I´ve found myself on the hot seat several times in the past having to convince a group of senior executives on the merits of purchasing expensive HR technologies, in my case, usually a hiring management system. Anyone making the arguments now, in these times of fiscal restraint, has a tough job. To the leadership, e-recruitment may look and sound like a lot of other projects competing for their attention. The leadership might also think that because recruiting isn´t a current top priority they can afford to shelve the project until next year or indefinitely.
To those close to the project, the decision to replace a paper-based recruitment process that takes months to hire and relies far too heavily on expensive print advertising seems straight forward. To the decision makers who are being asked to come up with the initial and ongoing funding for the project, the decision is usually less obvious. From their point of view, they´re being asked for a lot of real money now in return for the promise of hard and soft dollar savings in the future - something they´ve heard all too often before.
The decision makers may not know everything about recruiting and talent management but they have a right to be cautious. Vendor selection and costs are big concerns but executives also key in on the change management aspects of the project that are fraught with risk. For example, how are we going to convert 5,000 hiring managers from paper requisitions to web-based templates quickly? How are recruiters going to learn how to mine "talent pools", search the Internet for candidates, "blast" jobs to various job boards, configure resume agents, track hiring metrics and build useful screening questionnaires?
The project team may be keen on the extended candidate reach the new system will provide and the promise of higher quality candidates. But this might actually scare the decision-makers who, in this economy, can post a job for a few days in the newspapers and receive more responses than they can handle. The fact that automated screening tools can take care of the 50%-250% increase in applications that e-recruitment often generates might not satisfy them. How can we rely on a computer to reject half or more of our applicants, aren´t there going to be serious legal and public relations implications? What will the union say machines screening internal applicants?
The decision-makers are concerned about the extra load the system will place on IT personnel who are already overtaxed in upgrading the HRMS that was purchased the last time corporate HR pitched a technology project. The explanation that there will be no extra burden on the IT department because e-recruitment is to be outsourced to an Application Service Provider (ASP) only shifts their concerns to issues of data security, vendor reliability and other risks.
The project team might have spent months gathering a body of research and expert opinion on e-recruitment best practices and vendor offerings. It might have a clear mandate from recruiters and HR managers across the organization that e-recruitment is a top priority, and it might have a solid plan for vendor selection, change management and process re-engineering. However, the project and all the work to date is at risk unless the executive committee can be convinced to fund it. It is the kind of pressure that might fluster even the most experienced presenter, resulting in an unfortunate exchange that might go something like this: (carrying on from the part about outsourcing the e-recruitment technology):
Project Manager (PM): "... uh yes, our research indicates that some of the largest companies in the country are choosing ASPs for hiring management solutions ..."
CEO: "Who have you shortlisted"?
PM: "Five of the top ASP e-recruitment vendors, RecruitSoft, Hire.com, BrassRing ..."
CEO: "You plan to spend a million dollars with Brass what"?!
CFO: "I got a call from our ERP HRMS supplier last week, they told me we already own their e-recruit module, it´s free so why aren´t we using that"?
PM: "It´s not really free ... and besides, we did the research and conducted an RFI. We concluded that we need a best-of-breed solution, the ERP doesn´t have everything to meet our requirements".
CFO: "Not strong enough? They told me that more than 2,000 big companies have their recruiting software, if it´s good enough for them why isn´t it good enough for us"?
PM: "... uh, yes but the only reason 2,000 companies have it is because they got it free ..."
CFO: "... you just said it isn´t free". (others nodding agreement)
PM: "... umm, I mean parts of it are free but to make it work you need to buy other components .. and like I was saying, their system doesn´t have as many advanced features as the ones we´re looking at ..."
CEO: "Well, at least I´ve heard of them".
CIO: "Yeah, and the rest of our HR software is licenced from them. We have a strong relationship, our IT team is certified in using their code and all their software is integrated. Can these other guys integrate with our ERP"?
PM: "Yes ... sort of, the ones we´re looking at say they can integrate seamlessly ... I have some case studies here ..."
