The Experience of Employment Applications

I had the opportunity to consider an employment application from a perspective of user experience - and what I saw there was very disappointing.   Further conversation with the same individual (an HR recruiter at a firm I'll not name) uncovered a much deeper problem: the application-to-onboarding process for this firm was appalling, and I tend to doubt the situation is unique.  What's more, I suspect there is little motivation to address it, as firms do not seem to recognize the value of improving the candidate's experience.

Why is it important?

The perspective of the person who asked me to look over their form was that it is onerous for employment candidates to fill it out.   It's great that she was concerned about it, but it's going to be a tough sell within her company to obtain funding for process improvements that benefit someone else, particularly someone who isn't giving them revenue in the very same process. But in a broader sense, employees give a company all of its revenue - the equipment and systems do not operate themselves - and therefore getting the best employees is critical.   An onerous employment process effectively screens out good candidates.

It's tough to make this point in a down economy, in which many people are looking for work and are willing to jump through hoops to get a job, and I expect the perspective of employers is that they don't need to bother as a consequence. However, consider that highly qualified people are in great demand under any economic conditions, and do not perceive themselves as beggars asking for a handout, willing to supplicate themselves before a reluctant and disdainful benefactor.   Especially if they are well-connected through the social networks, chances are they get two or three inquiries from recruiters every week - and if they click-through to a lengthy application form that they must fill out before the employer will even deign to consider speaking to them, they will lose interest, figuring another opportunity will come along shortly.

I have heard the counterargument that a difficult application process weeds out people who "aren't really motivated to work for us" and dismiss that as hogwash by bureaucrats who wish to maintain the status quo and avoid putting in any additional effort to be more effective.   On the lowest level of menial employment, perhaps it's important for a candidate to prove they are motivated to do tedious and repetitive data-entry - but most firms seek people who are keen on efficiency and eliminating useless ritual, and such people generally despise being put through needless tedium.  In effect, an onerous application process weeds out good candidates rather than bad ones.

The Nature of the Problem

I won't go into the granular details - since it was "free advice" I didn't really pore over it and analyze each field in the form (and she had no budget to hire me as a consultant to do so), but what I saw there were problems well-know to customer experience professionals, so I provided some general remarks.

• Redundant Information - The form requires applicants to enter a great deal of information that is already on their resume.  There's software that will parse resumes (even aggregate data from social media profiles) and prefill forms.  Use it.
• Inappropriate Information - There was a giant red flag on this application form: it asked for the applicant's religious beliefs (denomination).   That's probably a leftover from the 1950s and needs to be gotten rid of.   Immediately.
• Needless Information - In many instances, there was no clear reason that specific information was being requested, and I had the strong sense that the company probably didn't even consider it when evaluating applicants.   The form could likely be reduced by 25-30% just by removing any questions that weren't necessary
• No Explanation - The form was completely devoid of any explanatory information that indicated why the firm was asking questions or what use they would make if the data.   This is a bit imperious ("You must tell us whatever we ask of you") but also likely resulted in people providing useless information because they had to guess what was needed.

There were other items in the list I provided her, but these were the most significant - and my sense is that these are very basic things that are woefully neglected.   Addressing them should be fairly simple, and will make a world of difference in making the task less onerous for applicants and the data more useful for the recruiting firm.

A much bigger problem

It occurred to me while reviewing this one form out of context that there is a much broader problem in employee relations - not only during the recruitment and onboarding processes, but also persisting for their entire term of employment at a firm.

The application form is not the only form that a candidate-cum-employee will encounter that asks for the same information - a new recruit is faced with an array of forms (taxes, benefits, and the like) that all request the same information.  And once they are hired, there is a lot of internal paperwork that likewise requests the same information.   Not to mention the array of internal forms to get set-up resources (a company-issued credit card, cell phone, remote network access, etc.) that ask for the same information.    And add to this the various forms that have to be filled out periodically as needed (a travel request, skills profile, e-learning courses, and the like) that once again ask for the very same information.

All in all, the problem evident on the application form is repeated for each form an employee has to fill out - and this is largely an IT problem because HR systems are often a succotash of various vendor products that don't share data with one another.  A great deal of human effort is required to make up for badly designed systems, and I strongly suspect that if a firm were to add up all the minutes that each employee spends providing redundant and/or unnecessary information would well fund the cost of integrating their data systems.

Winding Up

This has been rather a long meditation, and I have the sense that I have barely scratched the surface of "what's wrong with human resources" - I expect someone, and quite a few people, might make a career of cleaning up the problems for a firm that cared to have the problems cleaned up ... so let me stop here, as I think the point is well made that there is a great deal of opportunity to improve employees' morale and their perception of the quality of their employers by applying even the most basic principles of customer experience to the human resources department.