Reasons Technology Has Made HR Roles More Convenient

Are you considering a career in Human Resources? Smart choice. Working in HR may not be as glamorous as other domains, but as you’ll soon realize it’s one of the most important departments in any Australian company. Or anywhere else in the world for that matter. A successful company relies on having a good HR team and their opinion is one of the most valued when it comes to making important decisions.

At the same time, recent technological developments have made work in HR much easier and more fun than it used to be. If you’re thinking about a dusty office with desks crumbling under piles of files you’re clearly thinking about the HR office as it was 20 years ago. Now, most of the work is done on computers and you get to use some very exciting programs.

How does technology help HR managers

One of the most important tasks of an HR manager is to hire new employees. It’s by no means the only one, but it’s vital for any company to have an efficient HR team able to make the best decisions.

Decades ago the work of an HR employee was to read tons of CVs and conduct an endless string of job interviews. Both tasks are interesting, but they’re also exhausting, or used to be, as at present the workload has been significantly reduced.

Take for instance the many CVs a recruiting agent has to go through. The number of resumes you’ll be required to read is vastly reduced by using software to scan all the CVs and select those candidates that best fit your needs. You can use the software to input certain qualifications or so many years of work experience and the computer will only pick those that fit the bill. The rest of the applicants will be set aside and you won’t have to deal with them.

If you want, you can use various software programs as a form of preliminary job interview. You can have the applicants take personality tests or English proficiency tests if you’re hiring foreign nationals. All these tests can further reduce the number of eligible candidates, which leaves you with less work.

What are online background checks

As you gain more experience in HR you’ll develop an ability to read people or to assess whether they’re reliable or not from a simple interview. That’s all very good, but being a good judge of character should not make you skip background checks. An ex-con can be very convincing and this is a risk you cannot take. It’s not a personal risk, it’s putting the whole organisation at risk.

Fortunately, Australian HR managers now use predominantly online background checks like an ANCC police check. It’s all thanks to modern technology that people don’t have to go to the police station anymore for what, in most cases, it’s just a routine check. You can use an online background check service and you get a full background check on a job applicant in 24 hours or so.

Technology makes the work in HR so much easier and it frees up more of your time, which you can dedicate to improving the workflow or find ways to improve work conditions, as that’s also part of an HR manager’s work.