Britain set to become world leader in unemployment technology

1 April 2016

By Neil Patrick

As technology continues to transform jobs, a new government initiative will virtually eliminate jobs in the Jobs Centre network across the UK.

The flagship programme called ‘Care4Jobs’ will massively reduce staffing in job centres and in some centres eliminate them completely. Touch screens which automatically connect jobseekers’ social media accounts with suitable employers are being used to help people find work faster than was ever possible before. Because employers and jobseekers are now both using social media every day, the scheme was described as being a “no-brainer” by Jeremy Twonkington-Smyth, Under Secretary of Work for State and Pensions. He said:

“Britain has a long and proud history of world-leading innovation in the delivery of public services. We are determined to ensure we remain committed to the vital services we provide for job-seekers and employers. Our pilot study carried out in Grimsby, a northern town I hope I never have to visit, showed that the automated social media connection of employers and job-seekers had an immediate impact on the time taken to locate suitable jobs. This has resulted in a rapid decline in the number of unemployment benefit claimants. Many have already found jobs in Starbucks, McDonalds, Asda and other leading high quality employers who have embraced the digital and social media world. Some claimants have simply vanished completely which is a mystery we have set up a sub-committee to look into. ”

The use of this new technology in Job Centres means that the costs and difficulties of maintaining staffing levels are significantly reduced.

“We inherited a massively bloated and unproductive department from the previous government and have been working hard to rectify this. We have always had problems with staff in job centres. Some take several days off each year claiming to be sick, others take far too long to get their work done.”

Not only does this innovation increase productivity in job centres, it is enabling unemployed people in the UK to become part of the new ‘global gig economy’:

“We want to future proof our services and the use of these televisual screen thingies connected to the world wide interweb, means UK job-seekers can find jobs all over the world. Unemployed people in Britain have amassed many skills much sought after overseas. More than 20 have already secured work in dynamic overseas economies like Brazil, Colombia and Romania.”

Thanks to this innovative new scheme, Barry
 Clunge, 41 from Stockport has already found
 a new job working part-time in sunny Madrid.

The programme to automate job centres has cost £3.4bn and Mr Twonkington-Smyth said this was an excellent investment:

“This technology will establish Britain as a world leader in unemployment. Because technology works so much better than people, we will see both a reduction in unemployment claims and faster hirings. Best of all, the costs the unemployed impose on hard working families will fall dramatically.”

When asked about the forecast 28,000 redundancies in job centres, he was upbeat:

“We sincerely regret that a number of valued colleagues in our job centres can no-longer be paid for their work. Some will choose our community service option, where they can still attend the job centre as usual and work on a voluntary basis. I know many care passionately about helping people find work, and this will enable them to continue with their valuable work and continue to find personal fulfilment.”

“Those who choose not to take up this attractive option thanks to their excellent skills will be much in demand by other employers. Their skills such as working with people with financial, mental, drug and alcohol problems will be much sought after by all sorts of employers from call centres to retail.”

The Think-tank on Work and Technology (TWAT) said, “Our studies have shown that this sort of work is carried out much faster and more reliably by IT systems than people. Our research found that over 70% of employers prefer to use technology to automatically select candidates rather than having people manually review applications. The savings for businesses will be considerable.”

The technology for the programme has been developed by tech entrepreneur, Josh Jones, founder and CEO of Govetech Systems, an innovative IT developer which Josh founded in 2014 with a young entrepreneur grant of £1.2m from the EU Innovation Fund.

He said: “We are delighted with the success of the Care4Jobs platforms. This sort of system has many applications and we are already working on a further system which will enable the armed services to largely avoid the need to deploy troops into conflict zones. Instead they will use a combination of gaming technology and social media to connect with and then invite adversaries to fight them online. It will save billions of government spending on defence and enable the reduction of already overstretched armed forces troops and support staff.”

Josh Jones, 28, dynamic young entrepreneur
and CEO of Govetech Systems

“Enquiries from oversea governments have been coming faster than we ever thought possible. We are already in discussions with government representatives from Greece, Russia and most exciting of all the United States. Excuse me, I have to take this Skype call from my stock-broker.”

