Field note
What we actually open during an HR application audit
People ask whether we “look at the HR system.” Sometimes there is a system. Sometimes there is a shared mailbox, a cabinet, and a manager who keeps printouts in a car. An application audit follows the person who applied, not the tool someone bought.
We start with the public vacancy: where it ran, what it asked for, and when it closed. Then we ask for every application that arrived, including the ones nobody liked. If a file is missing, that absence is a finding. It is not a footnote.
From there the trail is ordinary and often messy. Acknowledgements. First reads. Score sheets. Notes that say “not a fit” with nothing underneath. Offer drafts. A rejection that was discussed and never sent. We do not need a dramatic failure to write a useful report. A quiet vacancy with three unexplained gaps is enough.
Clients in Sibu and further afield sometimes worry we will grade their software. We do not. We grade whether a later reader — a commissioner, a lawyer, a new HR lead — could tell what happened to a person who trusted you with a form.