While many readers are just starting to kick off their summer; here at iCIMS it’s upgrade season. Beginning a few months ago and continuing through the summer, all of our customers are getting seamlessly upgraded to iCIMS 10.

All of our 800 clients are learning that Version 10 officially supports Internet Explorer 7 and 8 for Windows users and Mozilla Firefox 3 for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Solaris users.  (Of course, applicants accessing career portals and employees accessing onboarding portals are able to use Internet Explorer 6, as well as an even wider variety of browsers, such as Mozilla Firefox 2, Safari2, Opera 8, Google Chrome 0.3, etc.).

However, they are wondering why iCIMS would like them to upgrade from IE 6…Some users (especially corporate users) can’t perform an easy upgrade; however there are plenty of reasons to start replacing this 9-year-old browser. Here are a few of them:

• Security.  Based mostly on security concerns, PC World rated Internet Explorer 6 the 8th Worst Tech Product of all-time. Now, keep in mind, Microsoft responds to virtually all of these reported holes with patches, but reportedly, new ones are reported at a pretty constant rate.
• Speed. Compared to newer versions of IE and other modern browsers, IE6 can be extraordinarily slow.  Try loading up a typical widget-full page running Java or Flash and see what happens. Modern browsers are optimized for this feature heavy experience and can easily load web pages faster.
• Lack of support for new features. Even on a job well done, IE6 can arbitrarily change style sheets, which determine where things are placed on the screen, making otherwise fluid web pages look ugly.
• It’s being left behind. Did you see the newest Lady Gaga cover jam? Maybe not if you use IE6. Besides YouTube, Google has also ended IE6 support for many of its services, such as Gmail. 
• Languages. While the internet has always been a global project (think: World Wide Web), the web is becoming ingrained across more and more of the planet. Just this year, ICANN, the organization responsible for assigning domains, approved the first Internet addresses to feature Arabic characters for Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the UAE. Why am I bringing this up? Well, Internet Explorer has some pretty big problems displaying Unicode and international characters, which can chip away at a global roll-out.

Of course, posting all of these reasons aren’t to say that we don’t like Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. In fact, much of the interactivity of today’s web is due to developments made to IE since it debuted in 1995. Because IE6 has many flaws, Microsoft has been encouraging users to upgrade or download its many patches. In fact, the newer release IE8 is a much better tool and is a significantly better offering.

Agree? Disagree? In the comments below, feel free to let us know what you think!

If you're into the newest tech gadgets or even if you turned on the TV this last week, you might be aware of a new tablet-based product that's supposed to remake the way we interact with the internet. Whether Apple's new creation will be a momentary trend in the evolution of the web, or a true game-changer, is yet to be seen; either way, as the role of the web gets larger, web applications are expected to cover more ground and look even prettier. This isn’t likely to change.

I'd like to pose a question in this post: Considering the above, how can Web 2.0 improve in the next few years? Like the certainty of death and taxes, graphic interfaces and performance will always be expected to improve. But in what way? iCIMS has always treated feedback as a cornerstone of its customer service. We work with both clients and non-users to keep improving the Talent Platform. In fact, iCIMS wouldn’t be celebrating its 10-year anniversary without some input and improvement along the way and we have no plans to stop. (If I’d stopped listening to advice when I was 10… well…)

Plenty of people have a grandstanding vision of what they see in the future of applicant tracking and software-as-a-service. I’ll start.

Personally, I would like to see SaaS grow alongside the same principles while retaining an openness that’s different for every user. Some systems might lock users in without the option to change or add to the software, but I think a healthy mixture of high-configurability and ease-of-use should be the de facto design choice. This configurability means that power users who would like to change their software a bit more can utilize a vast quantity of options while users with less tasks to perform in the system will have a much more defined set of tools for use – still powerful, but not confusing. All within one system.

We offer a configurable system in the Talent Platform, and that will only improve as the needs of the marketplace and our customers change. So what would you like to see? Where do you see Web 2.0, SaaS, or HR Software in the next few years? Please comment below!

So hey, let’s talk about slime molds. Sure it’s relevant, and besides, we’ll get to HR in a second.

According to research revealed this month, scientists in Japan grew a single-celled slime mold and placed it in a case that mimicked the layout of Tokyo. In order to monitor the mold’s behavior, these scientists took 36 pieces of oat flakes (to represent Tokyo and its surrounding towns) and placed them in the case. As the scientists expected, the mold grew long circular tubes to reach the pieces of food. A mere 26 hours later, not only had the mold developed an efficient network for getting all of the food, but the grid was starting to look very familiar. In fact, when transposed on a map of the current Japanese railway, the rail and the mold networks were extraordinarily similar. What people had taken years to develop, a mold had figured out in a little over a day.