The opposition spokesperson on Work and Jobs, Miranda Trellis MP said:

“This is a cruel and uncaring government that is cynically attempting to export unemployment. Thousands of families will be devastated by this move. We are liaising closely with the Union for Technology Workers’ Employment Rights and Policy Unit (UTWERPU) to organise a protest campaign to force the government to rethink this regressive strategy which will bring misery to people already deprived of opportunities. Sorry, I’m late for an equality and human rights committee meeting with JC. Can I go now?”

Why your career dream may already be dead

By Neil Patrick


We don’t just have a global jobs crisis, we have a career progression logjam…

Today I woke to a BBC Radio 4 news item which reported that CEOs were complaining (again) about talent shortages and their difficulties with attracting and retaining good people.

There was much talk about “talent acquisition”, “agile organisations”, “human assets” and a good deal more management psychobabble. But whilst I yawned at the language, there was no doubting the veracity of the message.

In October 2015, PA Consulting issued a report which attributed this problem to poor use of HR data:

“There is a mismatch between chief executives’ desire to get talent management activities right and their investment in technology; only 3.6% of CEOs and HR directors had a coherent approach for analysing talent-related data”.

Report author Jennifer Cable said: “The say-do gap is huge. It seems that talent management is belief led rather than metric led, but you name me another critical area of competitive advantage where activity is not being backed up with concrete data.”

I would go even further. The problem isn’t just about data and beliefs. It’s about culture and action. Or lack of it. 21st century HR leadership is broken. It no longer serves either employers or employees well. I have nothing against HR people. And I would point out that HR is by no means the only function which has failed to transform fast enough to keep pace with what Jeremy Rifkin calls "The Third Industrial Revolution". Marketing, sales, finance, even IT in large organisations are similarly lagging.

Recently, the Pew Research Center reported that the US middle class was now outnumbered by the poor and upper classes. This is another indication that the traditional career ladder structure has bottlenecked in the middle of society.

This strategic failure is also evidenced by my own mailbox. Almost everyday I get emails from professional people who despite having great qualifications and work experience report that they cannot get interviews, let alone get hired.

If we have lots of skilled people looking for jobs, AND organisations frustrated in their search for good people, how come this problem exists at all?

What on earth is going on?

I am not going to fall into the trap of blaming one party or the other. But organisations have to accept that the old model of recruiting and hiring is failing faster than they’d like to admit.

This isn’t news to some I know. It’s the maturation of trends which have been going on for at least a decade.

The root of the problem isn’t useless job applicants or wicked HR people. The root of the problem is how both employers and jobseekers think about jobs. What they are, who does them, how they do them, how they are managed, how they are rewarded.

The current model of recruitment has not suddenly materialised. It has had decades of refinement, all designed to assess, quantify and rank the suitability of individuals for a particular job. Organisations like processes and procedures. They help them feel in control. And able to defend themselves against potentially hostile regulatory or legal threats.

Recruitment and selection processes and procedures have now inevitably become hard coded into IT systems called applicant tracking systems. Large employers have invested millions in their adoption and deployment. I have written about the consequences of these systems here.

HR teams are not to blame either. But they have become servants of the machine. The catchphrase “Computer says ‘No’” could have been written just for them…

The problem is that the whole recruitment industry and HR profession has been getting better and better at doing what can now be seen to be the wrong things.

They have become experts at creating boxes and then matching the boxes with the people that apparently best fit into them. These boxes specify everything, much of which is irrelevant or at least a distraction. Things like:

• Hours of work which reflect traditional norms not operational or employees’ needs
• Cut and paste competencies which are generic and often based on lazy thinking
• “Acceptable” levels of sickness which assume everyone’s health is the same
• Holiday entitlements which reward length of service rather than accomplishments and workload
• Rates of pay pegged to outmoded concepts of seniority and status.

These boxes haven’t really adapted very much to reflect the huge changes which have been going on in the world. They perpetuate some very old ideas about what a job is and how it should be done. These ideas are a legacy of the old command and control structures which originated in business and organisations in the industrial age.

People were increasingly reduced to cogs in a giant machine. This direction of travel has now reached a breaking point where unless an employer is desperate, hardly anyone can match their over-specified expectations.

If we add in instinctive personal biases around gender, age, appearance, race, we start to get a glimpse of just how much the system is broken. Yes, I know such things are illegal, but they are so easily fudged that hardly anyone worries about them.

