Recruitment Management Systems – friend or foe?

PRLog (Press Release) – Jul 04, 2007 – E-recruitment systems essentially harness technology with best practice to achieve positive outcomes for candidates and clients alike.

Indeed, for a company to not have an online application facility in the 21st century, supported by a robust recruitment management system (RMS), is a bit like a music-loving teenager being without an ipod – those who do have them wonder how the world coped before they were invented!

Most Recruitment systems provide online applications, integrated email/SMS, scored assessment, calendar bookings, agency management, searchable databases etc.  In that sense there is plenty of choice – but when using a system, you should make sure that the technological tail does not start to wag the corporate dog.  Good recruitment systems are surprisingly complex pieces of software, but this complexity is not about front end use, it’s about the need to ensure total flexibility is built into the system.  In other words, you should have the ability to change the layout and process from department to department and from campaign to campaign.  The process that is right for recruiting, say, telesales staff, is unlikely to be the same for recruiting senior managers – and the process for internal applications should be different to external.  So, if your current provider takes a sharp intake of breath when you want to change the application form, or if they walk away to put together a costed proposal when you only want to generate new reports from the system, then the alarm bells should be ringing.

True e-recruitment systems, that allow clients to capture candidates, assess effectively, communicate with in a timely fashion and report on meaningfully, are very easily deployed and should be live within no more than six weeks of agreeing what you want.  If you are looking at systems that form part of a broader Enterprise software package, then you may have to wait a few months and be prepared to have deep pockets.  I am not here to critique the enterprise systems that have recruitment modules, but in my experience (as an HR professional, a recruiter and an Recruitment Management System specialist) then most resourcing teams do not want, or need, a highly complex system that takes an age to deploy and may not be particularly user friendly – or even fit for purpose.  Indeed, it is often a recipe for white elephants.  Instead they need something that is intuitive, practical, highly flexible and well supported.  

They also want value for money.  A good, very comprehensive system should cost between £25,000 - £40-000 all inclusive (regardless of numbers of jobs, users, applicants etc).  If you are paying much more than that, then perhaps you are not achieving the return on investment that you could be.

So, if you want to get the most out of talent management and on-line recruiting, don’t be afraid to deploy the technology as it will certainly enhance your performance – just don’t pay the earth for it and make sure it does what it says on the tin!