The Pony Express: Recruitment Then & Now

Recruitment in the Olden Days

On April 3, 1860, the Pony Express began using horse and rider relay teams to shuttle mail along a 2,000-mile route between St. Joseph, Missouri, and Sacramento, California. The trip only took 10 days, beating the previous time of delivery by stagecoach which normally took 25 days. They set a new standard for high-speed mail delivery, traveling around 75 miles at a time!

Sounds pretty quick and efficient, right? No? Well believe it or not, the Pony Express was the BEST way to find qualified candidates and handle recruitment at that time. That is until the transcontinental telegraph extinguished the Pony Express in 1861, of course.

Like the above recruitment flyer suggests, locating and choosing qualified candidates differed greatly during the Wild, Wild West era. We no longer choose candidates based on their appearance, and certainly not their lineage! Not to mention, we often don’t ask candidates outright to risk death daily…

… And Recruitment Nowadays

One of the biggest changes is that waiting 10 days to receive a piece of mail, news, or a reply letter is just ridiculous. Who needs to wait for snail mail when we have alternative news sources and communication systems? Yes, we’re talking about smart phones and the internet!

Nobody has to wait for their newspaper to read the day’s news any more – Not if they don’t want to. They can simply get online from a computer or their phone and find the same piece of news from several different sources. The same is true for the way we communicate. No more snail mail or landline phone calls, and we owe it all to text messaging and mobile apps like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and more.

Now, let’s think about this in terms of recruitment… A 10-day trip to find candidates? Obsolete. Sending them a snail mail decision? Definitely obsolete. Sorry Pony Express, but we think we’ll keep our internet! Nowadays, the recruiting and hiring processes are almost entirely done online. We use social media and job boards to find the best qualified candidates. Companies have applicant tracking systems to filter candidates and receive a good match’s resume and application.

Even the communication piece is handled via these systems! We don’t have to mail anything (or even make a phone call) to keep candidates in the loop. And the interview process? While it may still be beneficial to do this portion face-to-face, it is no longer necessary. We have applications like Skype, GoToMeeting, and FaceTime to handle virtual interviews. It’s time to embrace technology and our new way of recruitment!