Blueprint for a better 51job.com
By Jason Xie
Though a leader in online recruiting, 51job.com fails to offer a user experience equal to its market status. Instead of just joining the critics, here's a new approach: If I were a product manager at 51job.com, what improvements would I make?
Many firms, having published advertisements on 51job.com, have learned that it is quite common to receive hundreds of resumes for a single notice - 95 percent of which may not even be worthy of an interview. I once advertised for an account manager, only to find that more than half of the resumes coming in were for the position of an accountant. Either the applicants did not even take a cursory glance at the job description, or they did not know the difference between "account" and "accounting." They just clicked the mouse and their resumes got sent. There are many similar situations: a job opportunity that requires three years' work experience attracting a bundle of CVs from fresh graduates; another for a computer science major drawing a flood of applications from humanities majors... The result: the HR department is overwhelmed with screening the resumes, only to find that fewer than 10 percent are suitable for an interview.
To avoid the disadvantages of online recruiting, I did an experiment by having the HR department place an ad in a newspaper, leaving only a postal mailing address - no e-mail. I received 20-plus resumes, out of which 10 were chosen for an interview and 2 were finally employed. Why was there such a big difference in the efficiency of the two recruitment attempts? The reason is simple: the cost of mailing a resume (the time and energy spent), is much higher than that of sending an e-mail. This serves as a natural screening mechanism of sifting - job seekers will make a rough estimate before making their decision whether to apply. This is the equivalent of a job seeker's self-interview.
It is clear from the experiment that an effective system of screening benefits both recruiters and applicants. 51job.com lacks neither job seekers nor talent hunters; what is missing is a mechanism that matches demand and supply of job opportunities, particularly one that helps companies to screen applicants. The Career Development Centre at CEIBS, my alma mater, has established an effective screening system which can serve as an example for 51job.com.
At CEIBS, companies that come talent hunting are required to reserve certain opportunities for public applications. If a company intends to interview ten applicants, seven of whom are picked by the company out of the cluster of resumes, the remaining three spots will be set aside for open competition. Every CEIBS student is given a certain sum of initial points (e.g. 20), and they can apply for the public interviews by means of point bidding. You can bid for a single interview with all 20 of your points, or you can "spend" your points, bit by bit, on multiple interviews. If a bid is successful, points will be deducted accordingly. If the bid is unsuccessful, no points will be removed.
This system has several important merits. Firstly, students seeking a career transfer may be given new opportunities. When they do their own resume sifting, companies usually prefer students with relevant work experience. This system of point bidding allows transfer-seeking students chances to receive interviews. Secondly, "interview busters" can be effectively prevented from abusing interviews. Excellent students may obtain interview opportunities from multiple companies. If they participate in many interviews but do not take the jobs in the end [interview busting], CEIBS' image - as perceived by recruiting companies - would be damaged. In addition, other students would be deprived of a chance to be interviewed, which is clearly unfair. The CEIBS method ensures that there are fewer unnecessary interviews, while companies and students both benefit.
Based on the CEIBS experience, 51job.com can address several issues immediately:
1. Establish an automatic screening system. Some of the hard-and-fast requirements such as education and relevant work experience should be made structural so that a fresh graduate applying for a position requiring three years of work experience will be rejected automatically.
2. Offer tools of assistance in the categorization of job hunters. For example, for some jobs requiring a good command of the English language, recruiters may very well demand job hunters' finishing a couple of questions that test their English listening skills before the submission of their application. Some foreign companies ask job seekers to fill in online resumes based on employer-customized templates, or even to complete related character tests before submitting resumes online. These are effective measures that can be duplicated. The results of character tests may only serve as a reference, but the test itself screens out those not interested enough to invest 20 minutes on the test.
3. Establish feedback systems tracking user behavior. If a job seeker always applies but cannot land an interview, if one receives a job offer but refuses it, if a company is always posting recruiting advertisements but rarely gives job offers, all these factors should be clearly indicated by some means similar to the seller-rating system by users at e-Bay and Taobao.com.
51job.com, the ball's in your court!
Author: Jason Xie
Class: MBA 2000
Based in: Beijing
Title: Sales & Business Development VP for Elong.com.
Blog name: Xie Zhen
URL: zhenxie.javaeye.com
Family: Met his wife through the Internet when he studied at CEIBS. They now have a five-year-old son.
