Does anyone else remember when the “Help Wanted” section of the local newspaper was the place to go to find a job? We have certainly come a long way from the old school general resume and application, and necessarily so. The tools and processes have evolved at breakneck speed.
Now, here we are with a record number of open jobs during what is considered a post-pandemic recovery. Most hiring managers would agree that it’s still hard to find candidates even though there are so many people looking. Some would even say that in the current job market, there is a war for the right talent.
Yes, recruiting departments have grown, but they also seem to struggle with the sheer number of applicants and pairing them with hiring managers fast enough becomes a hurdle for businesses preparing to grow. The two main problems are:
1. The time it takes to pair applicants with hiring managers.
The faster that an applicant can be evaluated, the faster the hiring manager can proceed to interviewing, and then make an offer. It happens too often that the right applicant for the current opening has accepted a job elsewhere before the hiring manager had a chance to interview them.
2. The need to increase the quality of the hires.
Hiring managers need basic skills first, then transferrable skills, capability, and perhaps also personality. Though there certainly are some jobs where personality matters, when a recruiter and hiring manager are rushing through the process, personality can get the offer when the better skilled, more capable person should have. The right hire means that the employee will stay longer and is more worth the onboarding and training efforts.
Time Saving Automation Shifts the Focus to the Interview
Flexso, a leading Belgium-based service provider founded in 2004, partnered with TechWolf to create an automated resume-matching solution. It combines Flexso’s Resume Matching cockpit interface and TechWolf’s human resources AI Skill Engine that reduces the time spent reviewing resumes for SAP SuccessFactors Human Experience Management (HXM) customers. The screening, analysis, and matching is automated, empowers recruiters to focus instead on connecting, interviewing, and the hiring process.
The SaaS (software-as-a-service) solution uses data-driven competence matching between the applicant’s resume and the open position that decreases the time and cost to match long-term, quality new hires to jobs.
Minimizing Bias Matters
An additional benefit of resume-derived competencies is minimizing human bias. A data-driven automated experience shifts the focus away from impressions on paper and focuses more on the skills.
Let’s use me as an example. I am a native Californian of South Asian descent. And, I personally received advice to Americanize my own name to increase my chances of being interviewed. Why? Because my name can be difficult to pronounce – and that alone can potentially foster subconscious bias on the part of the interviewer.
Automated resume matching focuses on applicant’s skills against the open position and removes subconscious biases. My name, whether difficult to pronounce or not, would be inconsequential in this mix.
What About Applicants?
Through Flexso’s automated resume matching solution, all companies using SuccessFactors have the ability to match the job description with the entire talent pool in SuccessFactors, allowing the company to refine the description before posting.
And, applicants have the ability to find all potential openings their resume matches at that company. Applicants have an optional Job Matching chatbot to search open vacancies, and using this tool, applicants could potentially better target their resume to the open positions they would like to apply for.
When automated tools are used to review resumes, it makes sense that applicants would also have an opportunity to adapt to the automation, giving them the best chance forward in the process.
As a next step, the same matching principles will be applied for internal employees, making it a true accelerator for internal growth and mobility.
SuccessFactors customers can use Flexso’s interface – the Resume Matching cockpit – that integrates TechWolf’s AI Skill Engine to future-proof the customer’s workforce. The system was built according to the guidelines for Responsible AI in Europe and has been tested. As with any technology, there are extra benefits from using it:
- Reducing turnover: Data-/resume-driven competency matching against the opening removes initial bias and ensures that basic requirements are present in a potential hire; thereby, increasing the chances of hiring the right applicant the first time.
- Shifting the focus of recruiting: The recruiting department saves time and effort normally spent manually reviewing resumes , and instead can focus on building relationships.
- Reducing cost: The automation reduces time-to-hire and reduces turnover, which has a combined effect of cost savings/increased return on investment in hiring.
It’s hard to believe we really ever found jobs from the “Help Wanted” section of the newspaper. It’s amazing how far automation and AI have brought us.
Source: Forbes