Sometimes this happens. In a desire to remove inefficiencies, people test out their processes. And, when a solution needs to be implemented, oftentimes, the organically grown one is the best.

With quickly-developing technology, it’s sometimes easy to forget that the best solutions we use today are often those "basic" ones. When you’re looking at talent management, some providers host many bells and whistles, while others focus on their "basic" tools. Either way, each company must inevitably decide what kind of talent management system they want. Is it the old staples or the new-school features? The trick is to figure out what works for you (and what doesn’t): Networking events? Video job postings? Employee Referrals?

This is why we here at iCIMS like configurability in our applicant tracking software. We stress it. If you’re hiring candidates or managing your current employees, you’ve got to have the ability to test out different tools in the system in order to see which work. In the end, the talent management program should be very user-friendly.

For example, we let our clients take advantage of the Talent Platform’s configurability by doing some things for free that other providers usually charge for: we offer unlimited custom fields, workflow settings, screening questions, a robust searching tool and much more. This lets you use a piece of HRIS technology, that’s based on your needs, wants, and preferences, without having to manage your source code.

So keep experimenting and do what works; if a brainless slime can do it, so can you.

Sure, you might be getting some applicants, but could you be missing out on a lot more? To get a better idea of what I mean, check out this Washington Post article from September:

Applying for a job with the federal government can be a miserable experience. Announcements of vacancies are often written in arcane, incomprehensible jargon; applications can stretch for dozens of pages; one branch of an agency might not have any idea of the hiring needs of a second branch.

Unneeded jargon, Unreadable, Hard to navigate, Stuck in the ‘90’s -- Is this you?

There are so many reasons to create a nice-looking, fluid, and easy-to-use career site that if you’re guilty of the above, it might be time to refocus. You could start first on content, for example. Make sure that all of your job listings are concise and don’t scare potential applicants. In fact, before an interview, the language you use on your career site is one of the most telling indications of what it would be like to work for a company. If it takes ten minutes to click through links just to find your open jobs, candidates might think they’re walking into a bureaucratic nightmare. Likewise, if your job searching tools are outdated and hard to use, they can easily make your company look behind the times.

Here are some other quick tips to making your websites a little more current:

1.       Trackers– Website trackers and free tools like Google Analytics can tell you a lot about visitors to your website: how long they stay, where they come from, what they do, and more. Plus, they might help you figure out why they leave: do candidates flee your website one second after a full-page splash covers up all of your content? You know what to do.

2.       Keep it simple – I mentioned this above, but keeping your career site accessible bears repeating. If candidates are getting lost just trying to find your career site's open jobs, you won’t be getting a lot of follow-through. I’ve heard complaints from applicants at some career sites who’ve actually had to leave the corporate site and go back to Google to find the open jobs page. Unless a critical job skill is escaping a labyrinth, don’t do that. Make an easy to see “Careers” tab that lets job-seekers go right to your page and see your openings.

3.       Video – If done right, videos can be a fantastic way to engage your applicants. Consider Whole Foods, an iCIMS client that uses sidebar videos from real employees to tell applicants about the benefits and opportunities for working at Whole Foods. Making these videos can be cheap and easy to embed in your page, and also show how employee-oriented your company is.

4.       Social Linking – Add some web tools and social media. Google maps, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and beyond: all of these resources are fantastic. With LinkedIn and Facebook, potential applicants can see if they know anyone else at your company. Google maps lets applicants see where your jobs are and whether they’d mind commuting to the office. Of course with all of these, it’s important to ensure that you’re using tools that are actually going to motivate candidate or increase your company’s perception -- there’s no point of creating an interesting tool on your career site if no one’s going to use it. Likewise, don’t link to your Twitter account if you don’t use it; why direct potential talent to a ghost town?

5.       Search Agents –Why limit your ability to reach out to candidates only when they visit your site? Letting candidates opt-in for email alerts for specific types of jobs, search agents are pretty cool and are offered with iCIMS’ Talent Acquisition software.

6.       Keep it Simple – If a candidates leaves after page 92 of your job applications, it may not be their fault. Screening questions and assessments are vital for pinning down the best talent, but sometimes you can scare applicants away by asking too many questions. Keep it simple and remember that you can always reach out to them if they match your requirements – people are appreciative when you save them time.

