Human resources: standardizing formats with webPDF
Whether it’s résumés, information from social media channels, or the results of performance reviews and guidance sessions, the human resources departments of today’s businesses are accumulating enormous amounts of data.
Much time will have to be invested in the information contained in these records if you want to draw conclusions on which to base your organization’s strategic decision-making – precious time that often has to be spent doing something else. Handling job applications is a particularly time-consuming task, especially when you consider how they are submitted in a wide range of different file formats. The most-effective way of getting a grip on this situation is by using webPDF to automate the process of standardizing all those assorted formats.
Companies today are storing an enormous amount of workforce data from many different sources. The big problem is that personnel departments simply don’t have the time to go through all this information to draw meaningful insights on which to base strategic workforce decisions, and in turn contribute to the success of the business. This was shown quite clearly by the results of a recent worldwide survey of 592 HR professionals in Europe, the United States, China, Australia and South Africa conducted by SHL and published in its Global Assessment Trends Report 2013. No fewer than 77 percent of those responsible for human resources said they did not know what impact workforce potential has on business outcomes.
Instead of dealing with strategic matters, people working human resources are mostly busy taking care of important day-to-day tasks. A great deal of their time and efforts – especially in midsize companies and large corporations – is spent on the job-application process, not least because of the many different file formats used when submitting personal documents, such as résumés, transcripts, letters of recommendation and samples of work, to name a few. The ideal way of avoiding changes in layout and other problems caused by the incompatibility of system-specific formats is to convert all of these documents to PDF – a process that can be very protracted and laborious unless it’s fully automated.
Relief is now available in the form of webPDF. This automated software solution runs in the background and ensures that the formats of incoming documents are standardized by converting them into conventional PDF files, or to PDF/A files for long-term archiving. You can optimize processes and vastly improve your workflow by implementing webPDF as an interface to SAP or other platforms. The automatic separation, conversion and saving of file attachments from job applications means that authorized users in your personnel department can access the documents from anywhere at any time. A truly remarkable and smart way of freeing up resources that can be used more effectively somewhere else.