High volume seasonal hiring made easy, well, easier

For this installment, I'd like to discuss a large merchandising company that does high volume seasonal hiring, mostly to meet the demands of the large retails they service.

During peak hiring, over 500 people on any given day are in some stage of the online hiring process, from initial filling out a job application, to interviewing, through internal approval, store assignment, completing various new employee documents, I-9 and e-Verify, and finally payroll setup.  Much of the rest of the year, volumes are lower as they do maintain an ongoing hiring process year-round.

This company's web-based onboarding package of documents consists of over 25 forms and includes the job application, questionnaire, EEO survey, background check authorization, and various government forms like the W-4, I-9 and state tax withholding forms.

A powerful routing capability was custom developed for their hiring process on top of the Yozons e-signature platform.  Based on the applicant’s geographical location, the package of documents is assigned to an area manager.  The area manager does the initial review and then assigns the package to a specific store manager to determine whether to hire the candidate or not.  Alternatively, the area manager can override the area manager step and simply send the hiring package directly to the applicant.  Once hired, the package of documents is sent to the employee to complete all of the onboarding paperwork.  The package is then routed to the store manager to verify the employee's identity for the Federal Form I-9, and then it's routed to payroll.

With government and legal compliance concerns (i.e. “Failing to comply with Form I-9 requirements” is $110 to $1100 fine per employee -- see http://www.uscis.gov/i-9-central/penalties), this customer’s core requirement is to ensure legal compliance, to decrease the time to process all of the hiring paperwork, as well as the ability to search for onboarding packages from the past and to keep up-to-the-minute status of ongoing new hires.

Yozons rapidly built a custom HR onboarding system using our enterprise web service software.   This customer has been using their system since 2007, and they have yearly requirements to keep their system modern, useful and up-to-date with HR laws and regulations.  With this custom solution they are able to coordinate their hiring with over 100 HR staff spread across a large multi-state region.

If the shoe fits, wear it proudly and with style

There's an old expression that the cobbler's children have no shoes.  There is some truth to the idea that those who work hard producing a product rarely have the time and energy to do similar, but uncompensated, work for themselves.

At Yozons, while it's true that we've built many far more complex systems for our customers than we ever did for ourselves, we are not cobblers, and we've always lived with the contrary motto that we should "eat our own dog food."  And we do, though we think it's way cooler than dog food.

Here at Yozons, we use our technologies in myriad ways:

1. Our secure document delivery capabilities are used to communicate updates with investors.  On occasions, it's also use to transfer sensitive information that doesn't fit the solutions listed below, including credit card information, SSNs/EINs, etc.
2. Our main sales agreement and invoice incorporates a 7-step workflow that starts with the sales rep, goes to the order reviewer only if there is custom forms development, is approved by a sales manager, can optionally be approved by a customer reviewer for technical and pricing correctness, is then signed by the customer, countersigned, and finally processed by accounting to reconcile payments by checks or those automatically charged when a credit card payment is used.
3. We have an online sign-up form that customers can use to purchase directly using a credit card, which is then routed to technical support for installation and then accounting for payment reconciliation.
4. We use e-Docs to store files and scanned images (such as -- thankfully rarely received -- faxes) in our secure repository.
5. We have an individual contributors license agreement for those who help provide software code and/or documentation assistance.
6. A mutual NDA is used when dealing with parties who need private details about our company, and more often, so those parties can divulge private details about their projects and plans with us.
7. We have a sales agent and reseller agreement for engaging sales representatives and resellers.
8. A partner developer agreement for those who help build custom solutions for our customers.
9. A patent license agreement with royalty provisions for those who purchase a license to our U.S. Patent No. 7,360,079.
10. And finally, a credit card authorization form mostly for those whose credit cards on file need to be updated.

In subsequent postings, we'll describe briefly how our various customers use our technologies, as they seem to handle a wide variety of tasks that differ dramatically from our own cobbler's needs.