Imagine you are a branch manager and you just got back to the office from a business lunch meeting. You walk into your office and it’s absolute mayhem.
Your employees are running around like headless chickens. There are three people in one room filling out paper applications, four people on assessment computers and five more people standing around waiting for someone to pay attention to them. None of these people look happy.
It’s at this very moment you realize your office needs application kiosks.
If you don’t already have an application kiosk in your office, chances are you’ve given it some thought. Most people stop looking into it because of cost.
Of course, there are always really expensive ways to do things, and buying kiosks certainly can be very expensive. However I am here to tell you it doesn’t have to be that way.
For most offices, 4 kiosk computers will suffice. They don’t have to be killer machines, either. As long as they can run a browser and access the internet you are fine.
In fact, most of the time you can set them up with equipment you already have.
Step 1: You Need An Applicant Intake System
Do you have a website? Good. If not, head on over here.
Does your website have an applicant portal? If not, don’t fret. They aren’t that expensive.
What exactly does an applicant portal do? It allows visitors to your website to apply with your company online. They can add their name, address, phone numbers, SSNs and more. All of this information goes directly into your backend system.
If you already have one of these on your website you are halfway to having a full-blown kiosk system in your office.
Step 2: Install Computers In Your Office
Most companies have upgraded their desktops in the last few years. What do you do with all of those old computers? Make them into kiosks!
For most offices, 4 kiosk computers will suffice. They don’t have to be killer machines, either. As long as they can run a browser and access the internet you are fine.
Find some room in your office and get a cheap desk — one that can handle four monitors or four laptops. Deploy the computers by connecting them to your office network with an Ethernet switch and some cables (those will cost about $50-75).
As long as the computers can access the applicant portal on your website, you are now running kiosks!
Now those applicants can sit down at one of the computers and enter their information themselves. Your staffing specialists can focus on interviewing the candidate instead of entering all their information manually while they interview.
I’ve done this before and can promise you from experience this will speed up your intake process by about 20-30%.
OTHER TECHY DETAILS
The people who are coming into your office could be anybody. You want to be careful what they have access to. You can segregate the kiosk computers from the other computers on your network with firewalls/routers. This will keep people from hacking into your office computers.
Also, you need to protect the kiosk computer itself from misuse. This can be done in many ways, but essentially you need to make sure that applicants can’t access other websites. The only website they need access to is yours. Also, you want to disable almost all functionality from the operating system so the applicant can’t accidentally ruin the computer by deleting system files or other things of that nature.
I am sharing the inexpensive way to do this. You obviously can go out and buy specially made kiosks that have your logo on it and everything. Usually these kiosks have computers that are already configured for kiosk mode and have industrial strength keyboards, screens and roller mice. These can run you about $3,000 apiece.
I don’t normally recommend these types of kiosks unless it is going to be completely unsupervised (like at a mall), simply because of how expensive they are. If you have the money and can afford to get super sweet looking kiosks then more power to you! I say go for it, but you don’t HAVE to go that route.
Are you ready to deploy kiosks in your office yet? Let me know if you have any questions in the comments section below!
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
We were just discussing kiosks the other day. I’m relieved to read that it has been done successfully before and on a dime. All of my research was leading me to believe we would never be able to afford it. We have some old computers and laptop computers collecting dust. Can I use them do you think? I mean essentially they are just connecting to a website so the computers that we use themselves don’t need to be fast and new do they?
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They don’t need to be brand new by any means. However if they’ve been sitting around for a while you may want to clean out the dust! I have seen old machines shoot out flames (I’m not kidding) because there was so much dust near the power supply. Obviously this breaks the computer.
If possible, I would also recommend wiping the hard drive (if they are PCs) and re-installing a fresh copy of Windows. You’d be surprised how fast those old computers run with a brand new OS.
You mentioned the expense but is installation timely and difficult? What steps are involved in getting an applicant portal started on an existing website? Do you have to buy a whole package to get the functionality of the applicant portal and the backend?
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Installation of computers in your office takes a few hours. Installing an applicant portal on your website is an entirely different question.
There are many software companies who make web portals (including TempWorks – shameless plug). I would suggest giving the TW sales team a call and they can give you way more info than I could in the comments section!
http://www.tempworks.com/contact-us.php