It is the first business day of 2010 (pronounced twenty-ten FYI).  There are still no flying cars or teleportation devices.  I still have to type this blog out and can’t just think it.  No cancer shot has been discovered so the likelihood of I Am Legend actually happening next year is unlikely.  However, we are still in a recession that I thought we were buying ourselves out of last year and there is still historically high unemployment rates.  One thing that has also stuck around into the new year is the A&E TV show Hoarders and over the last week I caught up on the new season of Hoarders.

Hoarders was as gross and disturbing as it normally is. If you don’t watch it – they basically go in and clean up homes of people that hoard – most of them are old, crazy, cat ladies.  It follows their families that have ignored or enabled it for so long that the hoarder has lost their children, pets or their sense of reality.  On one of the episodes I watched a they were cleaning out a woman’s house who seemed to have 2, 3, 4, or even 10 of the exact same thing laying around and they found a cat.  A dead cat.  Then another.  2 dead cats.  In her house.  She didn’t know she ever had a cat.  As I was watching that, I couldn’t help but think about what state of chaos you have to be in to not realize you have someone else’s dead cats in your living room.

But in reality, it’s what most companies (and recruiters) do every day with their applicant tracking system.  For the most part, candidates are just dead cats in the living room of corporate software.

Many hoarders problems aren’t necessarily that they keep so much stuff – its that they don’t know what they have so they spend crazy amounts of money to acquire more of the exact same.  Then they fail to organize and keep track of it properly so they can actually use it effectively.  In the same light, Recruiting problems are not caused by the number of resumes they get it –  they are caused by software issues and  poor process decisions that they typically use.

1.  Software Issues – Many (even well known) Applicant Tracking Systems don’t have solid search functionality.  The ones that do, often make it cumbersome and not easy to work with. There aren’t easy ways to track/tag, manage and interact with candidates that aren’t attached to a particular requisition.  It isn’t a new issue, its been beat to a pulp in many a blog postings already in 2009 and it is something that a few of the vendors are in the process of correcting.

2.  Process Issues – This could (and IMO does) tie closely into #1 – but most companies don’t make searching their own database a priority.  When they need a candidate – the first instinct is to post the position and see what comes in.  The first step should be to stop, take a look around them and see what they already have.  That candiate in the database may still be alive and kicking and wanting to come work for you, but not actively searching for opportunities.

The high unemployment rates are creating an overwhelming volume of  candidates coming into ATS’s.  Candidates are coming in, sometimes totally unnoticed, and are hiding under the couch like that cat did. Sitting, Waiting, Hoping to be found. Unfortunately, time consuming search functions and poor results stop many of us from from even looking.  Like the hoarders, the recruiters are preoccupied with other priorities and companies software is so packed full of all of these resumes and people that don’t work for them right now, but may in the future (Common quote on the show Hoarders, BTW) that the one they may really want – may not ever be found.  And the candidate disappears under the mess of other, less qualified candidates because they were lost in the database.

So, as we move forward to our flying cars and teleportation that I was sure would be here by now, lets at least stop treating resumes like the dead cat under the couch we forgot about.

When I was a little kid, I dreamed of climbing the corporate ladder in my pinstripe suit and stiletto heels.  I wanted nothing more than to be toughest, no nonsense attorney in a top law firm and live in a high rise apartment in Manhattan with my CEO husband and our glamorous life of jet setting weekends to Europe and dinner parties with the other fabulous people.

Well, at least that is who I wanted to play on TV.  You see, I started studying theater and performance arts when I was 4 and auditioned for my first role in Annie at 5.  I spent the next decade and a half in a variety of classes, training programs and live performances from one act to television to full theater productions.  Like Rachel from Glee sets her sites on an grammy – mine was set on an Oscar.  Or at least an Emmy – (but not the daytime one)

In college I was a theater major.  Until I met a recruiter toward the end of my 1st semester who laughed at me and then shared his passion for this industry.  I quickly changed it to Public Speaking with a business minor – it was the closest I could get to a business major and still be allowed to participate in the theater program.  I spent the next 4 years carefully balancing my two lives – the liberal arts side made up of  innovation and philosophy, Shakespearean theater productions, hosting a tv show and open thought along with the business school side (or as we referred to them as “the others”) which was comprised of suits and SHRM meetings and case studies and mock interviews and alcohol free “business” fraternities.

