Vendor Selection & Technology

A corporate staffing department relies on a complex network of external providers for the various services that go into the hiring cycle: third-party search firms, temp agencies, job boards, ad agencies, and providers for background checking, assessment, and drug testing. Each time a service is used, key pieces of information must be conveyed to the provider, relating to the corporation’s requirements.

 

For example, to post to a job board the corporation has to communicate the job description, its post-by date, and contact information. To request a background check, the corporation has to communicate to the service provider the candidate’s name and Social Security number. In the case of background checks or assessments, the service provider has to convey the results for the candidate back to the corporation.

 

In the past, recruiters would interact with external providers of staffing services through a variety of different communication channels, including paper, faxes, phone calls and emails. The process was manually intensive, slow, and a huge administrative burden.

 

Many of these staffing service providers have moved onto the Web, relying on the ASP (application service provider) model to give clients access to the service. Using a standard Web browser to log on, corporate users may now interact with the staffing service provider’s systems, to enter data and view results. Moving an assessment service onto the Web also allows the candidate self-service access as well. Upon reaching a certain stage in the hiring process, the candidate may be invited to take a self-administered test using the system of an assessment firm. The results of the test are available in real-time to the recruiter, who accesses the system with a username and password.

 

While much has been done to Web-enable staffing services, corporations still encounter barriers to communication. Recruiters have to cut and paste information from an internal candidate database into the Web interface for the staffing service provider’s systems. The task remains highly manual, which means that it often gets pushed to a staffing administrative assistant. When results from a staffing service are returned to the corporation, the data typically is transferred in a plain text email or on a Web page. Again, manual intervention is required to ensure that the returning data gets linked to the particular requisition or candidate in question.

 

The results of an online assessment, for instance, must be stored in the corporation’s internal staffing databases in the record associated with the candidate taking the test. Typically, this happens by opening an email from the service provider that delivers the results of the assessment, reading the name of the candidate, finding the candidate’s record in the database, and manually typing in the assessment scores. A human operator has to be the manual bridge between two different systems. The situation becomes untenable as the volume increases, especially as the trend lately has been a reduction in staffing administrative support.

 

Corporate recruiters should have the administrative burden lifted so that they can do what they do best. A new protocol to address the data exchange requirements of the human capital management arena is gathering momentum. The HR-XML initiative is working towards an HR-specific vocabulary for the exchange of information between organizations in the human capital management supply chain. As the name implies, HR-XML is based on XML, a language used to create common information formats for transmitting data between applications and between organizations.

 

HR-XML is an open standard, which means that it is an industry blueprint available for all to use. As more companies adopt a given open standard, the easier it becomes for the industry to communicate as a whole, without the need for costly customized data interchanges. HR-XML will increase the efficiency of information exchange among various systems, organizations and service providers in the human capital management field, and remove the problem of having to negotiate and agree upon data interchange mechanisms on an ad-hoc basis.

 

The HR-XML initiative is working towards supporting many common Internet-based recruiting transactions. A project is underway to develop an XML standard for ordering assessments that support hiring, promotion, and other critical human capital management decisions. Presently, the protocol supports background check requests to third-party suppliers of background checking services. A wide variety of screenings are supported, including searches of criminal records, education, employment, military service, professional licenses, professional sanctions, and credit. Search results are returned to employers in a standard, reliable way.

 

The emphasis in human capital management is shifting towards viewing HR processes as part of a supply-chain, linked together electronically through Web-based applications (ASPs). Information, such as a background check, is a basic commodity in the staffing supply chain. The efficiency of the supply chain is increased as the efficiency of information flow is increased. The idea of improving a business process by increasing the efficiency of the flow information is nothing new. The digital integration of suppliers in the human capital management supply chain is. With HR-XML becoming widely adopted as the open, industry standard for data exchange, employers are in a position to reduce cycle time through real-time processing of information.