CIO: " ...nothing really integrates seamlessly, all software vendors say that and then there are problems ... especially if we´re looking at an ASP, I see another headache here and I´m not even convinced we need this e-recruitment stuff".
Feeling admonished, the PM turns to his research that proves everyone else has already implemented e-recruitment tools. Look he says: "iLogos did a big survey this year and 94% of the Fortune 500 has a corporate career site and more than 90% of them have hiring management systems".
CEO: "i-What? Who are they"?
PM: "Well they´ve been around since at least 1999. They survey the Fortune 500, they´re owned by RecruitSoft and ..."
CEO: "You mean they´re owned by one of the companies you just told us you were considering for the e-recruit system"?
PM: "Well yes (voice trailing off) but they say they´re independent (starting to perspire) besides other research firms say the same thing".
The PM brings out his heavy artillery, META, Gartner, Aberdeen, CLC and other research that "proves" the ROI in e-recruitment. "Look" he says, pointing to some graphs and charts he developed, "we´ll save $2 million right off the bat by reducing print advertising and driving more traffic to our corporate career site. We´ll also save at least $5 million in soft costs by reducing time to hire by 40% and about $50 million in reducing the costs of unfilled positions".
The PM surveys the room triumphantly, people seem to appreciate his projections, maybe the tide is turning. But then it comes:
COO: "In the research you did, what percentage of people actually find their jobs on-line"?
PM: "Well ... a lot of people search the Internet for jobs, it´s the number one activity from work (ooops!) ... uh, I mean it´s one of the most popular things people do on the internet after ... well, never mind".
COO: "But how many people actually get their jobs from the Internet"?
"Only about 6%", says the CIO, "I read it in a Dunn & Bradstreet survey a few months ago I think".
COO: "If it´s so great, how come nobody´s getting their job from internet postings"?
At this point the PMs face is red and he´s tugging at his collar. It´s too late to get into the brilliant strategy discussion he had planned, about how the project will transform the company into a "talent management organization" and let it hit the coming talent crisis well prepared, ahead of the competition.
Instead he´s managed to let himself be dragged into the muck of details. He should cut his losses, but instead he ventures:
"well ... in order to be competitive, we must learn to manage talent, we have to treat talent as our number one resource ... uhm ... it´s really important for retention (fumbling now) and we have to build talent pools of pre-qualified people that are interested in working in our company."
He´s reaching now, but they´re quiet. He´s encouraged, maybe he´s getting through. (more likely they´re just giving him rope, curious at what he´ll say next). Foolishly, he presses on:
"We can align corporate goals with workforce planning to gain competitive advantage and prepare for the next ´War For Talent´".
He furiously ruffles through his briefcase to find a copy of McKinsey´s book. Finding it, he takes a desperate chance, he holds it up.
"Here´s a book that McKinsey Consulting wrote on an actual War for talent ... McKinsey and the Harvard Business School Press no less!" (he prays that no one has read it, after all these aren´t HR people).
COO: "Yeah, I looked at that, someone sent me a free copy last year, not sure why. Anyway, they went on and on about how great a job Enron was doing. I stopped reading it at that point, what else does it say?"
The PM puts the book down. The executive committee doesn´t meet for another three months and he´s just wasted his 20 minutes. Yesterday the plan was to seek approval immediately and press ahead with the project, now he´s lost. He thanks the group and mumbles something about sending around some answers to the questions raised with additional supporting material.
The scenario above is definitely an exaggeration, but HR has to put itself in the shoes of senior executives in order to address their concerns more clearly. HR wants the best solutions and can appreciate subtle differences in functionality that might appear trivial to lay persons. HR strategists are "up" on the trends, the labor force demographics, pending talent shortages and the need for workforce planning - most executives aren´t but they can quickly understand the importance if the argument is put to them concisely in terms that are important to them. The key is in demonstrating a solid business case. Clear ROI projections and a well articulated change management strategy are important elements of the pitch. Forget about the vendor selection specifics unless asked and definitely don´t parrot analyst predictions and trendy jargon.
