Wherever you look in the business world you see the rigid workflows of the past replaced by something that more closely resembles conversation. Business process has become smarter and your email inbox is central to your everyday to-do list. The best tools reflect this evolution.
There’s no reason recruiting should be different. It’s basically a conversation between a team and its future members. It’s no wonder that most companies start off recruiting using email because it’s the default tool for conversations online.
Resumes, application forms, interviews and evaluations are just ways that were invented to structure this conversation. Somewhere along the line too many people mistook the means for the purpose. And that wrong thinking has crept into the way recruiting tools were designed.
It’s hard to keep track of things over email and spreadsheets, so you move to some kind of recruiting software. It gets your information better organized but soon it has you spending more time updating ‘the system’ and complying with workflows than talking to candidates or your team.
Hiring software should be designed around conversations. It shouldn’t take process and discipline to be able to answer simple questions like “What is everyone up to?” or “Who do I need to respond to?”
Smart teams know that you can’t rely on workflows alone to tackle complex, collaborative tasks. Modern tools like Asana and Slack proved that fluid, conversational collaboration trumps rigid workflows. They also increase productivity.
Why should hiring be an exception? Its processes, like everything else in HR, are a step behind. The tools need to catch up with the way people get things done.
Introducing “Inbox”
This week we released a new feature that will help you rethink the way you handle your recruiting workflow. It’s called “Inbox” and it looks remarkably like an email inbox. That’s intentional.
Your inbox is your conversations, your collaboration and your to-do list. Messages where you are mentioned will land in your inbox, so you know what needs your attention. Unanswered emails from candidates are there, too, so you can keep up with the conversation. Reply to conversations on the spot, archive what’s done and keep the stuff you want to do later. If you link your Gmail account with Workable, it will even sync up what’s read, unread or archived between the two so you’ll never have to read the same thing twice.
If we’ve got it right (and we think we have) it will make hiring feel a lot like your email workflow. But with all the benefits of applicant tracking still wired beneath the surface: Everything about a candidate is collected in the same place; the right people have visibility; and the recruiting pipeline is tracked. You get a structured applicant tracking system, without having to sacrifice the conversational fluidity you’ve come to expect from the most effective business software.
The post Rethinking recruiting with the Inbox appeared first on Workable Blog.