Logging on for a job

EDGEWATER, N.J. — The Pathmark supermarket here is hiring. But walk-in applicants need not bother asking for a manager.

First, they have to get past the computer.

“Join the Pathmark Team!” welcomes a screen built into a black and gray kiosk, tucked between the store’s customer service counter and a display rack full of beach balls. “Right now, we’re looking for people who think big and dream big — people a lot like you.”

The automated greeting, and screen after screen of multiple-choice questions that follow, are part of a new approach by some employers to filling their ranks of hourly workers.

A growing number of retail chains and similar businesses frustrated by near-constant employee turnover are entrusting the first step of the hiring process to computers, designed to zero in on applicants likely to do a job well — and stay a while.

To do that, the computers gather not just names and Social Security numbers, but also work to size up an applicant’s personality, and provide hiring managers with a list of questions for follow-up interviews.

Online screening systems issue reports on applicants almost immediately, grading them as green, yellow or red — the last a warning of a potentially problematic hire.

One retailer, Houston-based crafts chain Garden Ridge, even has its screening system set to page store managers so they can catch choice applicants before they walk out the door and apply at a competitor.

Companies including The Sports Authority Inc., Blockbuster Inc. and the Golden Corral Corp. steakhouse chain have also adopted the online screening systems. Many companies using the systems have installed in-store terminals or telephones equipped with screens and keyboards especially for the purpose, while others direct people to apply on company Web sites.

“I think it’s really going to take off because the technology for how people are screened is changing so quickly,” said Donald M. Truxillo, a professor of industrial psychology at Oregon’s Portland State University who studies the online systems.

“Our philosophy is to let the technology do the heavy lifting,” said Richard Harding, director of research for Kenexa Corp., a Wayne, Pa., firm that designs and administers online assessment systems.

Online screening incorporates personality tests similar to the paper-and-pencil versions used by some employers as far back as the 1940s. But computers use the results much more systematically, letting managers instantly rank candidates or dip into the pool of applicants who have sought jobs at other stores in the same chain.

“You’re able to prequalify people and focus really only on the people who look like they have the best chance of success,” said Charles Handler, an industrial psychologist whose firm, Rocket-Hire, is a consultant to employers in choosing the systems.

That’s only the start for some employers. Some continue to use the systems after making a hire, feeding worker performance data — like a clerk’s sales commissions or the amount of time it takes for a waiter to “turn” a table — into the computer. That data is then used to help fine tune questions and desired answers that can be used to screen future hires.

That helps employers “close the loop,” said Kim Beasley, a spokeswoman for Unicru Inc., a Beaverton, Ore., firm that makes the screening systems used at more than 50 retail and restaurant chains including Pathmark Stores Inc. and Sports Authority.

“We partner with companies throughout the employee life cycle,” Beasley said.

Online assessment could prove particularly valuable at big retailers and restaurant chains whose employee turnover rate runs as high as 200 percent a year, experts say.

Such employers, almost constantly hiring, are looking for ways to predict which job candidates are less likely to leave once they’re hired, and help them cut down on the cost of finding and training replacements.

“They just lose people about as fast as they can get them in the door,” Harding said. “What it really comes down to is, are you (the job applicant) going to stay there longer and produce more?”

Some employers say the system not only helps them settle on the right workers, but also reduce the time — and money — needed to find them.

Since Rock Bottom Restaurants Inc. began using a Unicru system in late 2002, turnover in its brewpubs has tailed off from about 110 percent annually to 91 percent.

The change may be partly due to the soft labor market, which has kept people from changing jobs, but some of it almost certainly due to hiring choices aided by the computer, said Ted Williams, senior vice president of the brewery division at the Louisville, Colo. company.

Lowering turnover has an immediate impact on profits. Restaurants spend an average of $500 to $600 to hire and train a new employee. But the actual cost of a new worker is closer to $2,000 because they are less productive while they learn the business, Williams said.

The system has also saved managers time that takes them away from running their restaurants, he said.

“If you can screen out at least the ones (candidates) you shouldn’t be talking to, that is a huge get-ahead,” Williams said.

Finish Line Inc., an Indianapolis-based athletic footwear chain, has found online screening particularly useful because the computer spots gaps in work history and helps managers, many of them young and with little experience in hiring, structure interviews.

“It really helps store managers ask all the right questions because it gives you all the questions to ask,” said Mike Marchetti, the company’s executive vice president of store operations.

Some researchers are concerned people will see the new technology as impersonal and find it a turnoff.

Some systems offer applicants minimal explanation for the process and ask inappropriate questions, Handler said.

That could be a mistake since most applicants for store jobs are also shoppers at those stores, and a bad experience with a hiring system could sour their image of the company, he said.

But Truxillo, the Portland State professor, said job seekers will probably get used to the idea over time. He compares it to pre-employment drug screening, which drew protests from some workers 15 or 20 years ago, but has become fairly routine.

Some job seekers may even come to see it as a faster, easier approach of applying, he said.

“You get really quick feedback and maybe some people would rather not deal with a real person at that point in the process,” he said.