I´ve found myself on the hot seat several times in the past having to convince a group of senior executives on the merits of purchasing expensive HR technologies, in my case, usually a hiring management system. Anyone making the arguments now, in these times of fiscal restraint, has a tough job. To the leadership, e-recruitment may look and sound like a lot of other projects competing for their attention. The leadership might also think that because recruiting isn´t a current top priority they can afford to shelve the project until next year or indefinitely.
To those close to the project, the decision to replace a paper-based recruitment process that takes months to hire and relies far too heavily on expensive print advertising seems straight forward. To the decision makers who are being asked to come up with the initial and ongoing funding for the project, the decision is usually less obvious. From their point of view, they´re being asked for a lot of real money now in return for the promise of hard and soft dollar savings in the future - something they´ve heard all too often before.
The decision makers may not know everything about recruiting and talent management but they have a right to be cautious. Vendor selection and costs are big concerns but executives also key in on the change management aspects of the project that are fraught with risk. For example, how are we going to convert 5,000 hiring managers from paper requisitions to web-based templates quickly? How are recruiters going to learn how to mine "talent pools", search the Internet for candidates, "blast" jobs to various job boards, configure resume agents, track hiring metrics and build useful screening questionnaires?
The project team may be keen on the extended candidate reach the new system will provide and the promise of higher quality candidates. But this might actually scare the decision-makers who, in this economy, can post a job for a few days in the newspapers and receive more responses than they can handle. The fact that automated screening tools can take care of the 50%-250% increase in applications that e-recruitment often generates might not satisfy them. How can we rely on a computer to reject half or more of our applicants, aren´t there going to be serious legal and public relations implications? What will the union say machines screening internal applicants?
The decision-makers are concerned about the extra load the system will place on IT personnel who are already overtaxed in upgrading the HRMS that was purchased the last time corporate HR pitched a technology project. The explanation that there will be no extra burden on the IT department because e-recruitment is to be outsourced to an Application Service Provider (ASP) only shifts their concerns to issues of data security, vendor reliability and other risks.
The project team might have spent months gathering a body of research and expert opinion on e-recruitment best practices and vendor offerings. It might have a clear mandate from recruiters and HR managers across the organization that e-recruitment is a top priority, and it might have a solid plan for vendor selection, change management and process re-engineering. However, the project and all the work to date is at risk unless the executive committee can be convinced to fund it. It is the kind of pressure that might fluster even the most experienced presenter, resulting in an unfortunate exchange that might go something like this: (carrying on from the part about outsourcing the e-recruitment technology):
Project Manager (PM): "... uh yes, our research indicates that some of the largest companies in the country are choosing ASPs for hiring management solutions ..."
CEO: "Who have you shortlisted"?
PM: "Five of the top ASP e-recruitment vendors, RecruitSoft, Hire.com, BrassRing ..."
CEO: "You plan to spend a million dollars with Brass what"?!
CFO: "I got a call from our ERP HRMS supplier last week, they told me we already own their e-recruit module, it´s free so why aren´t we using that"?
PM: "It´s not really free ... and besides, we did the research and conducted an RFI. We concluded that we need a best-of-breed solution, the ERP doesn´t have everything to meet our requirements".
CFO: "Not strong enough? They told me that more than 2,000 big companies have their recruiting software, if it´s good enough for them why isn´t it good enough for us"?
PM: "... uh, yes but the only reason 2,000 companies have it is because they got it free ..."
CFO: "... you just said it isn´t free". (others nodding agreement)
PM: "... umm, I mean parts of it are free but to make it work you need to buy other components .. and like I was saying, their system doesn´t have as many advanced features as the ones we´re looking at ..."
CEO: "Well, at least I´ve heard of them".
CIO: "Yeah, and the rest of our HR software is licenced from them. We have a strong relationship, our IT team is certified in using their code and all their software is integrated. Can these other guys integrate with our ERP"?
PM: "Yes ... sort of, the ones we´re looking at say they can integrate seamlessly ... I have some case studies here ..."
