VISION OF RECRUITGURU

8 Jan 2004

VISION OF RECRUITGURU

Despite a proliferation of jobsites on the internet during last 10 years, recruitment on the ground still remains more of an art than a science.

It is true that jobseekers can now

·     Post their resumes on jobsites

·     Conduct Job searches

·     Receive Job-alerts

·     Apply On-line

But there are thousands of jobsites. It is humanly impossible to daily visit even 5 jobsites. So, if anything, thousands, of jobsites, boating lakhs of job-openings, have made a jobseeker’s life for more miserable than ever before! Form an acute information-starvation  (of the newspaper era), a jobseeker now suffers from an abundance of information –overload (in the internet ara).

It is not a uch different situation for a Corporate employer. He too, can go to the world wide web, (jobsites) and

·     Post job-advts.

·     Conduct resume database searches

·     Receive candidate-alerts

·     Send –out interview-call emails.

His predicament is only many times worse than that of a jobseeker’s!

Whereas, in the good old newspaper days he used to get 50 resume against his advertisement, now he gets 500! And most of these are unstructured email resumes which are thoroughly “unsearchable”. Posting a job-advt on 5 jobsites simultaneously, only worsens the problem.

So, a recruitment manager too suffers from a surfeit of information!

Neither the jobseeker nor the recruitment manager realizes that mere information is not knowledge! A ton of information cannot substitute for an ounce of knowledge. What both need are Expert systems, which would shift & sieve tons of information and come-up with “answers” to the following questions:-

FOR THE RECUITMENT MANAGERS:-

For –and on behalf of the recruitment managers, the Expert system will arrive at following “decisions”.

1.  How to advertise? Where to advertise? When to advertise?

2.  Which/ how many applicants to call for interview?

3.  Where to call candidates for interview?

4.  When to call candidates for interview?

5.  What salary to be offered to selected candidates, without upsetting “internal apple-cart”?

6.  What “designation” to be offered to selected candidate?

7.  Who should be the interview-experts?

8.  Whom to consult for “antecedents”?

9.  What questions to ask? What tests to be administered?

FOR THE JOBSEEKERS

Acting as “Agent of a jobseeker,

The expert system will take following decisions or advice on:

1.  Which job advts are best “match” with his skills and therefore worth applying to?  

2.  Which companies are engaged in similar products/services as his current employer/

3.  In relation to peers/ co-professionals of same age/experience/education/designation etc, where does he “ stand” (percentile) in respect of annual salary? What salary/designation should be bargain for?

4.  Before appearing for an interview, what info/ data/statistics should be compile and study about the prospective employer? Where would he find such info/data/statics?

5.  How should he “customize his resume when applying to different companies?

6.  What are the “probabilities” of his getting shortlisted/selected against a given job-advt?

7.   Which companies could be in need for a person with his background-even though they may not have advertised such vacancies?

These are just a few of the questions to which, jobseekers and recruiters are desperately trying to find answers-and mostly failing. The reasons are as follows:

·     Massive database (corporate Profiles/Job-advts/resumes etc) are lying scattered all over internet. Some are structured but most are not.

·     These database are not easily accessible.

·     “Decision-rules” to convert these databases into “actionable knowledge” (with probabilities of success of each action configured  there advanced statistical analysis), do not exist. No systematic attempt has been reported anywhere in the world, to construct such “decision-rules” which mimic the “logic” used by the jobseekers’ and recruiters brains.

·     Then again, no human brain (either a jobseekers or a recruiters) can process terabytes of data using thousands of “decision-rules” to uncover/reveal relationship “patterns” amongst hundreds of “variables, in any reasonable period of time!

And the situation is getting worse by the day as business megatrends (see Annex: A) gather momentum. These have very real potential to overwhelm and paralyze human endeavors.

Fortunately for mankind, a parallel  set of megatrends are evolving in the area of Information Technology (see Annex: B), which hold the promise of coping with the business megatrends. These technologies are developing rapidly. The only limitation is mankind’s ability-and willingness-to exploit these technologies.

At Recruitguru, our vision is to develop and deploy Expert systems and provide a platform (in the form of www.recruitguru.com) where “Virtual agents” of millions of jobseekers will search-out/interact/negotiate with virtual agents of thousands of recruitment managers, to help their “owner-masters” reach mutually beneficial exchange of services & benefits.

Annex:A

Business Megatrends

·     Acceleration of services/knowledge based industries

·     Freer movement of business resources. 

1.  Finance

2.  Manpower

3.  Knowledge (Information/Databases)

·     Unprecedented creation of massive database on internet

·     E-commerce becoming a way of life

·     Higher productivity of resource-utilization

·     Much more competitive business environment

·     Much more out sourcing of non-core business processes, leaving management free to concentrate on development of core-competencies.

·     Information overload on unprecedented scale

·     Reduced business-travels as a result of video-conferencing.

·     Remote working from home

·     Free-lancing/manpower on tap

·     Instead of cross border movement of professionals, emergence of cross border movement of job (especially information/content based jobs)

·     More level-playing ground for developing countries under WTO.

Annex:B

·     Broadband Infrastructure

·     Ubiquitous coireless networks on all types of devices

·     Video –conferencing (real time collaboration Tools)

·     Video – conferencing (real time collaboration Tools)

·     Voice data Video

·     Storage-Area networks

·     Superfast computers

·     Nano-technology leading to pervasive computing

·     Merger of TV & computer

·     Wireless phones overtaking landline phones

·     AI & Neuralnet based Export systems to replace adhoc decision making in all walks of life.

Hemen Parekh