Recruiters are the brand ambassadors of a company as they are the first people with whom a candidate interacts. In addition, HR plays a crucial role in shaping the culture and talent of any organization. From personnel management role to a business partner/strategic role, HR has undergone tremendous changes in the last decade. While attracting the right talent is still one of the most important functions of HR, the changes in business needs and technology have made hiring one of the top challenges faced by companies across the globe.
Recruiters, it’s time to go Digital!
Along with qualification and experience, candidates should also meet additional needs like adaptability to organizational culture, openness to changes, ability to learn, agility etc. It is but natural that an “ideal” candidate will be inundated with job opportunities. In order to sustain in the fierce hiring battle, recruiters and manpower consulting companies must go the digital way in their business model.
Online job portals like Monster, Indeed and CareerBuilder have helped in reaching out to candidates across different geographies and industries. They have also helped in building good candidate pipelines for recruiters; an indication of the changes to come. Then came the applicant tracking system that helped to easily manage candidate database via company-promoted employee referral policies, job postings on Social Media, and so on. But to meet changing business needs, faster and better solutions are needed. Below are a few digital innovations to leverage in the recruitment process:-
- Chatbots: Recruiters spend substantial time to find a good resume, conduct preliminary interview and shortlist candidates. It is a tedious task to communicate with candidates especially when there are large number of applicants. A Chatbot can assist recruiters through timely communication with all applicants. Chatbots can reach out to potential candidates, conduct initial screening and even update the applicant tracking system through various channels like SMS, email, social media etc. This makes sure candidates are well engaged and connected to the company.
- Avoid unconscious bias: Hiring should be an objective decision rather than a subjective one. Most of the time, recruiters are influenced by stereotypes and prejudices, which can lead to wrong hiring decisions. A data-driven digital system or software program can eliminate unconscious bias made in the hiring process, ensuring that hiring decisions are objective and biases toward gender, race, age, etc. are removed.
- Crowdsourcing: Companies like Glassdoor have made it possible for job seekers to get an inside view of a company through crowdsourcing. This includes information on compensation, organizational culture, career progression, learning opportunities, etc. Such platforms have made it easy for candidates to compare between different companies. Recruiters, on the other hand, can get real time feedback about their company from the reviews written on Glassdoor by former or current employees. By being active on such forums, they can also keep an eye on the pros and cons of the competitors.
- Avoid wrong hire: It is said that 70% of the employers check the social media profile of a candidate before making a hiring decision. The social media profile can reveal the hobbies, interests, skills and social circle of the candidate. How fit a candidate is to an organization’s culture can be assessed based on her/his social media sharing habits on subjects like gender, age, race, politics, or even previous employers and job profiles.
To summarize
It will be difficult for recruiters to keep up with the volume of hiring using traditional methods. “The market is broken, as evidenced by the fact that 75% of workers submitting applications don’t hear back from employers and 54% of employers say it’s become more difficult to find qualified candidates,” says Eyal Grayevsky, CEO, Mya System. In the future, it might even be possible to predict when someone decides to change jobs using Big Data. To hire the right candidate in this digital world, it is imperative for recruiters to forsake traditional methods and embrace the digital ways of recruitment.
