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Overview
Firms drowning in irrelevant resumes, suffering from poor applicant quality or frustrated with the lack of insight gained from candidates during expensive interviews will definitely want to look closely at HRMC. Where most HRMS technologies automate manual processes, the Acclaim solution from HRMC uses artificial intelligence and a radically different approach to recruiting. The result is a solution that helps elevate the very best job seekers to the top. And, it does so while capturing deep insights into the candidate’s background – insights that are almost never visible from a resume.
The Business Problem
Many executives will tell you that the sourcing and recruiting process in their firm is broken -- badly broken. Companies often place advertisements looking for talent to fill key spots only to then be inundated with resumes that represent unqualified individuals. These worthless resumes must be processed by humans or systems to weed out the mountains of chaff. Increasing the frustration level are individuals who know how to “game” resume scoring systems. Their actions vault their resumes to rise to the top of the selection heap, meaning that more unqualified candidates will be reviewed by businesses while far more qualified individuals are never even seen. Technologies may be utilized to review and rank these resumes to identify the individuals best suited for the job. However, much of this matching occurs at the minimal job requirements level not at the ideal or optimal requirements criteria.
Once sourced, these resumes may be reviewed by a human being who will make additional value judgments as to which candidates may or may not be invited in for an expensive office visit. This screening is done based on the resume and rarely any other input. If a candidate has materially stretched the truth in their resume they will be unjustly rewarded with an interview opportunity. Likewise, a very capable individual will be bypassed because something in their resume did not shine as brightly as it did in another's resume. The problem is clearly the resume and the resume screening process but it actually goes much further.
Now that a screened list of resumes has been created, recruiters then begin the process of contacting the candidates. Unfortunately, the best candidates may be passive recruits (who may not have resumes and are never contacted) and they are gainfully employed. When the recruiter telephones them and doesn’t get an immediate answer, the recruiter skips the best people and moves on to lesser-qualified candidates. Why? Recruiters are measured by the number (not quality) of people brought in for interviews.
The dysfunctionality gets worse from here. Marginally qualified or unqualified candidates are brought in for job interviews. Too many executives use their scarce interviewing time to validate the items on the resume. Their time would have been better served had they asked more probing questions that provide insights into the individual’s character, learning processes and prior actions in tough business situations. The answers to these questions will prove the worthiness of the candidate for the job they will be expected to do as opposed to the activities they have described in their mostly irrelevant resume.
During interviews, managers and executives fall back on generic questions that tell them little about the candidate. The interviews rarely prove the appropriateness of one candidate versus another. Worse, they may just confirm the candidate’s ability to meet the minimum job requirements (the one’s used by the resume screening technology) and not identify the optimal candidate based on the best characteristics of the ideal candidate for the position.
This process is seriously flawed. Companies do not get access to the best and brightest. They interview the mediocre and do a poor job of it.
The business problem, quite simply, is that companies need solutions that:
The HRMC Difference
HRMC has approached this business problem in an interesting fashion. The best way to describe their approach is to walk you through the process that executives and applicants would use with the HRMC solution.
When a business needs to hire additional personnel, it typically utilizes some combination of job postings on websites, classified ads, referrals, their ATS (i.e., applicant tracking system) and other mechanisms to capture and collect resumes or referrals. When putting together the job listing, managers or HR professionals create a list of job requirements and candidate qualifications necessary to apply for the position.
At this stage, HRMC software and consultants define the ideal, not minimal, qualifications the very best individual for the job should possess. These qualifications are used to create very specific questions that will be posed interactively with potential job seekers. Some of the questions will be straightforward binary questions (e.g., “Have you ever managed a global project team?”). Should an individual answer in the affirmative, additional questions will be asked to allow the interviewee to elaborate on their experience. These responses are captured via telephone recordings. Interviewees have a finite amount of time (e.g., 90 seconds) to respond to these open-ended questions (e.g., “Describe a particularly challenging encounter you’ve had with a customer who would not pay their bill and explain how you’d handle that encounter differently today.”). Employers can even add streaming video components to their interview process. With this technology, they can show specific tools personnel will need to use or processes they must complete. In-depth questions can then be asked of the applicant to see how well they understand the job requirements. The technology that makes this possible is a combination of artificial intelligence, IVR (interactive voice response) and the Internet.
