Staffing Technology

39: A call to front office vendors: onboarding automation please

Hiring companies are pushing more and more administrative functions to their staffing suppliers. Staffing companies have between one and two dozen forms for new hires to complete. Just figuring out which federal, state, local, client-specific, position-specific and staffing company forms need to be completed for each new temporary employee is a major feat. Strict client compliance requirements and looming government audits mean that staffing companies need to implement effective processes for managing this immense amount of paperwork. Automation is the natural soltuion for exactly this type of uniform, high transaction process.

Many corporate HR oriented applicant tracking systems come with onboarding workflow, forms tracking and management and e-signature capabilities. However, onboarding solutions are not readily available fromcommercial front or back office vendors, even though the pain of managing onboarding paperwork is industry-wide. Because front and back office staffing solutions have not provided robust solutions fast enough, staffing firms are starting to find innovative ways to automate these painfully manual processes. It's unfortunate that staffing firms are having to work hard toadd additional technology in order to automate onboarding. In 2010, we hope to see more onboarding and compliance functionality integrated with, or built into, leading front office solutions.

Check back for our upcoming article on onboarding automation in ASA's Staffing Success magazine.

38: All work and no play: software selection sandboxes

Here at The Code Works, we facilitate a number of staffing software selections for our staffing company clients.

Throughout our marketing and sales process, we explain our software selection methodology to prospective clients.

In the spirit of one of our core company values, continuous improvement, we are always working to make the selection process more efficient while maintaining a high level of quality. To us, a quality selection process means that the selected software:

• Will enable the staffing company's business goals and business strategy
• Accentuates and/or does not detract from the company's competitive and operational differentiators
• Is aligned with the IT strategy, considers the other applications in the staffing firm's architecture and can fit into the IT environment

In addition to we need to understand meaningful gaps so that we can determine where business process will change or customization will occur. We have found that most company's do not like financial, functional, performance or implementation planning surprises. So, the selection process needs to be thorough enough so that these "gotchas" can be identified.

In October 2008 I presented a number of Code Works' best practices for software selection at ASA's Staffing World conference. One of our recommendations was that staffing firm's forget about a sending out a request for proposal (RFP) and focus on scripted demos instead. Our rationale driving the recommendation was that:

a) RFPs list requirements and vendor's make check marks but there is much room for interpretation

b) Software enables business process - so requirements need to be connected and not just listed

c) Seeing is believing - in addition to demonstrating functionality, scripted demos show how efficiently and elegantly a software enables a requirement

Staffing firm's have really appreciated the scripted demos. While vendor's tend to appreciate why customer's want them (i.e. apples to apples software comparison), sales people find the prep time requirements to be too much which is aggravating (they are used to quick decisions) and dramatically increases their cost of sales, which is then reflected in pricing or profit impacts.

We have had a great deal of success working with vendor's to set-up sandbox environments for selection purposes and then working through key business processes with selection stakeholders. I really enjoyed reading Jim Holincheck's post on this topic and it is my hope that The Code Works will find ways to make this process more efficient for staffing firm's and vendor's in 2010.

37: Buy not Build

We here at The Code Works love custom software as much as we love commercial packages. We see the strengths and weaknesses on both sides in the buy versus build discussion. Really, we do. But because of the high cost and risk associated with custom application development and the availability of good commercial packages for staffing firms, It is our view that there must be a compelling reason for a staffing firm to decide to build rather than buy.

At the end of the day our clients tell us that they are in the staffing, not software, business. Many, many staffing firms have learned this lesson the hard way. Nearly every large public staffing firm has an embarrassing annual report or two outlining massive write-offs related to a failed  software development or major customization project. Many staffing firms have learned the hard way that they do  not have the software product development discipline nor the software development capability to successfully complete and manage custom dev projects.

While our off-the-shelf staffing software options may not be perfect, they have improved over the last several years. Software vendors are releasing new functionality routinely. While custom systems can be extended to include new functionality too, we see that commercial packages are integrating with more and more technology-enabled services (e.g. background checking, payroll service providers, VMS integration, social and professional networks). We believe that it will be harder and harder for custom staffing systems to keep up with the partnerships and integrations that off-the-shelf vendors offer.

There is clearly a trend for staffing firms to buy rather than build software. Manpower selected Bond Adapt for all staffing segments across all branches worldwide. Kelly Services selected Bullhorn for their professional and technical staffing segments in the US. When large and complex organizations (who would've been best positioned to benefit from the economies of scale of a custom system  move away from their own custom apps toward off-the-shelf solutions, it becomes even more evident that off-the-shelf staffing solutions must be seriously considered - if they can do it - you probably can too.

