The Job Hunt Gets a Reboot

Looking for a job? Hiring new staff? Technology is revolutionizing the hiring process.

By Michael S. Goldberg

One week after collecting her bachelor’s degree from Questrom School of Business, Hannah Lombardo was acclimating to her new life as a professional recruiter at Wayfair, the growing Boston-based online home furnishings retailer.

There, she manages a “full cycle of recruitment,” from conferring with hiring managers about ideal candidates to conducting telephone screening calls and negotiating employment terms. Then it’s back to the start—with the help of technology: researching LinkedIn to find more prospective colleagues and analyzing data to review the pace of the company’s hiring to fill open jobs. “I’m like the project manager for the recruiting process,” says Lombardo (BSBA’17). “There are a lot of moving parts.”

As any applicant or recruiter can testify, the moving parts involved in searching for and landing a desired job are shifting in a business world that is adding advanced technologies to just about every process. The momentum that’s driving investments in artificial intelligence and automation for innovations like driverless cars and drone deliveries is also spawning experiments in the recruiting and hiring field. Candidates submitting videos for screening, Skype conferences instead of in-person meetings, skills testing on your smartphone, algorithms scanning your online CV—such interactions are here and more are likely. You could even encounter a robot during your next job search.

Take the San Francisco start-up Mya Systems (Mya is short for “my assistant”). It offers an artificial intelligence system that claims to assess résumés, handle phone screening, and schedule interviews to save recruiters time. Mya promises to work with a company’s system for tracking job applicants and create a short list. The system even provides applicants with updates on their status and can answer their questions. Automatically.

Today’s students need to become adept at navigating a system where recruiters are using more technologies to hire. At the same time, recruiters and recent graduates emphasize the value of the human factor and in-person conversations. Job-seekers, whether they just attended commencement or are re-entering the market, need to be ready. And employers need to balance their use of technology with creating human connections, especially when it comes to hiring millennials who are seeking authentic experiences and purposeful work.

Automated Hiring

The consumer products giant Unilever is emblematic of the automation trend. The company, whose recruiters once focused their efforts on eight schools for entry-level management positions, last year began placing ads on Facebook and career advice apps inviting interested smartphone users to apply. The Wall Street Journal reported that the ads lead to a Unilever careers website that makes it possible for the company to view applicants’ LinkedIn profiles and automatically screen suitable candidates. Two more hurdles follow: a set of online games assessing applicants’ skills, then an online video interview. With each step, artificial intelligence algorithms weed out applicants. The best get invitations to in-person interviews. Unilever says it’s attracting more interest and finding talent in places where the firm’s recruiters had not looked before. Goldman Sachs and online retailer Jet.com are among the major firms experimenting with similar procedures, the Journal noted.

Then there’s LinkedIn, the business networking site that has more than half a billion members worldwide, including 133 million Americans and more than 40 million students and recent college graduates (its fastest-growing demographic). Where do LinkedIn’s recruiters look? Not traditional career fairs for college students, where candidates typically get a few minutes of face time to make an impression.

Instead, they delve into the data they’ve collected to find candidates, explained Tey Scott, senior director of global talent acquisition, in a 2016 blog post. “We can find out how many students are on the platform from a certain school, then we can further look into what organizations they are affiliated with or what skills they have listed on their profile,” Scott wrote. The company can then analyze who is worth meeting. In a pitch for businesses to pay for access to LinkedIn’s data, she added, “The beauty of this approach is that any business whether big or small should be able to utilize this process to create or manage their college recruiting process.”

The experts at Questrom and its Feld Center for Industry Alliances are adjusting to this changing environment. The Feld team, which includes former corporate recruiters forging ties between the school and employers in a range of industries, is part of an effort to strengthen students’ digital job-hunting and networking savvy, such as filling LinkedIn profiles with search engine–friendly key words related to goals; practicing speaking to a video camera (in professional attire) for Skype sessions and automated job-screening apps; and seeking informational interviews with alumni via online networks. Roland Luk, executive director of the Feld Center, is based near Silicon Valley and focuses on the tech industry.

