Whither hast thou gone, HR-XML?
I spent a little while looking around for sites, blogs, or new software that supports the XML standard called HR-XML (Human Resources XML).
I did not find any.
I have come across an XSLT stylesheet or or two in the past. They transform HR-XML into other formats, but they have been around for quite some time.
I have not found any major websites that are touting it. I have not found any major sites or desktop programs that support capturing skills/experience information from a job-seeker, and then storing it in HR-XML format.
Without such software or websites, there just are not going to be a whole lot of HR-XML documents floating around or stored in repositories.
The last time the page on the topic HR-XML was updated at xml.coverpages.org was in December, 2003. It contains a quote about the purpose of this file format standard.
HR-XML Consortium:
The .xsd XML schema files for HR-XML formats have been out for several years. Several years ago, Microsoft and Monster.com announced they would be supporting the standard.
Only 20 pages that even mention the subject can be found at the Microsoft public website, which is where I would assume it would be mentioned if an MS product was supporting it.
About half of these pages are not in English - but in German, Russian, French, Chinese, etc. A white paper on the subject of HR software recommends implementing technologies like HR-XML - but fails to mention any such software.
The Monster.com website says that Monster currently does not have the ability to understand HR-XML documents. It seems to have stalled and died there.
From what I can tell, the file format looks usable. I tried it out a little once, and I was able to to through the process of creating a document in that format.
I used an XML IDE to do it, which was a little awkward but it worked. Such IDEs are pretty expensive commercial applications though, costing almost as much as a top-notch word processor. A person would not need to update their career info very often, so such a cost is not justified - except among serious XML developers. I expect most people would balk using a program that cost a hundred or two hundred dollars to enter their resume!
The necessary schema for performing automated validation and other things has been created. Technology exists to convert the documents into nicely formated HTML pages or PDF documents. There is a certification process that is in operation. Human resources companies are meeting regularly to this day to discuss HR-XML. There is even a HR-XML blog covering on-going activities.
I gather companies are using some of the standardized document formats to exchange data. It surprises me that programmers have not created applications, websites, and web services so developers can input their career info into it and then submit it to recruiters or companies where they are interested in working.
If such HR-XML aware software or websites exist, I do not see them. I think that is kind of a shame.
If used, the HR-XML file format would make it easy for programmers to support a wide array of free or low-cost programs to do resume searching, browsing, printing, summarizing, bookmarking, saving, ranking, and so forth. That is, of course, the advantage of having one standard file format for something - especially an XML standard file format for that thing.
Right now, it seems like it is all on the developers to do so. The standards guys have done their stuff.
I did not find any.
I have come across an XSLT stylesheet or or two in the past. They transform HR-XML into other formats, but they have been around for quite some time.
I have not found any major websites that are touting it. I have not found any major sites or desktop programs that support capturing skills/experience information from a job-seeker, and then storing it in HR-XML format.
Without such software or websites, there just are not going to be a whole lot of HR-XML documents floating around or stored in repositories.
The last time the page on the topic HR-XML was updated at xml.coverpages.org was in December, 2003. It contains a quote about the purpose of this file format standard.
HR-XML Consortium:
HR-XML's efforts are focused on standards for staffing and recruiting, compensation and benefits, training and workforce management.
The .xsd XML schema files for HR-XML formats have been out for several years. Several years ago, Microsoft and Monster.com announced they would be supporting the standard.
Only 20 pages that even mention the subject can be found at the Microsoft public website, which is where I would assume it would be mentioned if an MS product was supporting it.
About half of these pages are not in English - but in German, Russian, French, Chinese, etc. A white paper on the subject of HR software recommends implementing technologies like HR-XML - but fails to mention any such software.
The Monster.com website says that Monster currently does not have the ability to understand HR-XML documents. It seems to have stalled and died there.
From what I can tell, the file format looks usable. I tried it out a little once, and I was able to to through the process of creating a document in that format.
I used an XML IDE to do it, which was a little awkward but it worked. Such IDEs are pretty expensive commercial applications though, costing almost as much as a top-notch word processor. A person would not need to update their career info very often, so such a cost is not justified - except among serious XML developers. I expect most people would balk using a program that cost a hundred or two hundred dollars to enter their resume!
The necessary schema for performing automated validation and other things has been created. Technology exists to convert the documents into nicely formated HTML pages or PDF documents. There is a certification process that is in operation. Human resources companies are meeting regularly to this day to discuss HR-XML. There is even a HR-XML blog covering on-going activities.
I gather companies are using some of the standardized document formats to exchange data. It surprises me that programmers have not created applications, websites, and web services so developers can input their career info into it and then submit it to recruiters or companies where they are interested in working.
If such HR-XML aware software or websites exist, I do not see them. I think that is kind of a shame.
If used, the HR-XML file format would make it easy for programmers to support a wide array of free or low-cost programs to do resume searching, browsing, printing, summarizing, bookmarking, saving, ranking, and so forth. That is, of course, the advantage of having one standard file format for something - especially an XML standard file format for that thing.
Right now, it seems like it is all on the developers to do so. The standards guys have done their stuff.
posted by John Collins | 3:26 PM
3 Comments:
OpenSkills uses it, and was doing so at the time your post was made.
Thanks, trejkax. I found the site for OpenSkills at http://openskills.org/ using Google search.
The format of the online resumes published is decent. Here is an actual resume as an example.
It would be nicer if instead of just having a since and last-date field for skills, they actually had hyperlinks to each relevant job listed under each skill.
Other than that, pretty nice.
Open Skills does not seem to make the resume available to the public in whole or in part in HR-XML file format.
Seems like having an abridged version in HR-XML that summarized some basic things would be useful.
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