By Deborah Thoben
Led by Sjoerd Gehring, the current head of Global Talent Acquisition at Johnson & Johnson, J&J is disrupting the status quo for HR by improving the candidate experience. After years of work and collaboration, Gehring and his team have created “J&J Shine,” an innovative career platform created for candidates frustrated with the traditional hiring process and its lack of transparency. According to Gehring, Shine is a truly, ground-up effort that wasn’t modeled after any other existing system. The platform responds to a candidate’s desire to track their application progress step-by-step much like they do their consumer packages.1
However, transparency isn’t the only advantage of the new Shine system for candidates. Job descriptions have been edited for mobile so that they can be more quickly read and applied to. Carefully curated content is available to help job seekers better understand the hiring process. And, if a candidate doesn’t win the position they applied for, J&J Shine is capable of suggesting alternate job openings at the company when available.1
On the employer side, J&J has partnered with an augmented writing platform called Textio to help improve the phrasing of the company’s career postings. Aided by artificial intelligence, J&J is now able to write compelling posts that will appeal to intended prospects and will eliminate text that might turn prospects off. For example, by making minor changes to postings that were skewing masculine, the company has been able to increase their female applicants by 9%.2
Gehring notes that with over a million applicants for more than 25,000 job openings per year, his company is in a unique position to “disrupt the talent acquisition process.” “We have a level of freedom and agility to make changes, but also the muscle and discipline to invest in innovation.“