Meanwhile the very nature of work has massively transformed in many jobs over the last ten years.

Organisations talk a great deal about becoming agile, yet their procedures change really slowly. Many aspire to being disruptive, yet are effectively paralyzed by risk aversion and legacy structures. They seek to be flexible, yet find change difficult. They espouse how they are customer-centric, yet shareholders' interests always trump customers'. They keep on doing the same old thing when it comes to specifying job roles and finding people to put in them.

Jobseekers are rightly and understandably frustrated and incensed by this. The explosion of  digital communication, means anyone who is looking for a new job can find hundreds almost instantly online. The result – organisations are bombarded with on average up to 200 applications per vacancy.

And since humans cannot possibly be expected to accurately assess such a deluge, automation has been adopted to screen, sort and rank resumes and choose candidates. Except these systems are at best only partially effective. In one test carried out by consultants Bersin Associates, a ‘perfect resume’ only scored 43% on the applicant tracking system…

Organisations aspire to respond and adapt to these problems, but very few are making real headway. This is because they are playing around the edges, when what they really need is a complete rethink of how they can reconcile their need for talented people with an admission that the current way of doing things is no longer fit for purpose.

So we see the continuation of cut and paste job descriptions. Of largely discredited psychometric assessments. Of idiotic interview questions and competency ‘tests’. Of overly rigid terms and conditions of employment.

The future won’t be owned by organisations which perpetuate the status quo. It will be owned by those that can grasp the nettle and figure out how they can live by these ideas not merely talk about them.

For millennials, this fragile career environment is one they have grown up with. They’ve never known anything else. For older generations, it’s nothing short of a catastrophe for which few are equipped.

Organisations will eventually transform. They have no choice. The trouble for people seeking jobs and career progression is that this transformation is going to take a very long time. And the trouble for organisations is that this key strategic requirement is so low on their agendas that they are at risk of organisational obsolescence which at best will hamper every aspiration they have, or at worst kill them.

Happy New Year! ;-)

The full lowdown on ATS systems

By Neil Patrick and Marcia LaReau

ATS systems are now in widespread use by HR teams and recruitment firms. If you don't know how they work, you are at risk of getting caught out by one when you apply for a job.

It doesn't matter how well qualified you are. Or how keen you are to take the role. If you're unaware of how ATS systems filter applications, you risk being rejected without any person even looking at your resume or application. It's that serious!

My first post here on applicant tracking systems or ATS attracted a lot of readers and comment. After that, I knew I needed to get more information to share here.

So I turned to the one person I know who probably knows more about this subject than anyone else in the world right now. My friend, Marcia LaReau, the President of Forward Motion US has spent two years testing and evaluating these systems!

Last week I interviewed Marcia to find out as much as I can and I'm pleased to share this information in this post. NB This is a long post...but if you want to go straight to the action points just scroll to the end!

Marcia LaReau Phd.

NP: Why did ATSs come into being? 

ML: What I’m about to tell you here is based on my experience and information I collected from hundreds of conversations within the hiring communities.

The birth of Applicant Tracking Systems was before the Great Recession in 2008. They came about because available technology filled a need and could be sold to a huge market.

The Applicant Tracking Systems began with the job boards and when I started Forward Motion in 2007, I began by studying Monster and CareerBuilder, which were among the first. CareerBuilder (formerly NetStart) was launched about 1995 and Monster in 1999. Both sites sold subscriptions to companies and posted their job openings. They were able to report demographic information and served as a searchable repository of résumés.

The Great Recession brought a flood of desperate job seekers applying for every possible position.  Hiring professionals were overwhelmed and unable to satisfactorily filter all the applicants manually. Although they were in their infancy, the ATS platforms offered a tempting solution, despite their shortcomings.

NP: What type of jobs are ATSs used to screen for? How widespread are they? 

ML: ATSs are used for every conceivable kind of position you can imagine. Since a company can own and customize its own system or simply rent a system on a monthly basis, or just pay for candidates who click on their postings, everyone can now use them - from big companies right down to tiny ones. A company does not even need a website; an email address is all that is needed.

For example, if an entrepreneur is looking for a marketing manager or a part-time administrative assistant, s/he can easily use a system to find the right help at a reasonable price.

