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Back to Jan/Feb 2004 Explorer
Feature: State of the Industry - 2004 Trends
By Charles Handler, Ph.D.
Happy 2004.
Ringing in year No. 4 of our still young millennium, and I'm sure it will bring us as many surprises as the first three. Our world is changing in many ways, and while we will never be able to predict the exact nature of these changes, overall trends and directions associated with them are often very clear. For the past 2 years I have started the year off by making predictions about what's coming in the world of online staffing. I want to continue this tradition by reflecting on some of the trends I feel will continue to unfold in the coming year.
1. Changes will be slow.
Overall, I feel we have been moving in a positive direction when it comes to the adoption of new hiring technology. By now most organizations understand the role of the web in their talent sourcing process, have adopted the use of an applicant tracking system and are beginning to understand the value provided by this technology. While this is encouraging, fewer organizations have moved past these basic "must haves" and begun to integrate with other systems that can provide additional value (i.e., assessment systems, learning content management systems, performance management systems). For many organizations it has taken several years to get to a place where the ATS has become a useful part of the hiring process. I feel it will be several more years before the real value of these systems (their ability to serve as part of a larger, more strategic, integrated system) is completely understood. Based on this slower than anticipated rate of adoption and utility, I have begun to adjust my expectations in terms of timing. The evolution of hiring processes is up to individual organizations - the sooner they begin creating and executing a long term, strategic vision for the integrated use of technology in their hiring processes, the more rapidly this area will evolve.
2. There will be a continued focus on quality.
Over the past year my thoughts have really begun to turn to the idea of quality. While the specifics of screening and assessment tools may be complex and confusing for many, the idea of quality is easy for everyone to understand. When I refer to quality, I am referring to the process of aligning the characteristics of individuals with those required for success in the organization and with a specific job or career track within that organization. The end result of a quality focused hiring process is the ability to provide an organization with the human capital needed to ensure that it is able to meet its strategic objectives. It is the ability to clearly define and meet quality standards that will allow an organization to create value from its hiring process. I think in the coming years more and more organizations will begin to understand the importance of quality and will look to technology to help them find it. A focus on quality is needed because the value it can create is the key to shifting perceptions of the staffing process from a cost center to a profit center. Until this perceptual shift has occurred, staffing personnel will continually butt heads with those controlling the purse strings and staffing systems will continue to fall short of their potential to add value.
3. Staffing will begin to borrow from supply chain management.
An increasing number of organizations are realizing the value of using metrics to increase their understanding of what is occurring within their staffing processes. These metrics are a critical part of understanding how to add value to the hiring process and are an important part of a focus on quality. I feel that the use of metrics to help measure the role played by staffing in organizational performance will continue. Eventually, technology will help staffing to begin adopting a supply chain management philosophy and organizations will use metrics and data to better understand the costs/benefits of staffing processes and the decisions made via these processes. A premium on data and metrics is the first step in moving towards a data driven supply chain management model.
4. Sourcing and sorting companies will begin to expand their product offerings.
In an effort to create more value for their customers while also increasing their own ability to generate revenue, job boards and ATS vendors will begin to expand their product offerings and provide in-house tools needed to integrate additional functionality. I feel assessment tools will be an excellent example of this trend. The integration of assessment tools into the sourcing and candidate management process is an important part of the continued evolution of the online hiring process. Sourcing and ATS companies will slowly investigate the use of assessment tools to help their core offerings provide more value. The future will see these types of companies making a play for the in-house addition of assessment to their core service offerings rather than doing so via partnerships or alliances. This will provide sourcing and ATS companies with the tools they need to reinforce a quality-focused strategy that will allow them to provide their clients with more value. Within 5 years many ATSs and job boards will offer their own proprietary assessment tools as part of their core product offerings.
5. People will continue to get fleeced by bogus products.
On several occasions this past year my gut was wrenched by so called "assessment" products that I saw advertised in the mainstream of the marketplace. Because assessment tools are complex, the overall understanding of how these tools work is still relatively low and it is very difficult for many consumers to differentiate between good products that work and shoddy ones that do not. This is a problem because organizations that have fallen prey to shoddy assessment tools often lose interest in the idea very quickly. These experiences contribute to the false assumption that assessment tools do not work. This is unfortunate because many people have proven time and again that these tools do work as long as they are used properly. The best advice I can give is "buyer beware." Before you invest in an assessment tool, do your homework and consult a credible expert. If anyone tells you that handwriting analysis or the Meyers Briggs will help you make quality hiring decisions, please do us all a favor and show them the door!
6. The number of vendors will continue to grow.
As organizations continue to make an investment in upgrading their hiring processes more and more people are realizing that there is money to be made in providing organizations with tools to add value to their hiring process. This means that the continued influx of new vendors offering solutions will not slow down anytime soon. When doing the research for the first edition of our "Rocket-Hire Buyer's Guide to Web-based Screening and Assessment Systems", we identified about 60 vendors of products somehow related to online screening and assessment. For the next edition of our Buyer's Guide we have already identified over 100 vendors and are adding more to the list each week. Unfortunately, the increasing number of vendors will make choosing a reputable vendor with a legitimate solution for your needs an even more difficult task. This situation means that organizations wishing to use online hiring tools to meet quality goals will require that industry awareness and education about online hiring tools become an important strategic focus.
7. The overall technology level of the hiring process will increase.
The level of technology within organizations' hiring processes will continue to increase over the next year. Within a year or so most organizations will have the basics down and will continue to see the value in using technology to help make their hiring processes more efficient and effective. This continued adaptation is an important part of the overall evolution of the hiring process. We all need to face the fact that technology and the web isn't going away anytime soon and the reason for this is that technology provides a valuable advantage to everyone involved in the hiring process.
8. Technology WILL NOT replace humans.
Over the years I have continually gotten push back from people who think that I am advocating that technology replace humans in the hiring process. Nothing could be farther from the truth. When it comes to hiring decisions, I feel that humans should always play a central role and that human judgment should have the ultimate decision making power. I see the role of technology as providing humans with the tools they need to reduce information overload while simultaneously making better, more informed decisions
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