Custom systems can be tightly tied to business process and this  can be appealing. Technology can be a key enabler of a staffing firm's differentiators. Sometimes, the differentiator can be configured or customized into the off-the-shelf system. Sometimes, not. It is our recommendation that staffing firms be very clear about the importance and necessity of the functionality that drives the decision to build rather than buy staffing software. Be sure it's differentiating - be sure off-the-shelf systems can't handle it - be sure you can't risk leaking the intellectual property with the outside world.

Do everything you can to talk yourself out of building that custom application before you make the leap because once you commit to building it you are definitely a pig not a chicken, and it is going to be incredibly difficult for you and your organization to make the move to an off-the-shelf application down the road.

36:I-9s, ICE audits: technology is the best risk mitigation plan

On July 1, 2009 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced "a bold, new audit initiative...by issuing Notices of Inspection (NOIs) to 652 businesses nationwide - which is more than ICE issued throughout all of last fiscal year." In August, the Wall Street Journal reported that "John Morton, the new chief of U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement, a unit of the Department of Homeland Security, said that the agency is set to increase the number of companies it will audit and systematically impose fines on violators. Violations could also lead to criminal charges, he said."

On October 1, 2009, SIA reported that the owner and a staff members of Illinois staffing firm, Ideal Staffing Solutions, got jail time, for staffing illegal immigrants at Chicago O'Hare. The ICE press release explains that "the complaint affidavits allege that Ideal Staffing managers told workers they needed to have identification, but that the documents need not be legitimate. At times, Ideal Staffing managers allegedly provided some workers with deactivated airport security badges issued in other names, allowing them to bypass the appropriate security screening."

ICE said the audits were about building criminal cases and a short 3 months later the Ideal Staffing announcement. Clearly, Ideal is an outrageous case.

But there is no doubt that this announcement builds concern across the staffing industry as civil fines are scary enough "Each improperly completed I-9 carries a penalty of up to $1,100, and that's assuming the employee is authorized to work."

Staffing firms tend to collect I-9 forms when candidates are deemed placeable. This means that many, many more I-9s are collected, reviewed, signed and filed than necessary, since only a fraction of interviewed candidates are placed. While procedures are always put in place to find the I-9 in case of an ICE audit, it is extremely difficult to ensure consistency across decentralized recruiters and branches. In addition the the volume of paperwork, the business rules around I-9s are kind of tricky. For example, the document must be retained for 3 years from teh hire date, and we know that tracking the hire data can be hard, especially if you add in breaks in service. When a fool-proof, auditable process is needed, especially in a decentralized environment, automation is required.

The George Association of Personnel Services posted a great article that includes a list of what ICE auditors might ask for:

• Original I-9s. Forms I-9 must be retained for three years after the date of hire or one year after the date of termination, whichever period is longer.
• A spreadsheet alphabetically listing all current and terminated employees with hire and termination dates in electronic form Word or Excel, non-PDF, including the names, Social Security numbers and dates of birth of each employee.
• Copies of quarterly wage and hour reports and/or payroll data for all employees—current and terminated—covering the period of inspection, as well as quarterly tax statements.
• Business information, including the employer identification number, taxpayer identification number, owner’s Social Security number, owner’s contact information (e.g., address, information, phone numbers and e-mail addresses), articles of incorporation (if applicable) and copies of business licenses.
• Copies of Social Security no-match letters.
• A copy of any I-9 policy.
• The name and responsibility of those who complete I-9 forms.
• The date the business was established, form of the business, where it is incorporated and its revenue.
• The department or job titles of employees.
• Quarterly unemployment insurance reports with the state or quarterly returns for Federal Income Contributions Act taxes.
• ICE may also ask whether the company is a current or previous participant in E-Verify or the Social Security Number Verification Service.

Recent technology announcements:

• TALX Surpasses 200th Client for I-9 Service (9/21/2009) related to TALX I9 eXpress and I9 Management Service
• Biometric Identification May Soon Be Inescapable: Bipartisan Push to Add Biometrics to Employment Verification (SHRM, 8/26/09, login required)

Other providers of electronic I-9s (there are a bazillion of them)

• Tracker Compliance Solutions
• I-9Compliance.com
• LawLogix
• JobApp Network

35: Bi-directional matching comparison

As many of you know, we are always investigating and implementing candidate search and match technologies. We found this great table comparing bi-directional matching offerings:

Source: 10 Jul 2009 Wall Street Journal article | table

Also wanted to call out that this is the first I've heard of Bintro, Trovix was purchased by Monster, Jobfox was formed by ex-CareerBuilder CEO (anyone know how much $$ they have left after buying all those steak dinners?) and I am still sad about itzbig.

34: LinkUp: Easy job push to Facebook

As you know, we are always on the lookout for cool staffing tools. On Thursday, Electronic Recruiting Exchange had a good article about LinkUp, a cool (i.e. inexpensive and useful) tool that makes it easy for recruiters to publish their active jobs to their company Facebook page directly from their company career site. Check it out.

