PeopleSoft 9.2 Candidate Gateway – A more user friendly product, for your organizations recruitment needs.

GenNext of Peoplesoft recruitment solutions is here which is sure to create some ripples amongst its competitors in the ERP space. With substantially enhanced appearance the product looks more appealing aimed at not only simplifying the application process but also increasing productivity of recruiters helping them find the right talent for the organization.

Candidate gateway pages have been given a fresh look and feel which provides candidates a more intuitive way of applying for a job opening. This along with a new guided application process provides an attractive visual representation of application steps across pages increasing successful completion rate. Multiple pages involved in application process have been consolidated into a single process flow with a ‘Train Stop’ configurable process flow allowing users to tab in and out of a particular page while staying on the component.
A new review and submit page towards the  end of the process allows candidates to review the information one last time before final    submission. Something I feel should be present in all self-service screens which help to reduce administrative costs. A few tweaks have been made to the process to make terms and agreements and pre-screening questionnaires appear before candidates submit their resume. This allows candidates as well as organization to filter out unsuitable profiles even before the process kicks in.

More usability enhancements include enhanced search options very similar to popular job portals like Monster and Yahoo, where the applicant will have advanced search options to look for job openings by various parameters like job location or keywords. The Home candidate screen is also soothing to eye with improved fonts, style sheets, icons and better organized content like providing apply button next to every job opening and clearer statuses for notifications and activities.

Strengthened account management enhancements provide candidates the ability to retrieve forgotten usernames and passwords. Administrators can now configure password controls to strengthen security like applying password strength requirements, allowable password matches with username or primary email and setting password expiration options.

Over a long time since inception of Candidate Gateway in version 8.9, Peoplesoft customers have been looking for a more attractive and branded career sites. With the new release they will have the opportunity to publish a branded career site with company logo, images and attractive instruction text providing information about organization and recruitment process. This helps organization build a positive image in minds of candidates who are new to the organization and attract more talent. These sites provide configurable display options for job search and job application to the administrators.

A look back at the overall enhancements delivered in new candidate gateway release definitely suggests a much stronger candidate self-service experience for candidates. More intuitive career pages enables hassle free completion of forms, simplified process and branded career sites helps lift up organizations image in the market. This will be a big positive helping attract good talent since most of us tend to go by the look and feel of the career sites to make the first image about the organization which usually is the last also.

In my personal opinion while on one side the product is becoming jazzier functionality enhancements would have been a good value add as well. Enhanced interfacing capabilities with popular job portals like Monster, CareerBuilder and Yahoo! HotJobs would give the product a push forward. Almost all organization links up with external job portals to post job openings and it would have been handy to see a product that offers seamless integration with such portals reducing Total Cost of Ownership.

Also, in social media savvy world organizations are increasingly using LinkedIn and Facebook to tap talents suiting their requirements. Capabilities to integrate with social media websites as well as providing options to candidates to link their Gmail or Yahoo webmail accounts during registration would bring a new flavor to the application. Another aspect left wanting is an intelligent resume extractor facilitating auto fill of applicant’s details. A stronger extraction tool would not only speed up the process but also ensure an error free application without missing important information.

All said and done, the new release will make customers more adaptive towards Oracle Fusion which has a very similar front end user interface. Overall product looks much better than its predecessor with much enhanced user interface. For the time being although it would be safe to say that Peoplesoft candidate gateway still enjoys an advantage over other popular ERP recruitment solutions owing to lower TCO and flexibility, it faces acute competition from its siblings Oracle Taleo application in future. With Taleo a well-established product in its sleeve, it is just a matter of time Oracle comes up with a consolidated comprehensive recruitment solution.