“We talk about networking being important for students to land jobs. The whole recruiting process also needs to be a networking model. It needs to be evolving from an on-campus primary model to both an on-campus and off-campus network model,” says Luk.

Practically, this means anticipating that more employers are going to be seeking alternatives to on-campus visits. In that case, providing spaces on campus for virtual interviews, such as Skype video calls and web-based presentations from corporate recruiters, makes sense. So does bringing students to where the action is. Every January, Luk leads a group of 25 to 30 MBA candidates to the San Francisco area to visit employers like Airbnb, CBS Interactive, healthcare giant Kaiser Permanente, and Hewlett-Packard, where Luk once worked as an executive building strategic alliances.

Still, that does not mean the end of recruiters visiting Comm Ave to hold information sessions and job interviews. The Questrom calendar remains robust, even as more firms are scheduling virtual presentations. JP Matychak, associate dean for student experience and services at Questrom, says the University needs to keep classic job-hunting skills in the mix. Questrom has instituted a series of required courses—covering topics as basic as résumé writing and complex as cross-cultural communications—with in-house advisors to help students think about and plan their careers. Internships are also an essential part of the process for many students. An internship at recruiting agency WinterWyman led to Lombardo’s first job, for example. Questrom’s full-time MBA Class of 2017 had a 99 percent internship placement rate with 110 companies.

Human Perspective

While graduating students expand their networks, hone their LinkedIn profiles, and practice interviewing and presentation skills, recruiters like Ren Herring have their own challenge of standing out among the clutter of prospective employers to attract the top applicants. Herring, a campus talent acquisition manager at PwC, says his firm has pilots underway to experiment with advanced technology in recruiting, but his own emphasis is on making introductions in traditional face-to-face meetings and presentations. Herring is devoted year-round to recruiting Questrom MBA candidates for internships and senior associate positions.

“Being a consultant is not easy work. You’re traveling a lot, you’re working on multiple projects or long-term projects. It can switch in the flip of a hat,” Herring says. “You answer and solve important problems that either society or our clients give us, and we’re expected to be the source of knowledge.” It means he has a long wish list when looking at potential MBA hires: strategic thinkers with strong research, writing, people, negotiation, and conflict resolution skills.

PwC is not alone in trying to entice the best new recruits, of course. While Questrom students are keen to join management and strategy consulting firms—28 percent of the 2016 MBA class took consulting jobs, more than any other category—there are hundreds of companies in the market for freshly minted MBAs. The Graduate Management Admission Council, the nonprofit educational organization that runs the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT), surveyed 842 employers representing more than 530 companies in 40 countries and found that 88 percent planned to hire MBAs in 2016, up from 80 percent who actually hired MBAs in 2015. The same percentage of respondents planned to hire graduates with bachelor’s degrees in business.

Given the competition for talent, it’s not hard to see why Herring recently moved to Boston’s Back Bay from New York. He visits BU regularly. He works with a PwC partner to set up events, including information sessions, one-on-one informational interviews over coffee, and case competitions. He brings in PwC consultants who are BU alums to help. “We look to build relationships and we look to meet people, and they get the opportunity to speak to us and talk to us about their past experiences,” Herring says. “A lot of times, people go to business school to make a pivot. And so we want to figure out why they’re thinking about coming into consulting and why they’re thinking about pursuing this career as a lifestyle.”

After screening résumés, PwC will invite promising students for interviews on campus. One is a behavioral interview to discuss how a candidate has managed and solved problems. A second meeting offers the chance to solve a business problem to demonstrate how a candidate analyzes a complex issue. For first-year MBAs applying to be interns, Herring has established a case study competition he calls “fiercest competitor” that challenges contestants to, for example, develop a business model for an Uber-like disruptor to vie for business against an entrenched incumbent.

That contest is an example, Herring says, of his efforts to engage students and bring new ideas to the recruiting process. It’s about balancing the need to evaluate people and making them want to work for you. He says the discussions about injecting more technology into the recruiting process can divert attention from a key goal.