Two years ago, I spoke at the Connecticut Library Association Conference on the topic, “The Library as Employment Center". The librarians bemoaned that local supermarket chains and even small businesses sent job seekers to the library to “apply online” for jobs such as stocking the shelves and unloading the trucks. Sadly, some of these individuals did not have any basic computer skills and had not even used email. 

What hope would such a person have of getting through an ATS system?

NP: How did applicants respond to the use of ATS?

ML: With the recession, thousands of people began applying for jobs. HR was overwhelmed with the number of applicants and the first real “Tracking Systems” were quickly upgraded to help with the screening process. New job boards were cropping up daily and ATS companies began competing for market share.

This is what I call the first generation of ATSs. I don’t think anyone thought they worked very well.

Job seekers realized that keywords were important and tried beating the system by loading their documents. The problem was that once they “got through” the verbiage was unreadable and many were quickly eliminated. Some companies were so overwhelmed that they actually outsourced the résumé review process overseas - which didn't work either.

NP: You've tested these systems extensively Marcia - how did you carry out the tests?

ML: Since I had been in HR prior to being laid off, I was able to connect with many of my former colleagues and ask them how these systems were being developed. Importantly, they were willing to allow me to test their systems with imaginary candidates.

Over a period of two years, I learned about their hiring process from end to end. With my contacts' permission, I created several imaginary job seekers and started applying for positions at their companies to see if I could get through. I wanted to know what it would take to get a phone call. This way, I was experiencing the systems from the job-seeker side.

At this time, the experience was rather dismal from both sides. I never managed to meet more than 80% of the requirements with my imaginary candidates. Over a period of a year, I developed a system that was able to get through about 65% of the time.

NP: Tell me about the second generation of ATS. What changed?

ML: The next generation of ATS came fairly quickly and by 2011, price wars had begun. As of today, it currently costs over $400 to post a job on CareerBuilder or Monster. The aggregate job boards (e.g. Indeed.com and SimplyHired) frequently use Pay-Per-Click (PPC) pricing with charges between $.25 to $1.50 for each click.

These second generation of ATS began using more sophisticated filtering systems. ATS companies began selling directly to large corporations and offered additional customization. (Examples are Brassring, Taleo, HRM, iCims…)

NP: Is it true that the right keywords alone were no longer enough to get a résumé through the system?

ML: Yes. Some companies used a public job board for initial screening and then applied additional criteria and invited select candidates to enter their information into their internal databases. This second generation of ATS was more sophisticated, but the experience on both sides was still less than acceptable.

I might add that the many new cost-effective options allowed even small businesses to use the systems for initial screening. This was far better than their “Craig’s List” attempts at finding candidates.

NP: What's the current state of play?

ML: We are now embarking on a third generation of ATS. New levels of sophistication have been added all along. At this point, the companies gladly give me a 90-minute review of their “latest and greatest” so I think I’m up-to-date on the functionality. With my help, my clients get through the ATS at least 90% of the time now.

This new generation is certainly the most sophisticated. They typically integrate the whole hiring workflow that includes tracking and compliance with Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) as well as the Affirmative Action Plan (AAP). Since AAP is based on demographics and since the demographics are changing with regard to Hispanic and Asian populations in the U.S., these new systems have really taken on new roles. There are other features such as auto-responders and electronic scheduling that saves time and hopefully improves the experience for the job seeker as well.

These latest versions are better able to select qualified candidates, as they are able to read context. This is a double-edged sword for the job seeker though. Getting through to a person now requires a great deal of care. But it isn't rocket-science by any means. It is caring in ways that are meaningful to the hiring process, which begins with the ATS as well.

The articles I read that focus on beating the system and working around it (to get right to the hiring manager) are shortsighted from my perspective. Better, in my opinion, to work with the hiring communities rather than against or around them; especially since we all want the same thing - the right person in the right job.

NP: What in your opinion are the biggest shortcomings of ATS systems?

ML: This is an excellent question. Before I answer you, I’d like to give a bit of context.

I believe that we are still coming to grips with the fact that we are now a global economy and we have yet to fully comprehend the impact of the Great Recession. Add to this the technologies that are changing and influencing every area of our lives. I’m referring to Big Data, 3-D Printing, biotechnology, the demise of Moore’s Law, and disruptive innovations. (I’ve put 11 videos on YouTube about this topic.)