It was like the melding of two worlds that just didn’t belong and it was somewhere mixed in with all that mess around my 3rd ‘business’ internship that I realized – I will never even try for my big break break and I should utilize what i have learned through all of that to kick some serious a$$ in the corporate world.  This is the role I was meant to play.

Our industry is made up of a lot of people with some really varied backgrounds and experience.  We are full of innovative ideas and people that want to make a change.  We are also filled with a lot of rules and regulations – process and best practices.  We are a group of people that question everything and nothing at the same same time.

Imagine what you would do if you could wipe away the rules and processes and best practices and just create.  Imagine if you could just do what your passion is and have it meld with your career.  Imagine if you were asked to redesign whatever it is you want and you had no lines, no boundaries, no budget – just innovation.  What would you do?  How would you do it?  Why aren’t you doing it already?

I admit it – I like a little 50 – especially when I am working out.  There is something about his songs that make me feel like I can run a little longer,  lift a little harder and feel a little gangsta.  I also admit that it is also only because of 50 I have any Justin Timberlake on my Iphone (which I recently learned is odd not to have via twitter).   Anyway, beyond the soooo NSFW lyrics of the song – Ayo, Technology is “I’m Tired of Using Technology” and I  think a lot of us can relate.  Personally, it feels like I am never disconnected – between my 4 email accounts, im, 3 twitter profiles, linkedin, the blog, facebook, text messaging, voice mail and phone calls – I am rarely just experiencing down time anymore.

And truth be told, I do feel like the work never ends.  The IM sessions until midnight, the email’s at 3 am because I thought of a great idea in my sleep – I bring it on myself.  I am not really tired of using Technology – just bad technology that makes things harder than they need to be.

This past month I have been working on marketing strategy for new product lines, reviewing partnership requests (and doing demo’s) of a number of other peoples solutions, all while working on new product development and improvement with our own technology team.  Needless to say, technology has been on my mind.  Unfortunately, I have to admit that for so many new HR Technology vendors that I am seeing demos for – they have forgot about the users behind the product.   Demo after demo I have done had a great user interface for 1 of the key stakeholders – but horrible ones for the others.  It is no wonder that twitter is crazy with people complaining about their ATS’s (umm..big guys – you should really be paying better attention to your clients and what is going on via twitter….btw) and how unfriendly the user interface is or the complaints from the managers, etc.  I had to sit through a complaintfest (A nice term for what it really was) during a late night poker game after the UFC fight Saturday night from a number of managers and end users of a certain performance management company.  The ‘solution’ had been forced down the throats of users at 3 different companies in the Chicago area over the last 12 months and all of them had the same opinion –  there “has to be something in it for HR, because we don’t see the value – it’s just making life more difficult”   I sat slightly smugly and quiet glad it wasn’t my product they were talking about.  :-)

So – I’m not really tired of using technology – just crappy stuff that makes my life harder.   (Umm…iPhone that won’t send mail from all of my email addresses half the time) Vendors listen up – remember that behind all of the technology are people that acutally use the solution and need the solution to work for them.  You should be designing for the Candidate, the Recruiter, the Hiring Manager, the employee, the retiree and who ever else may need into the solution – not just the person making the sales decision.

As for me – I am going to take a vacation next week without my laptop (ok, I will still have my iphone which is really just a mini office, but still)  and just appreciate the joys of (almost) technology free downtown on the beach.

Not that I don’t appreciate all of the thought that goes into a traditional whitepaper – but really?  If you think about our ever increasing recruiting world – there are more of us that have attention spans of a 3 year old than ever.  Why haven’t we seen a push toward video whitepapers that have actual people really talking about whatever the whitepapers focus is.  

At this point, I would be thrilled with a video preview – like a commercial to get the basics of the whole whitepaper before I read it.  I mean, it is something I can just listen to in the car on the way to the gym, or download to the ipod to watch when i am sitting at the airport or….

With all the blogging, tweeting, facebooking and every other form of social media that we have going on – is is really to much for someone to give us gen y’ers a video to watch?