When designing your organization's online employment portal, how much effort was put into mazimizing the "Applicant's Experience"?  Certainly, the top priority when implementing online recruiting tools is to electronically capture  as much candidate data as possible and thus streamline internal processes. Because it's an employer's market right now, it's easy to overlook the convenience factor of the applicant. This sort of oversight may not hinder the quality of your candidate pools right now. But, eventually the tide will turn and the recruiting process will return to a more level playing field between the employer and candidate.  When (not if) this happens, those organizations with online application systems that aren't user friendly will be at a disadvantage.

So, why am I bringing this up?  Well, I've been comparing employment portals lately and have noticed that the online applicant process has become more and more complex. It's not too uncommon for it to take upwards of an hour just to complete an e-Application for a single position.  Currently,  many job seekers are unemployed and have ample time to engage in this process several times a day.  But when the job market picks back up again a greater percentage of quality candidates will come from the actively employed. That means they will have less time to spend hashing through long application processes and thus be more selective as to where they apply.  That's when employers will wish they had given more consideration to the quality of the applicant experience when designing their employment portal.

 Let's face it, HR tends to have a blind spot when it comes to thinking outside of its own internal silos and how they interface with external processes. Looking solely at the opportunity to electronically collect applicant data without also considering the quality of the user experience is an exercise in shortsightedness.  Remember, true process optimization means simplifying the process for both internal HR resources AND for applicants.

A few things to consider that might enhance the applicant experience:

1) Do how much detail is really needed on employment history dates? Is having the exact day-month-yr really necessary? Or, would the start and end year be sufficient?

2) How often does your employment process actually contact the candidate's previous supervisors? Would gathering contact information on just the most recent supervisor be satisfactory?

3) Is it really important to have the exact day/month that a degree was completed. Would the year completed be enough?

4) Does your online applicant process offer both a career summary and a cover letter section? Could you get by with just one or the other?

Most employment portal applications are highly configurable, offering maximum flexibility on these sorts of things. I'd welcome hearing your thoughts in general about the Applicant Experience and/or any additional ideas you might have to make it more user friendly.