The HRMC software allows very large numbers of applicants to take a quick interactive interview that is focused on the most relevant and important behavioral and skill requirements of the job. Better still, the software keeps track of the applicant’s responses along these critical job requirements. Individuals who answer in the negative on some of these basic needs are immediately moved to the bottom of the applicant pool. Those who answer in the affirmative have their responses to these questions stored for replay with an appropriate executive. Operational or HR managers can listen to these responses at their leisure. When reviewing responses, an operational or HR manager can assess the veracity of an applicant's experience around these key skill requirements. The real advantage here is that numerous applicants can be quickly and inexpensively interviewed without using scarce and hard to schedule operational leader time. Should an applicant lack critical experience, the manager reviewing the responses can terminate the interview replay at that point and move on to the next applicant. Now, supervisors can conduct many more interviews in the same time as before but achieve superior business results (e.g., better quality applicants are being hired).
The effect of this style of recruiting can be profound. First of all, applicants do not need a resume to be evaluated initially. Second, business executives do not need to spend time sifting through hundreds of resumes when a better applicant scanning process can be utilized via HRMC. Third, job seekers are being asked highly relevant questions that are intended to find the very best candidates for the role and not just a warm body who knows how to play the game. Finally, the solution is respectful of everyone’s time – both the employer’s and the applicant’s.
HRMC Solutions
HRMC solutions are marketed under the Acclaim brand name. These products are used to source, screen, interview, assess, schedule and hire candidates. A critical component to the Acclaim solution set is the use of artificial intelligence technology. This technology interactively and in real time drives the most relevant possible interview experience with a candidate. Because these interviews occur via telephone and the Internet (all via applicant-to-machine interface), the software must correctly interpret responses, adjust the interview questions by relevance and avoid immaterial or irrelevant questions.
There are some other aspects to this product line worth noting. First of all, the software can also be used by businesses for internal succession planning purposes. Individuals can be quickly assessed as to the degree of fit they have for their current and future roles within the company. Likewise, this product can be of great value to companies that experience significant amounts of organic or inorganic growth.
Acclaim also possesses survey and other reporting tools to round out its solution set. All of the software is available on a software as a service (SaaS) basis.
Market Acceptance
We do not have sufficient information to render any opinion as to the marketplace’s acceptance of HRMC and its products. However, given the company’s longevity and number of interviews the software processes annually (approx. 3 million), we believe the company to possess a significant number of customers.
Target Customer
HRMC serves large, Fortune 500 accounts as well as midmarket clients. The company indicated they have specific solutions optimized for the way midmarket firms recruit and hire. When asked for examples of representative clients, HRMC indicated that confidentiality agreements preclude the disclosure of same.
We believe Acclaim will work well in organizations with the following characteristics: rapid change, high turnover or high-growth. Businesses with numerous local hiring locations (e.g., retail store chains) or businesses with large numbers of job prospects who do not utilize resumes (e.g., construction workers) are also solid candidates for this solution.
We also believe that HR organizations that are already functioning at high performing levels would benefit from this software. Why? These organizations have already wrung out all of the efficiency and effectiveness savings that were possible in the HRMS products they use today. To achieve further process improvements, these groups must take a more radical view of how they recruit and hire personnel – a view that embraces real reinvention or re-engineering of HR processes.
Who is HRMC?
HRMC is based in Tampa, Florida. The company is 25 years old and has approximately 15 employees.
HRMC states it is in the business of recruiting people not paper. Ron Selewach, CEO of HRMC, put a finer point on this when he told me that "the only resumes that are important are those of the finalists."
Prognosis
HRMC software is intellectually some of the most transformational and impactful HR technology we've seen lately. Sadly, market success does not always follow transformational products in the marketplace. We have seen profit optimization and other brilliant technologies fail to achieve significant market success. Why? These products require users to take too great a leap in changing their moribund and outdated processes. Nonetheless, we do not believe that history will or must repeat itself for this type of solution.
Businesses and the managers within these firms must do a better job of interviewing. Our own observations show an appalling immaturity in the way businesses interview candidates. If businesses use Acclaim just to improve the rigor, intensity and insight derived from interviews, then the software will have delivered tremendous value to its users.
We concur with HRMC’s leaders in their view of the broken and uneconomical sourcing and recruiting processes in use in businesses today. We believe that the overreliance on resumes and resume scoring systems is producing profound, unintended consequences to businesses that utilize these technologies. Furthermore, the dislocations these cause businesses, the US economy and workers are unforgivable. These gross inefficiencies must be addressed and innovative firms would do well to consider the more novel, nuanced and possibly superior approach utilized by HRMC.
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About the Author
Brian Sommer is the CEO of TechVentive, Inc. - a market-strategy and content firm. Brian closely follows what C-level executives think, feel and need. Brian also publishes a blog on the intersection of application software and professional services (http://blogs.zdnet.com/sommer/). He welcomes your thoughts and invites you to contact him at brian@vitalanalysis.com .