CIO: " ...nothing really integrates seamlessly, all software vendors say that and then there are problems ... especially if we´re looking at an ASP, I see another headache here and I´m not even convinced we need this e-recruitment stuff".
Feeling admonished, the PM turns to his research that proves everyone else has already implemented e-recruitment tools. Look he says: "iLogos did a big survey this year and 94% of the Fortune 500 has a corporate career site and more than 90% of them have hiring management systems".
CEO: "i-What? Who are they"?
PM: "Well they´ve been around since at least 1999. They survey the Fortune 500, they´re owned by RecruitSoft and ..."
CEO: "You mean they´re owned by one of the companies you just told us you were considering for the e-recruit system"?
PM: "Well yes (voice trailing off) but they say they´re independent (starting to perspire) besides other research firms say the same thing".
The PM brings out his heavy artillery, META, Gartner, Aberdeen, CLC and other research that "proves" the ROI in e-recruitment. "Look" he says, pointing to some graphs and charts he developed, "we´ll save $2 million right off the bat by reducing print advertising and driving more traffic to our corporate career site. We´ll also save at least $5 million in soft costs by reducing time to hire by 40% and about $50 million in reducing the costs of unfilled positions".
The PM surveys the room triumphantly, people seem to appreciate his projections, maybe the tide is turning. But then it comes:
COO: "In the research you did, what percentage of people actually find their jobs on-line"?
PM: "Well ... a lot of people search the Internet for jobs, it´s the number one activity from work (ooops!) ... uh, I mean it´s one of the most popular things people do on the internet after ... well, never mind".
COO: "But how many people actually get their jobs from the Internet"?
"Only about 6%", says the CIO, "I read it in a Dunn & Bradstreet survey a few months ago I think".
COO: "If it´s so great, how come nobody´s getting their job from internet postings"?
At this point the PMs face is red and he´s tugging at his collar. It´s too late to get into the brilliant strategy discussion he had planned, about how the project will transform the company into a "talent management organization" and let it hit the coming talent crisis well prepared, ahead of the competition.
Instead he´s managed to let himself be dragged into the muck of details. He should cut his losses, but instead he ventures:
"well ... in order to be competitive, we must learn to manage talent, we have to treat talent as our number one resource ... uhm ... it´s really important for retention (fumbling now) and we have to build talent pools of pre-qualified people that are interested in working in our company."
He´s reaching now, but they´re quiet. He´s encouraged, maybe he´s getting through. (more likely they´re just giving him rope, curious at what he´ll say next). Foolishly, he presses on:
"We can align corporate goals with workforce planning to gain competitive advantage and prepare for the next ´War For Talent´".
He furiously ruffles through his briefcase to find a copy of McKinsey´s book. Finding it, he takes a desperate chance, he holds it up.
"Here´s a book that McKinsey Consulting wrote on an actual War for talent ... McKinsey and the Harvard Business School Press no less!" (he prays that no one has read it, after all these aren´t HR people).
COO: "Yeah, I looked at that, someone sent me a free copy last year, not sure why. Anyway, they went on and on about how great a job Enron was doing. I stopped reading it at that point, what else does it say?"
The PM puts the book down. The executive committee doesn´t meet for another three months and he´s just wasted his 20 minutes. Yesterday the plan was to seek approval immediately and press ahead with the project, now he´s lost. He thanks the group and mumbles something about sending around some answers to the questions raised with additional supporting material.
The scenario above is definitely an exaggeration, but HR has to put itself in the shoes of senior executives in order to address their concerns more clearly. HR wants the best solutions and can appreciate subtle differences in functionality that might appear trivial to lay persons. HR strategists are "up" on the trends, the labor force demographics, pending talent shortages and the need for workforce planning - most executives aren´t but they can quickly understand the importance if the argument is put to them concisely in terms that are important to them. The key is in demonstrating a solid business case. Clear ROI projections and a well articulated change management strategy are important elements of the pitch. Forget about the vendor selection specifics unless asked and definitely don´t parrot analyst predictions and trendy jargon.