For as long as I can remember the Human Resources function has struggled with the task of communicating adequately with candidates. Whether it is to let them know you received their resume, that you have selected another applicant, or that the job is cancelled, we have never really done a very good job.

We have come a long way but even with all of the advances in Web 2.0 technology, the proverbial candidate black hole is alive and well.

In fact, I would argue that the biggest black hole in candidate communications is actually caused by the technology.

Here's why:

As soon as the world wide web made it possible for a candidate to apply to a job online, it gave us the ability to monitor and measure job seeker behavior before they ever express interest. It opened up a whole new world of recruitment marketing and employer branding. 

Over the 15 years of advancement in this area we have been able to measure everything from the referring website, to the pages viewed before applying, and most importantly how many candidates drop off and don't apply.

But as I look closer, I am beginning to wonder is the candidate drop off rate a self fulfilling prophesy?

Here is my take:

The other day I received an inquiry from a colleague. She was trying to convince her company they needed to purchase a Candidate Relationship Management (CRM) product and was looking for a good industry definition to be used in her business case. Over the course of the last 5 years the use of some sort of CRM tool on top of the applicant tracking system has become widely popular, but if you asked five people for a definition you might get six different answers.

Before we get into a specific definition, let’s start with the origins:

When you think about the Web 2.0 or 3.0 technology, you have to recognize that the value proposition has changed. For the last thirty years we have been deploying applications with one thing in mind. Efficiency. We needed to do more with less and so the purpose of technology used to be all about automation.

But lately it is a whole new ball game.