Will Technology Change the Way Employees Get Hired?

These used to be the only guaranteed place to get a signal…

There was a time when fax machines, email and voicemail did not exist. Yes, I know that’s hard to believe – but it’s true. It was a time of payphones, ‘snail’ mail and rooftop TV antennas. In the last 30 years, we’ve seen drastic changes in how we all send and receive information.

During the last 30 years, companies have evolved to keep up with the times. Companies that didn’t adapt… well, they circled the drain and now they’re gone. The ones left make use of technology to their benefit. Technology usually saves time and money, and that’s the name of the game.

Less Personal Contact, More Efficiency?

Job seekers are not encouraged to drop into a human resource department and hand someone their resume any more. People consider it an inefficient use of their time. Is that good or bad? I think it’s a little of both, and I’ll explain why in a minute.

OCR and Parsing

OCR technology used to be a huge deal to hiring authorities – and not that long ago. It provided a way to scan resumes. Now OCR is a dusty relic, replaced by parsing. My regular readers will know that I always harp on tailoring your resume to each job – and parsing is part of the reason.

Parsing is a technology that allows companies to process online resumes by extracting data in an intelligent way. We recruiters love this tool because it enables us to gather resume information from our emails and export it to our databases.

Recruiters can ask that job seekers apply directly into a database – and then we can see if a candidate is a 100% match or a 10% match for a job opening. It saves time and energy by allowing us to fill jobs faster than ever before; think of it as an automated screening tool.

So is Technology Helping or Hurting Job Seekers?

After 30 years in this field, I think it’s doing both. Qualified candidates (qualified by the computer’s standards, at least) can start work that much sooner because the process is so streamlined. But other candidates, who may be equally or better qualified, can be left in the dust. Thirty years ago, that wouldn’t have happened.

When you take the human element out of the early part of the hiring process, you also remove something that only we as humans have: common sense. (I’m not saying everyone’s got common sense; that’s a post for another day!)

Adapt or Go Jobless

The flow of progress is an unstoppable force. The point here is that even if technology changes the face of hiring as we know it – as it will continue to do – every one of us has to prepare to adapt to those changes.

Perhaps in the past, companies were able to find better talent. Maybe employees stayed longer in their positions because they felt their employers cared. Making hiring choices might have been easier when people handled the process. Perhaps it’s easier now. The only thing that’s certain is technology is at the forefront of the hiring process, and it’s going to continue to change.

Do you think technology on the job front is a good thing or a bad thing? Please share your experiences here.

Blog by NY Staffing Professional
Catherine Palmiere, President
Adam Personnel, Inc.
CPalmiere@AdamPersonnel.com
(212)557-9150 ext. 208

Image courtesy of Sue_R_B at RGBStock.com.