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Now hiring: the kiosk as HR professional

Good help is harder to find than ever, especially in certain industries where human resource departments are strained to the breaking point. Kiosks can help, but must be implemented with a few key caveats in mind.

August 4, 2005 by James Bickers — Editor, Networld Alliance

Ask the manager of just about any fast-food restaurant what his biggest battle is, and chances are he won't point to food costs or operations or marketing. Most likely, he'll bemoan the Herculean task of keeping enough quality employees in uniform and behind the counter.

"You're talking about hires that require a volume of employees, and are always continuously looking for that volume of employees," said Ronald Bowers, senior vice president of business development for Frank Mayer & Associates. "In the fast-food industry, and in c-store, supermarket and big-box retail, all of those companies are looking for help on a regular basis. Some of them have turnover as much as 1,000 percent."

HR staffers tasked with keeping the employee rolls filled have their hands full, and for many medium-to-large companies, kiosks have become a solution. Most major retailers have at least one self-service job application device somewhere on the floor, but the jury is out on how successful they are - and whether they do a good job getting the right people to apply.

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Frank Mayer recently completed an HR kiosk rollout for Milwaukee-based Roundy's Supermarkets, a project that involved 113 machines. According to account executive Tom Casey, the goal was to not only collect applications in-store but to drive prospective hires to the company's online job application.

"They wanted to have a comparison of who applies online and in-store," Casey said. "The kiosk is an extension of the service provided to make the application process easy and less intimidating."

Unfortunately, the very nature of kiosks themselves might make these machines inherently intimidating to at least one pool of worthy applicants.

"For older applicants who do not have computer skills, (kiosks) may inadvertently screen out good candidates Â… who may be afraid of even a touchscreen, much less a keyboard," said retail consultant Jim Dion, founder and president of Chicago-based consultancy Dionco. "As older workers are becoming a real opportunity for a lot of retailers, they need to keep this in mind and have alternate ways of collecting job applications."

From a logistical standpoint, kiosks definitely make sense to employers looking to fill hundreds or thousands of positions over time. But companies that remove the human touch entirely do so at their own peril, said Ultan Feighery, president of human resources firm HR-otb.

Frank Mayer's HR kiosk design for the Roundy's supermarket chain

"In retailing, as in other sectors, you have to seize the opportunity to have a face-to-face with an applicant, have applicants drop in and say `hello' to the store manager," he said. "Then, if he or she meets the first line of defense, he or she is referred to the next level. This is a natural filtering system that is missed by the kiosk. It also creates buy-in on the part of the manager for the prospective new hire."

Due to the economies of scale, HR kiosks make little sense to the small businessman. That's unfortunate, as smaller companies could greatly benefit from some sort of hiring automation.

"The small businessman always takes it on the nose," Bowers said. "He calls in the newspaper ad and he gets people coming in all day and night, and he has to interview people just to find out that they don't want to work on Thursdays." He said that job application kiosks would be a tremendous boon to smaller businesses - a significant opportunity for the kiosk developer who can figure out how to make it work financially.

For the larger companies - those fast food chains and big-box retailers with the 1,000-percent turnover - HR kiosks do the dirty work of pre-screening applicants, so that the "real" human resources department can spend its time calling people who might actually work out.

"If you're going through a vast number of potential employees that are coming in, and you're trying to weed through the people who are going to be beneficial and come in and hit the ground running, it's a powerful, helpful application," Bowers said.

More research on these key terms: Human resources Retail Interface design

The very nature of a job application - and the amount of detail it requires - acts as a bit of pre-screening, as well.

"The average time it takes to fill out one of these applications is 15 minutes, sometimes as much as 45 minutes," Bowers said. "So an individual who is really looking for a job will spend the time. An individual who is not really serious about it, and it might be too strong to say this, but they're almost pre-qualified because they have to sit down, answer questions about address and phone numbers and contacts Â… the applications are written to cull out those who are just putting in their application every place and are not serious about one place over another."

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Frank Mayer and Associates

Kiosk Design | Manufacturer

Frank Mayer Kiosks and Displays specializes in large-scale rollouts of custom digital kiosks for enterprise and growth-oriented brands. With a relentless focus on premium design, customization, and end-to-end service, we manufacture self-service customer engagement solutions that expand market reach, boost sales, and enhance brand equity.

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