These are just a few ways to spruce up your career site, but there are dozens of things you can do to create a better environment for candidates -- you can even experiment. But, at the end of the day just make sure that for all the money you're paying to attract new hires, you aren’t scuttling your plans on a poorly designed career site.

Happy holidays! 

Uh oh. One minute, someone’s kid is petting a pig at the state fair, and within days, your whole office is down for the count: HR, IT, Accounts Receivable and Payable, the FedEx guy – everyone has the flu (relax- I know it doesn't really come from pigs). Unfortunately, there’s not much you can do at this point, besides send everyone home for helpings of CDC-mandated Chicken Soup and Orange Juice.

But is that really the best option? During your typical flu season, work tends to pile up, but in the next few months, HR professionals are expecting an unprecedented number of absences across the board as H1N1 lodges itself in the bodies --- and fears – of the working population.  In fact, in a study done last month by the Harvard School for Public Health, only one-third of businesses are confident they could maintain operations if half of their workforce reported absent due to H1N1. That said, what’s a business to do?

Enter Software-as-a-Service, and the beauty of the Cloud Revolution. Because of the internet, a growing number of employees can work from home with an unparalleled access to the tools and technologies they would otherwise only have at their desk. Already, tools like Google, VPN and WebEx let workers communicate and collaborate over the web, but a number of companies are starting to harness the advantages of SaaS to do more robust work, regardless of where they work from. Companies like iCIMS.

With tools like the iCIMS Talent Platform, Human Resources staff and managers can manage the entire recruiting lifecycle from home or anywhere else. Accessible through a common browser, users can easily handle Applicant Tracking, Onboarding, Candidate and Employee Management, Requisition creation and much more. 

Plus, these technologies are some of the best ways of fighting Presenteeism, a trend where employees come to work despite being sick. While this might sound like a good thing (“office hero!”), it’s really only good for spreading the flu, and obviously, it’s better to have one employee out than ten the week after.

Of course, the jury is out on whether H1N1 is going to be the threat it's being made out to be, but any time companies want to take some of the sickness risks out of the office (or just help save some money on transportation costs) the advantages of Software-as-a-Service are pretty clear.

Now, instead of refreshing the Google Flu Trends website at the first coworker’s sniffles, Human Resources can just go home and work on their recruiting initiatives from their home office. And, if they really do get sick, the bed and cartons of OJ are just steps away. 

It's the middle of summer in iCIMS-land and most of us are longing for the beach: sitting under the cloudless sky, reading trashy novels and watching seagulls steal our sandwiches. Don’t be fooled though, there’s always staffing work to be done, and summer is a fantastic opportunity for any business seeking seasonal employees. Whether it's a law firm looking for summer interns, a tax preparation company getting income tax specialists during April, or a retailer looking for help on the floor during the holiday season, there’s always a need for seasonal hires. In fact, according to a CareerBuilder study, 34% of retail employees during the summer are seasonal hires.

While it’s always tempting just to get out of the office, there may not be enough time to sort through all of your incoming applications, emails, and paperwork as it is. But let’s step back: if you’ve done the right work, started your game early and have staffing plans in place, you deserve that cool drink by the shore. Now, while we’re not ashamed to toot our own horn here at iCIMS and say we’ve got a pretty comprehensive solution for seasonal and mass hiring needs, there are a couple of tricks that might even go beyond software.

For example, this AllBusiness article has some pretty good ideas for getting young talent. Since many college and high-school students have time-off during the summer, they’re usually a good start. Think of a plan to raid the local schools and universities, and do it early. While there are plenty of students willing to put in summer work, you need to give yourself enough time to evaluate your need across these applicants. Checking Social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace is also a good idea to find driven workers. You might also find plenty of retirees looking for work as well, so be sure you tap into these circles, as well.

Another valuable pieces of advice is to encourage referrals. If you have happy, dedicated employees already, why not let them help source your candidates? Referral programs are typically cheaper and more efficient than other means of sourcing, and they can boost morale across your organization. Many employees wouldn’t mind working along a friend or two, and if these are quality employees they’ll likely supply quality referrals. After all, your workers certainly want to look good within your company - and make a little bit of the referral bonus you’re offering. (You are offering one, aren’t you?)

Remember, your organization’s success depends on how it responds to industry trends and demands. And if you prepare with the right mix of workers at the right time, you can stand on solid footing as a recruiter, even wearing sandals and a pair of sunglasses. But don’t get too comfortable – the holiday shopping season is only 4 months away!