed web 2.0, so has technology for the hiring process. The next generation hiring process is called PowerMatch. PowerMatch uses structured information and easy access to web based computational services to achieve such incredible results.

Understanding the current generation hiring process technology

The traditional hiring process consists of four basic phases:

Sourcing

Selection

Assessment and Interview

Offer and Hire

The problems associated with identifying job candidates, including speedy evaluation, ranking and sorting of resumes take a heavy toll on an organization’s bottom line. The time spent during the selection phase is consistently the most costly and inefficient due to the way the recruiting and selection process has evolved with the current use of technology.

The barrier to streamlining the process for matching candidates to open job descriptions has been the resume. All of the current generation candidate identification systems begin with the same basic document – the resume – written with the terminology and vocabulary its author is accustomed to using. The technology behind almost every automated system for qualifying job candidates is based on trying to understand or interpret it. Syntax and style inconsistencies lead to inaccuracy and interpretation difficulties. The problem is the universal inability to have a set of standards for creating both the job description and resume. This makes the old curriculum vitae out of sync with today’s need for speed, accuracy and the digital environment.

The original technology for evaluating and ranking resumes was the yellow highlighter. In some organizations, it’s still in use along with resume scanners, word parsing, keyword search, Boolean search and artificial intelligence (AI) systems. Once a resume is available in digital format, only then can it be subjected to a keyword search to determine how many times a particular word shows up in a resume. The number of times a word is used does not equate to the skills, depth of experience or education of a candidate. The result of keyword searching is usually a huge pile or database filled with irrelevant resumes.

A Boolean search expands the keyword search to include a string of words and/or phrases. This means either the HR or hiring manager has to interpret what those words or phrases mean. Creating an accurate command search string for a Boolean search can be complicated and time-consuming. More often than not, HR managers are not skilled in the nuances of writing Boolean search command strings. Even if a successful string is created, the results may be marginally better but is still unable to reflect the important depth of experience levels of candidates.

AI systems take evaluation and ranking a step further by attempting to interpret what different combinations of words and phrases might mean. The relationships between words and phrases and their definitions as defined in existing vocabulary or captured through previous experience are used to interpret the meaningfulness of the resume. However, systems using AI are still limited because they are trying to interpret the meanings. Without some structure to the data it remains an apples and oranges comparison.

Some approaches try to avoid dealing with resume searches by asking a set of pre-qualifying questions of every applicant. Only those applicants who correctly answer all questions are put onto the “A” list for further consideration. This sorting approach makes the original resume pile smaller but does not identify the best qualified candidate in the shortest period of time.

Using current generation hiring process technology, the accuracy for finding potential candidates is limited because of the interpretive nature of keyword, Boolean and AI searches. It’s a classic measurement systems problem. While these systems can sort groups of candidates into different piles and incrementally speed the selection process, they haven’t increased the accuracy of matching and ranking the best candidates to job descriptions. The measurement system accuracy can only be improved with the use of common terminology and vocabulary as well as consideration for the depth of candidate experience.

PowerMatch™

Improving the evaluation and ranking systems to select the best candidate in the shortest time requires an innovative approach to re-engineering both the job description and resume in such a way that is easier and still more usable for both the hiring manager and the candidate. Current day methodologies such as Lean, Six Sigma and business process management provide the fundamental thinking and concepts to creatively create such a process.

The process for hiring starts with an open position that must be filled with someone who can fulfill the requirements of the job, or the job description. Inherent in the job description are the elements of success: necessary skills, education and amount of experience. These elements, collectively called a job profile form the basis for identifying, selecting and hiring the best fit candidate.

The next generation technology, called PowerMatch begins with these fundamental elements consisting of the job profile (using a structured data approach) so that job requirements can be directly matched to a similar profile created by the candidate. Therefore, the interpretative nature of current generation technology is eliminated and it becomes an apples-to-apples comparison.

The job profile is electronically created using an existing job template in an online library, modifying an existing template or creating a new template. The hiring manager/recruiter easily completes a job profile in PowerMatch™ in a few minutes in four easy steps.

Simply cut and paste an existing job description into the profile field.

Complete the education requirement by selecting degree and field of study from pull-down menus.

Select what industry experience may be required from pull-down menus.

Lastly, select the skills and certifications required. Simply check off the appropriate skills and certifications, and how many years of experience is needed for the job.

The job profile is then immediately posted to the careers page of the company web site and may also be posted directly onto paid Internet job posting boards.

Candidates create a similar profile using the same steps as the hiring manager/recruiter used to create the job profile. With or without a resume in hand, filling out a profile is easy and consists of contact information, education, industry and skills. It takes about 10 minutes. After first completing the contact data, the candidate completes the education template which includes the education institution, type of degree and field of study, etc. Next the candidate selects their Industry experience from a pull-down menu. Lastly, the candidate selects skills and certifications organized in pull-down menus. The candidate simply checks off the appropriate skills and indicates the years of experience in each skill.

Notice that the process for the hiring manager/recruiter to create a job profile and the process for a candidate to create a candidate profile are nearly identical. This minimizes inaccuracies and is the key for precise matching of job seekers to jobs. This means that there is truly an apples-to-apples comparison of education, industry and skills that will be exactly matched to the education, industry and skills of a candidate.

Additionally each time a job profile is posted, all candidates in the database are instantly matched to this job. Also anytime a new candidate enters the system, they are immediately analyzed for a match to all open and future jobs. The hiring manager/recruiter is immediately notified if a candidate meets the match and rank criteria. Similarly a candidate could see what jobs they have matched to if this option is selected in the system. In real time and with an unprecedented level of accuracy, the recruiting process just became easier and extremely faster. This is the basis for PowerMatch – the next generation hiring process technology.

Another benefit of this next generation hiring process technology is the ability to fully characterize an organization’s existing internal resources and intelligently respond to needs. There are several workforce planning benefits from this:

An organization can first look at internal talent resources before looking outside the organization. This provides a powerful tool for better managing human assets and boosting employee morale.

The key to managing any team, department or organization is to understand the team’s experience and total skill set. By creating employee profiles, their education, industry experience and skills in various departments, groups and teams can lead to the identification of the combinations of factors that lead to higher performance. Using this information to benchmark a model of high performing groups, allows subsequent groups to be created with the same characteristics. Additionally, identifying missing experience, skills or depth of experience within the organization allows the hiring managers and/or the HR department to take corrective action.

A change in strategic direction, expansion or reduction of operations or a reaction to competitive challenge can quickly be assessed and acted upon from a human resource talent perspective. For example if an organization needs to expand its operations and knows the critical talents needed to launch it, an instant list of internal individuals can be created. Or if a special task force needs to be developed to perform an important set of actions, they can quickly be found with this technology.

The problem of ensuring the hiring of high quality personnel cuts to the very heart of an organization’s success. For no matter how high the demand for a product or service, it’s the organization’s people – human assets – that must deliver. By giving the HR departments, recruiters and hiring managers the tools for identifying candidates that truly match to job requirements, the quality of hire is increased significantly.

The hiring entity, the job seeker and commercial job boards benefit from the use of structured information instead of interpretive approaches. Simply put, it is more accurate, faster and produces a higher quality solution at a lower overall cost then the current generation of recruiting process technology. PowerMatch is a hiring process revolution.

(by Bruce Culver, CEO and Don Redinius, President of IdealHire, Inc) http://www.hrtc.org/attachments/contentmanagers/

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Date: 2015-12-18; view: 678