More Than Paint — Why New Tech Isn’t Always the Answer for Talent Acquisition

My very first car was a 1983 Volkswagen Rabbit that I bought from my grandmother for $500. I was 20 years old at the time (same age as the car) and thought it was going to be the greatest car ever. I drew plans of the body kit I was going to buy for it, the engine mods I was planning and the insane stereo I was going to install.

Now would be a good time to mention that the car had a football-sized rust hole in the hood, a roof liner that had come completely detached from the ceiling of the car and rested on my head while driving, mismatched wheels and the worst part? The car regularly overheated, making it impossible to drive for more than 30–45 minutes in any given season (yes, even in our Canadian winter).

I had very little savings in my account but decided I would go ahead and start the mods to the car. First logical step in my brain? Paint. I brought the car to a local auto painting shop, walked in and began talking about the plans I had for my car. I told the guy that I wanted a pearl orange paint job and that I would bring a body kit in later to have colour-matched. He talked about his love for VWs and told me that he couldn’t wait to get started. He was genuinely excited about the paint job and the plans I had. … Until he walked out and saw my car.

Pointing at the giant hole in the hood and mismatched wheels he began laughing.

“Dude, you have bigger problems than your paint.”

It’s very easy as professionals, in any field, to get excited about the technology being released. It’s exciting to make plans for the things we’re going do, the systems we’re going to overhaul and the awesome transformation we’ll lead.

The problem is, that in many cases, these things are paint. Adding good tech to crappy processes doesn’t help anything, in fact, it often makes things worse in the long run. Sure in the short term, it may look better but in most cases, it comes at the cost of ignoring the deeper issues like the rust-sized hole in your hood, drooping ceiling or major engine problems.

PS I’m not talking about cars.

HR Talent Acquisition departments frequently fall victim to this trap. And rightfully so. HR departments are often stuck with legacy systems and clunky, outdated software, so when something fun and flashy lands in their inbox, it’s easy to get excited and want to pull the purchasing trigger.

But as a result of using those legacy systems for so long, there’s a bunch of accompanying problems that need to be addressed before making any purchasing decisions and it starts with the most basic of issues. Basic issues like addressing the root of your process problems, the legacy systems you’re using, your leadership team, overall recruiting strategy, defining metrics that matter, and establishing updated best practices etc.

It’s not until those issues are addressed that Talent Acquisition(or any other department) can truly start to see the lasting transformation that they’re pursuing.

When we released Ruutly.com we did it with the intention of focusing on one of the most basic units of measurement in HR: The job posting.

We looked at the entire process and asked ourselves where we thought we could have the most impact with our experience building RaiseYourFlag.com and we kept revisiting the job ad. Why? The job posting is often the first interaction, real interaction, a candidate has with a company in their candidate experience. So much stems from this interaction. (And if you read my last article you know that I believe that the vast majority of companies in the world are advertising jobs like it’s 1996.)

What if we hyper-focused on the job posting and committed to getting it really right? Well then we’d be patching a hole in the hood. It may not be a full engine change but it could lead to improvements in other processes… and it’s not until we drastically improve our processes that we can truly say we’re making change.

At first glance, it would appear that Ruutly is the definition of a paint job. Almost literally. Some may argue that it’s a simply a better looking version of a job posting. And while we would take that as a compliment, it’s so much more.

Ruutly is a way for job-seekers to immerse themselves in your job postings. To allow them to curiously discover the opportunity and understand the context of the position, which we’d argue is more important than the content itself. It’s a way to get poor candidates to recognize that they’re a poor fit immediately and opt-out of the application process sooner than later and it’s a way to engage quality candidates before they ever click the apply button.

And while I don’t want this to become an advertisement for Ruutly, I want it to be clear why we created Ruutly and give a glimpse into our brains as we continue to build a product that delivers lasting results to companies and their candidate experience.

True impact will only be made when you are brutally honest with yourself and your teams about your technology, processes, culture and room for improvement at all times.

There will always be room for improvement in every department of every company and the most impactful improvements can only come as you look into your processes and search for holes, drooping ceiling liners or weird engine noises before you decide to go with a new paint job.

Like what you’ve just read? Go ahead and applaud for this article so we know to keep creating content like this. Oh and visit Ruutly.com to learn more about how we’re transforming traditional text-based job descriptions into branded candidate experiences.