Web 2.0 hiring process
This is a prediction only, in the meantime the show must go on as it is - almost!
By 2008, employers will list their jobs for FREE on all job boards such as Monster, Totaljobs etc. Job boards will gather 'people details' (CV's, profiles etc) as a result of having these jobs and make then make money from the people details instead of listing jobs. They will of course find other ways to monetise their traffic but not for listing jobs!
The ATS will become more like a payroll system - only processing qualified candidates who are then classed as applicants. Integration with third party web services will become more critical, usability will simplify/improve, the systems will have smarter data matching, and set-up will be less complex, time-consuming and costly. The unit/monthly cost of the ATS will come down as the volume of people processed (qualified only) will drop by at 50% - 80% (in current terms) although the entire volume of hires will increase e.g. hourly paid, shop/warehouse staff etc which will maintain the financials for the ATS vendors.
There will be new Marketing Resourcers, who will be responsible for purely attracting, developing relationships with, nurturing and qualifying candidates, shortlisting/passing them through to the ATS/Resourcers once qualified. These people will use marketing techniques rather than traditional recruitment techniques, most likely from an online marketing background such as e-commerce or a networking type site.
Employers will buy tools such as Jobster, and others that are similar, that will help them distribute their job messages and actual jobs to multiple locations such as job boards, search engines, databases such as Google Base, blogs etc. These tools will provide the marketing/CRM functionality required. This is pretty much what Jobster already do today!
Business intelligence (BI) software will be added to the fray to keep track of all of the activities across the various systems used in the process.
The employer career site will become a mesh of web services that help people build a relationship with and understanding of the prospective employer before actually being shortlisted for a job in order to secure an initial interview.
It may not appear to be too radical (unless you are a job board!) but the key change will be where the employer sees value and spends their money. Online marketeers are critical to the success of future online businesses, and a career site will be treated in a similar manner. The catalogue and checkout elements of an e-commerce site do of course need to be robust, user friendly and reliable but without the right kind of traffic, they are pretty much redundant.
Why will it change? Because the job boards cannot/will not control the quality and focus on quantity - which is fine in principal. More and more people are moving online so volume will only increase. Web 2.0 is about user control so the services will come. Fail to react to consumer demand, fail to get the best people first!!
