Talent Management Processes

Opportunity Cost Savings from Careers Website Best Practices

by Taleo Research

A quality staffing process should be accomplished quickly, efficiently and for the lowest cost. Many corporations have turned to the corporate Careers website as the platform for streamlined candidate-facing interactions in the staffing process. As reported in the Taleo Research study Value Creation Through Corporate Careers Websites, 92 percent of Fortune 500 companies have a corporate Careers website¹. Yet, the mere adoption of a Careers site by a large corporation does not necessarily provide optimal return. Specific Careers site features and functionality create an efficient and effective process for both the site visitor – the candidate – and the corporation. In particular, a corporation may realize opportunity cost savings and value creation due to a faster and higher quality recruiting process, with certain Careers website best practices implemented.

Careers site practices that streamline the recruiting and talent deployment processes and decrease the length of the hiring cycle reduce the opportunity cost of an open position and directly effect the corporate bottom-line. These practices include:

• Automated Online Pre-screening Tools: 9.5 percent adoption by Fortune 500 companies; 104 percent year-over-year growth rate
  
  Though this best practice is still in the early stages of adoption, annual rates of growth should remain high as Fortune 500 companies recognize the value of online pre-screening in counterbalancing the increased volume of responses made possible by online recruiting in a changing economy. With the implementation of pre-screening tools, short-list creation activities in the recruiting process are streamlined, and the opportunity cost of an open position is diminished.
  
• Job Agent: 22 percent adoption by Fortune 500 companies; 73 percent year-over-year growth rate
  
  Automating communications with pre-qualified candidates lowers overall sourcing costs and increases the available flow of talent for an organization. With Job Agent functionality implemented, targeting and communicating with qualified candidates takes place at an accelerated pace, which results in a faster time-to-hire. By automating and digitizing communications with candidates, Job Agent technology saves the corporation revenue potentially lost through decreased productivity brought about by vacant positions.
  
• Online Response Only: 42 percent adoption by Fortune 500 companies; 24 percent year-over-year
  growth rate
  
  The goal of electronic recruiting is to transform the recruiting process into a paperless business process. The Internet represents a revolution in recruiting not so much because it is the single largest source of candidates ever, but because the information stream coming from that source has the potential to be put into a uniform electronic format. Digital formatting of candidate information creates greater efficiencies throughout the staffing management process. Making the online channel the only way to express interest in a job position posted to the Careers website increases the speed of the hiring process. In so doing, the Online Response Only best practice reduces the opportunity costs of unfilled positions by eliminating the wait for candidate data to return from a resume scanning process.

The implementation of these best practices requires robust systems, with a centralized candidate relationship database at its core. Gathering digitized candidate information in a structured format drives a quality process that is streamlined and scalable across a large enterprise.

Opportunity Cost Savings

Corporate staffing department management is increasingly recognizing the benefits from optimizing the recruiting process through the corporate Careers site. However, the corporate Careers website is only one component of a broader corporate staffing process. Yet the Careers site is a very public reflection on the corporation, and requires an allocation of corporate resources of labor and budget. While corporate staffing departments are undergoing increased scrutiny and process re-engineering, executive management is simultaneously realizing the impact that external recruiting and internal talent deployment and redeployment practices have on corporate goals. This is especially appreciable with revenue-generating roles such as sales positions. Opportunity cost savings may be easily assessed by calculating the cost to the corporation of an unfilled position over time. Careers site best practices can provide savings and create value by contributing to an effective process, which efficiently provides quality talent to the corporation.

¹Value Creation Through Corporate Careers Websites. iLogos Research, 2003. Available at www.taleo.com.