Chicago , IL - November 20, 2005 - Each year I meet with hundreds of human resources executives regarding their recruitment challenges. In every case, these executives know that filling positions expediently and economically, with the most qualified employees requires periodic candidate processing system evaluations. Whether a company is using an in-house solution or outsourcing its recruitment needs, the same issues apply: obtaining better hires faster, and at a lower cost than competitors.

If your business requires a high volume of non-exempt employees, then recruitment optimization is essential for meeting your staffing and cost strategies. So, how do you get the optimal balance of people, process and technology for your recruitment system? PeopleScout recently polled a cross section of its clients on this very question. The result: seven requirements for optimizing recruiting and the steps needed to achieve these goals.

Goal #1: Maximize Fill Rates. Increasing fill rates and reducing time to hire were identified as the most critical aspects of volume hiring. Clients noted that maximizing fill rates reduced vacancies, improved customer satisfaction and supported the company's growth, revenue and profitability goals.

Steps: Achieving maximum fill rates requires developing a strong employment brand, researching your target candidate's demographics, analyzing your sourcing results to improve media placement and testing alternatives to traditional employment advertising. Any candidate processing technology must be combined with personal interaction between candidates and hiring managers. In other words, relegating the entire recruitment and selection process to purely automated tools is not nearly as effective as combining them with a "live" interaction -- especially at the pre-employment screening stage, when identifying candidates' interpersonal skills is crucial.

Goal #2: Low Cost. Managing expenses to the lowest possible level was routinely identified as a key business driver for human resources and operations executives. Hardware, software, systems integration and development were noted as the biggest cost contributors to recruitment optimization.

Steps: Regularly analyze and evaluate recruitment processes to take advantage of the most cost-efficient recruitment solutions currently available. Consider various forms of recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) software to reduce costs and operating expenses while retaining flexibility and scalability that is essential for managing high volume hiring.

Goal #3: High Quality User Experience. Resisting change is human nature. This is the number one reason most companies avoid changing their recruitment and selection processes or find that few employees really take advantage of new system enhancements. For many with high volume hiring needs, business unit managers who are not trained HR professionals perform much of the actual recruitment and selection. While recent advancements in human resources technology systems have introduced a wealth of new capabilities, those doing the hiring do not use many features of these sophisticated systems. At the same time, recruiting high volumes of non-exempt talent can be an exhaustive, often redundant exercise laden with unnecessary administrative burdens and low impact activities.

Steps: New processes, systems and procedures must be logical, easy to use and convenient for the end user. To prevent burnout, use a recruitment system that offloads "administrivia," allowing recruiters to focus on analyzing reports, making qualitative decisions, tweaking the system and concentrating on high-impact HR initiatives.

Goal #4: High Quality Candidate Experience. Employment candidates want to be treated professionally, consistently, courteously and efficiently. It's a big mistake to think that hourly candidates can be treated differently than salaried ones. With a shrinking pool of qualified and available candidates to fill the non-exempt rolls, competition is fierce for the cream of the crop.

Steps: Those employers who go the extra mile to offer candidates a personal and professional experience at the earliest stages in the hiring process are often the ones who will most likely succeed in securing the most competitive individuals. An interactive recruitment process will help ensure that a positive candidate processing experience takes place, resulting in quality hires.

Goal #5: Continuous Process Improvement. Successful firms continuously strive to become better, faster and more innovative and cost efficient at everything they do. Your recruitment system is no different.

Steps: Research the solutions available and seek advice from industry experts. As you design, implement or outsource your recruiting process, the total system must reflect the company's culture and allow for continuous refinement and enhancement. Once you have your recruitment system in place, evaluate it regularly by measuring, monitoring and interpreting those metrics that will enable the leadership team to make better-informed decisions.

Goal #6: Ease of Use. This is the pitfall of many recruitment systems. If a recruitment tool or process is not easy to navigate, internal users will spend much of their time creating "work arounds," while employment candidates will simply seek employment elsewhere. For this reason, candidate processing systems must be designed with the end-user in mind.

Steps: Simplicity and common sense are key elements in the design of an effective system. The concept of "user-friendly" must be defined by those who use the system and not by system developers.

Goal #7: Universal Practice. Survey results routinely pointed to the need for "universal deployment" as a key ingredient for identifying and leveraging best practices. Once a company has successfully optimized the recruitment and selection process, those elements that prove to have most impact on the organization should be replicated enterprise-wide.

Steps: Analyze your entire process on a regular basis, from source to hire, to insure that the programs you are using properly interface and/or compliment your company's existing hiring practices and procedures. Metric-based reporting will ensure quality results and a positive return on investment. Outsource your recruitment. Recruitment process outsourcing firms have the knowledge, experience and systems to complement a company's HR department, enabling the company to achieve improved candidate processing goals by streamlining its hiring practices. At the same time, outsourcing allows organizations' HR departments to save valuable time and effort to concentrate on their core competences -- which ultimately helps increase the company's bottom line while achieving the highest standards in recruiting.

Dave Coons is vice president of PeopleScout, a Chicago-based candidate-processing firm that specializes in high-volume recruitment for major companies in the transportation, retail, telecommunications and finance industries among others. He can be reached at: www.peoplescout.com, or by calling: 800-966-4803

About PeopleScout
PeopleScout is a division of SeatonCorp, a best-in-class staffing and recruiting company recently named by Crain's Chicago Business as one of Chicago's largest privately held companies. PeopleScout is a leading provider of recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) services aimed at helping companies with their exempt and non-exempt hiring needs. The firm's suite of services includes RPO, employment branding, on-boarding, and employee retention. Annually, PeopleScout facilitates over 184,000 hires via partial-cycle RPO engagements and end-to-end RPO engagements. Industries served include airline, financial services, telecommunications, retail, utilities, insurance, pharmaceutical, and transportation.

PeopleScout's clients include some of the more recognizable names in the Fortune 500 list of companies. PeopleScout has succeeded in being selected for four consecutive years to HRO Today Magazine's Baker's Dozen - the closely watched list of industry - leading RPO providers - as well as being named #1 in large deal capabilities. The firm also has also been recognized as the #1 RPO Provider by The Black Book of Outsourcing on its "2008 Top Ten HRO: Recruitment Process Outsourcing/RPO" list. For more information, please visit us at www.peoplescout.com or call 800-966-4803.

For More Information
Gerry Sullivan
Vice President, Solutions Development
(312) 915-5036
gsullivan@peoplescout.com