I’m a fan of HR Technology. I think the right tech tools do a lot to empower an HR team to drive business processes and deliver results. On the flip side, the wrong—or broken—HR Tech can derail even the best team and work against them, rather than for them.

Recently I talked with a friend who is looking for a new job. In the last six months, she’s submitted dozens of applications and resumes online. She hasn’t said much about the experience until the other day.

“I submitted my application and didn’t receive any type of reply,” she said. “Usually, I receive at least the ‘we’ve-received-your-application’ email. But with this job, I didn’t even get that message.”

Ever the proponent of the system working, I asked if she was certain that she’d entered her email address correctly.

“Yes, I went back and checked that,” she said.

Still, nothing.

Thankfully, she’s moved on. But I haven’t.

There’s a fundamental problem with the experience this organization is creating for their applicants. Does anyone in their Staffing organization know they have a problem?

To avoid this type of less-than-welcoming experience for applicants or any other user who interacts with your HR Technology, you must test the experience from the user’s side. Even if the HR Tech is working as it should on the back end, you can’t know that it’s working on the user side unless you regularly test it. For example, when is the last time you:

  • Set up a fake profile and applied for a job using your organization’s applicant tracking system (ATS)?
  • Logged in to the learning management system (LMS) as a manager who wanted to assign an eLearning course to their employee?
  • Completed a performance review or provided peer-to-peer feedback using your human resource management system (HRMS)?

If it’s been more than three months, I recommend setting aside some time within the next week to review your HR Tech from the end user perspective. Put on your “user” hat, and test the system. Push it to the limit. Consider asking some other people on your team to do the same. Compare notes. If you find something is wrong, fix it.

Today’s best employers (the places where everyone wants to work) do everything they can to ensure that they engage top talent. Behind that engagement is an HR team that uses (and tests) their HR Tech to guarantee systems are delivering and supporting a positive end user experience for candidates, employees, and everyone in between.