Unwieldy, Sluggish Hiring Process? 3 Signs You Have a ‘Frankensystem’

It seems every day we see stories on social media where candidates are abruptly rejected, ghosted or forced to suffer through a months-long sluggish hiring process that fizzles out with no explanation.

Has recruiting lost its senses and suddenly stopped caring about candidates? Clearly not. More likely, social media is putting a spotlight on mistakes that used to happen behind the scenes.

Sluggish hiring process on social media

The question is, why do these mistakes happen in the first place? On #worktok, HR gets the blame. But I’d suggest that the real culprit is often mechanical—or rather, digital. It’s a hodge-podge of unreliable, siloed HR systems that frustrate recruiting teams and sabotage their strategic work. I call them “Frankensystems.”

Frankensystems wreak havoc across the entire HR life cycle. But given that the average cost-per-hire in the U.S. is $4,000 and it takes 24 days per worker, the costs and hours of running a Frankensystem can really add up during recruitment. To understand the damage they can do to your recruiting and hiring processes, we first need to examine the heart of the monster.

2 types of Frankensystems — and their dangers

Frankensystems come in two models. There are those of your own making, which typically resemble a web of disparate, shoddily hammered together point solutions Frankensystems. Then there are those you buy from an “all-in-one” software vendor. All-in-one Frankensystems are the result of years of poorly integrated acquisitions, consisting of half-built, siloed modules just begging you to enter the same data in two or three different places.

These two versions of technology fragmentation have turned recruiting pros into mad scientists, trying to reanimate dying software. Both share the same core weaknesses: They silo candidates and recruiting data from the rest of your HR systems. This major design flaw overloads hiring teams with tons of manual work, demanding extra time and people resources. To onboard an employee, for example, someone has to shuttle data from the applicant tracking system (ATS) to an offer letter in another system, then to the human resources information system (HRIS) to add them to payroll, then finally to the IT system to set up their apps and devices.

Of course, not every recruiting problem is software-related. How do you know if a Frankensystem is to blame? If you’re experiencing any of the following problems, take it as a sign you may have a monster on your hands.

Sign 1: Hiring managers can’t get tools, data

Hiring managers dealing with point-solution Frankensystems often have no way to access the right pipelines, reports or data. They might use a standalone ATS that isn’t connected to their HRIS, or try to build their own HRIS on top of their ATS. Point-solution Frankensystems work off static permissions, which are always out of date and require constant manual upkeep. It’s simpler to limit access to a subset of people in HR and Recruiting, meaning lots of hiring managers can’t get a hold of the resources they need.

If your hiring managers can’t close the offer with top talent because they’re too busy doing administrative tasks, you might have a Frankensystem on your hands.

Sign 2: Recruiting data inaccurate, out-of-sync

Disconnected ATS and HRIS systems also create data discrepancy problems. For example, the two systems may not agree on which candidates have accepted offers and who’s actually in-seat. Finance and Recruiting can’t agree on headcount when they’re reporting two different numbers.

Hiring is one of the most cross-functional processes in a company, spanning Finance, Recruitment, HR, IT and the managers across departments requesting new roles. When every stage of hiring happens in different systems, you have no single source of truth for your data and can’t align everyone on cross-functional objectives. You don’t know how many roles Finance has approved and when they can be hired, how many candidates have signed their offer letters or if new hires have the right laptop and software.

Without a headcount source of truth that stretches from applicant to fully onboarded employee, teams spend hours downloading, filtering and verifying recruitment metrics—even before trying to tie those metrics back to HR and finance data. As a result, it takes a few extra days or weeks to get offers approved and processed, and your perfect candidate has signed somewhere else in the meantime.

If your headcount plans, recruiting systems and HRIS aren’t in sync, you guessed it: You have a Frankensystem.

Sign 3: You do more manual work as it scales

Point-solution Frankensystems require you to re-enter information across every tacked-together application as candidates move through the hiring process. All-in-ones require heavy content customization, offering rigid and generic pipeline stages, feedback forms and candidate email templates. Neither type of Frankensystem can scale.

The lack of scalability draws recruiters and hiring managers outside of their Frankensystems to cobble together a manual process that works for their needs. Different hiring managers tend to adopt different processes, creating an inconsistent candidate experience and making it impossible to effectively measure and report on your recruiting effectiveness.

If your recruiting process becomes messier and messier the more you hire, better check for Frankensystems in your closet.

These three issues are annoying and inconvenient, to be sure, but they’re only symptoms of the real damage Frankensystems can do. When left unchecked, Frankensystems rot your organization from the inside out by attacking your most valuable asset: employee data.

Disconnected data blunts HR’s strategic impact

With HR playing a constant game of whack-a-mole with admin tasks, data errors and out-of-sync systems, there’s no time left to be proactive about improving candidate experiences, building high-performing teams and growing the business.

Frankensystem might be a humorous label, but its effect on the business anything but. In a 451 Research survey, 41% of HR pros and executives said data silos make it difficult to merge relevant workforce data to gain actionable insights.

HR systems house information on the most vital asset in any organization: its people. The reason HR is so underutilized as a strategic partner isn’t that they’re not capable. It’s because Frankensystems prevent them from getting the full story of employee data.

When employee data is fragmented across siloed systems, it severely limits your ability to conduct people analytics. You can’t determine whether your screening process is yielding the right hires without comparing interview feedback with actual performance reviews, for example. To get that answer, you’d need data engineers to structure your data, SQL experts to query it and business analysts to build dashboards to visualize it.

With only one piece of the employee data puzzle, it’s nearly impossible to spot potential risks around headcount, retention and turnover rate. In this current macroeconomic climate, with many organizations acting in fear of an upcoming recession, checking your vitals early and often is crucial.

Lose the Frankensystem or top talent?

If a Frankensystem is lurking behind your hiring and candidate experience problems, there’s no excuse to keep feeding it—not in a world where plenty of other companies are enjoying streamlined, automated hiring processes. HR Frankensystems are relics of a bygone era. They silo valuable data, piling on inefficiencies and obscuring insights.

When companies can’t offer streamlined recruitment experiences, they risk losing top candidates to their competitors. When companies repeatedly squander critical talent, they complicate their ability to execute strategic initiatives and respond to market changes. Hiring teams need user-friendly and scalable systems based on a unified, single source of truth for employee data that spans all their critical hiring functions: from headcount planning to sourcing to onboarding to time-to-hire tracking. If you want to attract top talent and stay competitive, it’s time to do away with your Frankensystem.