“At the end of the day, our firm is all about our people,” Herring says. “And so we really invest a lot of time and effort into actual individuals.”

He worries that a reliance on technology could erode the personal touch, adding that while millennials might be digital natives, they’re also focused on “creating human relationships and trying to figure out what the best fit for them is. And so a lot of companies are doing a lot of the digital stuff, and so are we, in different areas. But at the same time, it’s important to remember that the personal relationships that you build with individuals and the way in which they see themselves fitting into this community is extremely important.”

For the millennial generation of graduates, part of fitting into a community is believing in its purpose. Matychak says the millennials who find their way to business school often express an urgency when it comes to purpose. Many of them want to be difference-makers now. And while undergraduates and MBA candidates express different attitudes—in general, Matychak sees a majority of undergrads still interested in working for big-name firms to launch their careers compared to master’s degree students—everyone is seeking meaningful work that goes with their jobs.

“They realize that they are the generation that’s going to need to fix the issues of the world from the generation before them. And I think that they truly are looking for ways in which they can change the world for the better,” says Matychak, who oversees career development for both undergraduate and graduate students, as well as course planning. “At the grad level especially, this idea of being a part of something that’s new, innovative, and entrepreneurial is important to them. They like the entrepreneurial nature of things because they realize the world around them is changing, and they want to be a part of it.”

Survey data support Herring’s and Matychak’s observations. Asked by the research firm Universum to name their career goals, Questrom undergraduates consistently cite work-and-life balance as a top priority. In 2017, students said they also wanted careers characterized by intellectual challenge, entrepreneurship, and innovation. By contrast, five years ago (perhaps with memories of the Great Recession still fresh), students said that after balancing personal and work lives, they were more interested in a secure job.

“Although we have more and more technology available to us, the students still want a personal touch. They still want to communicate with a human being to see how we explain the passion we put into it.”
—David Andersen, a lead recruiter for the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency

What students seek in an employer has also changed. In 2012, students wanted to work for companies known as innovative, with inspiring management, market success, and exciting products and services. Today’s undergrads want inspiring leaders and successful firms, too. But they also identify ideal employers as inspiring purpose and demonstrating ethical standards. (And they have access to data: they can check out sites like Vault.com and Glassdoor.com, to read employee reviews of corporate culture and compensation.)

Recruiters recognize these traits of recent graduates and adapt their approaches. David Andersen, a lead recruiter for the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, broadcasts a public service message when he speaks to business school students about becoming bank examiners.

“I tell them they can serve their country without wearing a uniform,” says Andersen, who served in the US Marine Corps for 21 years, including three as a recruiter, before joining the US Department of the Treasury four years ago.

Like other recruiters, Andersen, who is in charge of the northeast territory from Maine to South Carolina, uses various technologies, including Skype calls and the Handshake recruiting platform, to communicate with students. These channels can help extend his reach and enable him to stay in touch, but he adds, “Although we have more and more technology available to us, the students still want a personal touch. They still want to communicate with a human being to see how we explain the passion we put into it, and the belief that we have in what we are selling.”

That human connection is what drew Hannah Lombardo to the recruiting profession. In a way, the start of Lombardo’s career is like an expression of empathy. She understands what applicants are going through because she just finished an intense year-plus of networking and applications herself. She became a LinkedIn power user, researching potential connections for informational phone calls. She attended events at the Boston branch of Levo League, a professional network for millennial women, and followed up with people she found interesting to learn about their experiences.

Now as a recruiter, she digs into LinkedIn, but says it’s a tool, a catalyst for forming in-person connections. She says that while automated bots could be helpful in the pre-screening process for locating qualified candidates through a career website, such automated interactions can’t replace human conversations. She relies on the give-and-take to assess whether someone could be a good fit.

“You know when it’s a good conversation, when that person is interested in the job and asking good questions,” Lombardo says. “There’s a back-and-forth. It’s important that it’s a real conversation.”