Recruitment - the art of matching qualified applications to openpositions within an organization - is one of the most challenging tasks forany Human Resources department. However, powerful open-source tools likePHP and mySQL have made the process simpler, more efficient and moreeconomical than at any time in the past. This case study demonstrates how,by building a complete job listing and resume management system fromscratch.
Before getting into the nitty-gritty of syntax and structure, it is important to understand the problems I am addressing, so that the functional requirements of the solution become clear. Very briefly, here they are:
1. Every placement call attracts a large number of resumes. Most of these resumes are printed documents, making it harder to search through them for potential candidates. Ideally, resumes should be made available electronically.
2. Resumes are not in a standard format. Different applicants use different templates, styles, and colours, making it harder to read and sort through the volume of data. Ideally, every resume should be in a standard format, with standard fields and some structure imposed on the data within.
3. With a large volume of responses, job applications may get misplaced or destroyed. Ideally, every resume, once entered into the system, should remain stored there with any data loss, so that it may be accessed at any time in the future.
4. Searching through a large number of job applications for specific skills or capabilities is a time-consuming process. Ideally, the resume database should be easily searchable against pre-defined criteria.
Having understood the problems, it becomes easier to decide on the requirements of the solution. An analysis of the problems above reveals that most of them would be resolved if I had a system which:
1. categorized resumes by job;
2. imposed a standard structure on the contents of a resume;
3. processed resumes electronically;
4. incorporated a search engine to easily produce a subset of the database matching specific criteria;
5. archived applications over a period of time;
6. allowed administrators to easily add and remove job listings from the Web site.
This, therefore, constitutes the initial feature set for the application, and serves as the guideline for future development activity.
This article copyright Melonfire 2001. All rights reserved.
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