My wife does most of the Christmas shopping for our family. Scratch that.  My wife does all of the Christmas shopping for our family. And her shifting shopping habits mimic the macro trends reported everywhere.  I also believe that her shifting habits parallel the adoption of SaaS applications. Now, before you think I am stretching this comparison to thin, let me explain…

My wife has been lucky enough to be married to me gracious enough to let me be her husband for about eight years, so let’s use that timeframe as our starting reference point.  So, going back to the pre-historic mid-2000’s, she did all of her holiday shopping offline. Everyone remembers the drill: decide what to buy, get in the car, go to the mall, park, pick the item, bring it home, wrap it and give it away.

Then, a few years ago, she started shopping more regularly online.  But it wasn’t an all-in transition. Sometimes she’d buy online but more often than not, she would research online and buy offline.   Still pretty manual.

Now, almost all of her Christmas shopping is done online. Pick it, pay for it, and have it delivered (and already wrapped!)  It’s easier, more efficient, and offers a wider array of options.  Most importantly, shopping online saves her a tremendous amount of time – which is especially important around the holidays with our four kids. 

Her historical shopping patterns, and her shift to cyber-shopping, aren’t unique. This year, on Black Friday alone, 66 million people shopped online.  

So clearly, things are changing and soon, just about all of our shopping will be online. And shopping is nice, but I tend to frame everything in terms of software. So I think it is interesting how closely shopping habits mimic adoption, and usage, of web-based business tools. And since Hyrell is a SaaS-based Applicant Tracking System, I’ll use that as the use case for comparison.

Years ago, when a company needed to hire someone, it was all manual and offline. You’d post a job in a newspaper or in your place of business and applicants would call or walk-in to complete a paper-based application. This put 100% of the burden on you, the company, to evaluate, process and hire an applicant.

Then, things began to shift to a part-online, part-offline model. Companies would post a job to an internet job board and resumes would stream in to a company email address.  However, in spite of these advancements, the process is still very manual and laborious. You have to read through the resumes, put them into folders, track your applicants, communicate with them, play phone tag to schedule interviews, etc.

Today, modern companies are shifting to an all-online model.  By using one Recruiting Management platform, you can post your jobs, get pre-scored applicants and perform all recruiting and hiring activities within one web-based platform. It’s easier, more efficient and saves a tremendous amount of time – which is especially important given all of the other tasks you need to get completed within a day.

Yet it’s clear to see that online versus offline shopping habits haven’t fully shifted yet (an estimated $12.3 billion was spent this year on Thanksgiving and Black Friday in brick-and-mortar stores!) And full adoption of SaaS applications hasn’t shifted yet either. 

Bottom line: If you aren’t using a modern web-based approach to hiring, your process is chewing up valuable time, and more importantly, not allowing for companies to discover, and hire, the best-fit employees it can. 

But all is not lost. Switching to a cloud-based system is easy.  And once you do, you’ll have plenty of time to finish your holiday shopping.  Online, of course.

Are you ready to switch to a SaaS hiring solution? Contact Hyrell to learn how you can automate the hiring process with a simple, efficient solution.