Re: Enabling a job applicant to resume a submission later

[Russell Fulton <r.fulton () AUCKLAND AC NZ>]

On 16/12/2010, at 10:08 AM, Clifford Collins wrote:

> Folks,
> I've been approached by one of IT's analysts about a potential project our HR department is contemplating that would 
> enhance our current, home-spun, online job application service. HR wishes to allow a job applicant to resume filling 
> out an application over the course of multiple sessions and over many days.

late in on this one...

We recently have reworked our Enterprise Person Registry (EPR) and Application for Admission (AFA).  One of the 
requirements for AFA was that Applicants be able to fill out stuff over an extended period so we reworked EFR to handle 
what we think of as soft identities as well as the official ones.  The idea is that someone can enter the system and 
establish and identity using 'openid' or even just an email address. If you tell us that you have an existing 
relationship then  as we find out more about the you the system automatically tries to match them to known official or 
soft ID.  At the point where the relationship becomes official (student enrols or applicant gets a job,...) then you 
are issued with an official ID and you use that from then on.  

If you have an official ID but don't know it/have forgotten it (alumni - contractors, etc)  you can establish a soft ID 
to start the process of recovering your official ID.  We are currently working on a project to make it easier for 
alumni to get back into the system (so we can get more money out of them :) but many of the targeted people are older 
than our current ID system so we are setting up some new options to help people find their official ID and set up 
credentials in a reasonably secure manner.  This is not straight forward as one credential have been established they 
can be used to get an academic transcript so we need to exercise some care to make sure that the applicant is in fact 
the person who the ID belongs.   The assumption is that this will be a two stage process where we mail out urls and 
then have people fill in some stuff that they should know but which isn't in the email -- not fool proof but better 
than nothing and a lot better than simply mail out credential which is what we were initially asked to do.  (Marketing 
and privacy would appear to be an oxymoron :(  )

The soft IDs can be used to access semi public stuff that need to store data on the systems without the hassle of have 
complicated registration processes.  The system has been in place for about a year now and we are very happy with it.  
It comes with the ability to reset password on the soft ID etc. so if you start enrolling for semester 1 and find a job 
 but decide 6 months later that you do want to go to uni then you can pick up where you left off even if you can't 
remember the password you used (assuming you have not changed your email address) -- Hmmm... I think you can get a 
reset code via text  if you have put in a mobile numbers too ?)

Russell