Last October, we presented at the HR-XML Summit, "How and when to get on the Facebook train" and our main point was that it does not cost very much to get on board and it's a good idea to get on the train now, as it is leaving the station.

LinkUp's Facebook App, "Current Jobs at Our Company" is currently $39/month and sounds like a great way to continue to build on your recruiting presence on Facebook. We'll definitely be watching this app and add it to our "to be considered" list for our Cool Tools 2010 article.

33: And staffing vendors give us a hard time....

And some of the vendors involved in the software selections we facilitate for our clients give US such a heard time for all of our questions :)

Source: Dilbert.com

And this is a good time to give a special thanks to Bond and Bullhorn for being so helpful - both companies do a spectacular job throughout the sales process.

32: Killer feature: Who knows who functionality

In my opinion the killer feature in executive search FO/ATS applications is who-knows-who functionality. We've added this question to our standard FO RFI and have found that staffing FO vendors don't offer this feature - at least not yet.

Successful executive recruiters rely heavily on referrals and capture a contact's network continuously. Executive recruiting software includes a simple feature which allows recruiters to enter the name and characteristics of the relationship. So, for example, the system has a simple way of capturing the fact that board members Sue and Joe golf together, used to work together, hate each other, etc.

Professional and social networking sites allow recruiters to view the network that contacts want you to see but it is impossible to characterize the relationship or to leverage the connections in a sophisticated way. That is, you can work you way to the person you want to know but you don't know the quality of the relationship, especially with open networkers.

Simple who-knows-who functionality allows recruiters to capture the portion of the network that matters to your staffing firm and to characterize the quality and type of the relationship. Some executive search software helps you visually see the links across your database so that you can find a warm, high quality path to contact them,  within your very own, honed database.

I don't know about you, but I think this feature would be a great addition to FO and ATS software as long as it is extremely easy to use.

31: Introducing Human Capital Supply Chains

At the 2009 SHRM Annual Conference in New Orleans (my new favorite city) we gave away nearly 500 reviewer’s copies of our book, Human Capital Supply Chains. I was a bit worried that the HR audience would not appreciate the concept of the book, but I was very pleasantly surprised by their overwhelming interest. Here’s what we shared with them:

Human Capital Supply Chains has three main themes. The first theme is about tying together your business planning, strategic workforce planning staffing and recruiting processes into a unified and cohesive business process.

The second theme discusses the methods and benefits of applying common manufacturing and distribution supply chain management principles to this end-to-end, human capital supply chain. The idea is to leverage 30 years of expertise developed by companies like Toyota, Wal-Mart and Dell. Total quality management, lean and strategic supplier relationships, when applied to our industry, can help us hire the right talent at the right time at the right location at the right price.

The third major theme of the book is around managing all types of human capital. While most companies focus on managing the cost of their full-time, permanent workforce we suggest that firms need to manage the cost of their flexible workforce at the same time. The flexible includes temporary workers, contractors, consultants, business services and outsourcing costs.  Both flexible and permanent workers make up a corporation’s workforce.  Surprisingly, most companies do not manage all worker types consistently; it is more common that worker types are managed out of a different pot of money and even a different organization, mostly likely procurement instead of HR.

Human Capital Supply Chains suggests corporations define their own human capital supply chain and manage their permanent and flexible workers as a single workforce.  Managing the process and workforce holistically and tying workforce planning tightly to business planning positions corporations to take cost out of the human capital supply chain while increasing workforce quality and productivity. 

Thanks to all of you who shared your interest in reading the finished book later on this year.

30: Time for job posting SEO

I recently submitted an article to SI Review magazine on the topic of job advertising. I find the subject fascinating since it seems that candidates seem to be using Google for their job search as much as they are using job boards to conduct their job search. It used to be that one would never think to kick-off a job search from Google but I guess we’ve all been Googlefied at this point.

Looking at Google’s keyword search volumes for the keyword jobs has the following results: 

The returned 150 job-related terms total ~200m+ searches per month.

When looking at Quantcast I see CareerBuilder.com gets about 12.9m unique visitors per month and Alexa tells me 6.4 page views per user, giving an estimated total monthly page hits of 82.56m. Monster numbers are slightly lower. Numbers for Indeed.com are 5.4m unique visitors, 6.23 pages per visit for 33.642m pages visited per month. Seems like those three sites total in the range of Google’s numbers.

Of course, these are all very rough numbers and there are a lot of flaws in my data and calculations, but it does seem to provide compelling evidence that it is now time to focus on job search traffic on web search engines.  You’ve probably spent some effort optimizing your corporate site -- now it’s time to apply those SEO techniques to improve your organic and paid positions in web search engine results for your individual job postings.