Add to this the number of baby-boomers who are retiring in record numbers (now that the stock market has restored some of the value of their retirement) and we can easily see that companies are scrambling. At this time, key concerns include “employee engagement” and succession planning.

So…let’s try to tackle “employee engagement.” We are learning that just because an employee can document that they have the needed skills, knowledge (experience) and abilities (SKA), doesn’t mean s/he will be engaged.

Business models have focused on measuring everything as proof of their success. Examples include Six Sigma, Lean Manufacturing, Balanced Scorecard and many, many others. But how do we measure employee engagement? And how do we devise a filter for it in an Applicant Tracking System?

Now, what about succession planning? With the record number of retirements, companies are losing their knowledge base. Succession planning is a challenge with a smaller Gen X. As we look to Millennials, we are finding a less-than-enthusiastic labor pool when it comes to corporate culture. So this takes us right back to the engagement question.

NP: So you're saying that the problem isn’t really with ATS at all?

ML: How many times do job seekers go through the interview process to find out that they have been eliminated because the position included something that was left off of the posting? Recruiters continually tell me about their frustrations when companies really don’t know what they want (or need) in a position.

The recruiter goes through long lists of candidates and scores of interviews and learns what the company is actually looking for through the process of learning what they don’t want. (The job seeker gets the frustrating response, “The company has decided to go in a different direction for this position.”)

Finally, the internal hiring professionals are enormously frustrated at the number of unqualified candidates. They are also deeply concerned that after careful vetting and attention to their hiring process, they are still hiring the wrong people.

The good news is that their attention to employee engagement is, in my opinion, exactly the right concern!

I have yet to see a job posting that sufficiently addresses this concern. Instead we get verbiage like, “Must be able to work under pressure and meet tight deadlines.” …now isn’t that inviting?

The root of the problem is how we think about the work that the employee will actually do. So the needed change will first require a shift in our thinking. Then we can ask the right questions so we can communicate with jobseekers. This is a whole new dimension about employment. From this point, we can easily manage the ATS questions to address the concerns about engagement. 

NP: What should job seekers do to avoid being eliminated?

ML: That’s the right question as well Neil. The Forward Motion Differentiation Workshop was designed in 2009 and has undergone 17 major upgrades and over 32 minor versions. I say this to make the point that as the hiring processes change, so must the jobseeker understand the phases of elimination in the ATS (usually 4 or 5) and adjust his or her cover letter and resume to fit with this.

It’s important to remember that once a candidate gets through the ATS screening, there are seven or eight more steps to get an offer. They have to appeal to HR first and then make it all the way through to the final approver. The ATS is step one. If we isolate that one step, then I offer the following suggestions:

1. Carefully vet the job posting and the company and apply only for those positions that are truly a good fit.

2. Narrow the information on both cover letter and résumé to address the skills, knowledge and abilities specific to the position. Customize accordingly.

3. Don’t assume that software can make a leap of understanding regarding experience. For example, if the job posting is for an Event Planner and asks for “project management” experience. If the résumé only addresses “event planning” the ATS won’t be able to translate. That résumé will be kicked out because it does not cite “project management.”

4. Different ATS set-ups have filters that may include a myriad of questions. These are critical. Many jobseekers do not fill out demographic information about themselves. Yet, with the AAP compliance, they may be eliminating themselves.

5. There should be ample demonstration of the needed skills, knowledge, and abilities in your résumé. These should come under the bullets in the Work Experience section.

6. Use Times New Roman font. Nothing smaller than 11pt. Despite the on-going concern over tables and bullets: they work just fine because the ATS is reading text strings.

7. If, after carefully entering your information into an ATS, you receive a link that takes you to another ATS and asks you to do it all over again…be encouraged! You've been invited to the “inner sanctum” of the company.

I believe the ATS is here to stay and it’s going to get better and better. As we look to new ways of finding the right people who can genuinely contribute to their employer’s success, it is only going to get better. I’m excited about it and looking forward to continuing to be a bridge between the job seeker and hiring communities.

I'd like to thank Marcia for the time she has taken to share these valuable insights. You can find out more about Forward Motion US and their resources and services here. Do please post any comments or questions below and we'll do our best to answer them.