How Tech Can Enable Better Recruitment
Tech advancements continue to revolutionize many industries — including recruitment. With COVID-19 ushering in the mass implementation of fully distributed teams and the resulting benefits underlining that remote work is here to stay, companies everywhere are seeking solid partnerships and tech automation to find, vet, hire and retain ready-to-work talent.
Recruitment technologies are far from completely replacing the human elements of hiring methods. Still, early exposure to, education around and incorporation of new and emerging recruiting technologies can make your business more competitive and poised for growth – especially in the quickly-growing remote world. Technology can help eliminate the struggles recruiters faced in the past, almost entirely eliminating location restrictions, resourcing challenges and communication struggles.
5 Advantages to Incorporating Technology in Recruiting
Digital tools, tech-enabled, team-building software and video/mobile assessments and interviews are inherently valuable for saving recruiting resources. However, they also provide additional benefits to your hiring process, helping improve your overall team and elevate company culture.
Increased Productivity
With traditional hiring processes, filling even a single role can take hundreds of hours scanning through resumes, vetting and interviewing applicants. Even with all that, you can’t 100% guarantee you’ve found the absolute best candidate for the job. By putting digital tools, AI and tech-enabled interview tools to work for you, you can free up your internal team to focus on essential functions without letting top talent pass you by.
Broader Talent Pools
Tech-driven recruitment methods offer remote and location-flexible companies a distinct advantage. When location is not a driving factor for hiring, it’s simpler to find the ideal candidate for a position based solely on skills, culture fit and experience. Plus, now you have an entire digital pipeline of qualified job seekers, already pre-considered, for your next open role.
Greater Diversity
Even with the best intentions, hiring managers can fall victim to unconscious bias. AI and tech-driven candidate software, though still programmed by humans susceptible to bias, are designed to focus on skills and fit rather than demographics. This approach helps highlight the qualifications of potential candidates who might otherwise be prematurely filtered out with a more manual approach, due to conscious or unconscious bias, and can bring greater value and diversity to your team.
Higher Engagement
More than 60% of job seekers say they’ve given up on a long or complex job application partway through. Inputting desired details like cognitive aptitude, core skills, specializations, education, and experience, AI platforms can better filter and engage job-seekers, encouraging them to provide the most relevant information that helps you make a better decision. By offering job-seeking best practices and insights to candidates, these tools help them optimize their engagement and set themselves apart as qualified, hirable professionals.
On the employer side, automated chatbots can help ease the volume of common application-related inquiries, and digital platforms like LinkedIn and Indeed both streamline and simplify candidate communications. When valuable resources, like job descriptions, company culture expectations and more are readily available, candidates feel informed and empowered to better engage with your team.
Superior Vetting
Some positions have advanced requirements, like HIPAA or other certifications and licenses. Tech-enabled recruitment tools can help you quickly filter ideal candidates according to those specific needs and more, including geographic location, past job titles and specific skills. Tech-driven filtering accounts for specific needs and can quickly match pre-qualified candidates with open opportunities, eliminating the need for secondary assessments and unnecessary additional interviews to prove skills. Additionally, tech-enabled recruiting encourages diversity and further eliminates unconscious bias by focusing solely on objective evaluation criteria, like cognitive aptitude and skills scores from pre-employment tests.
How Tech Can Enable Better Recruitment
Three types of emerging technologies — digital tools, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and online or recorded interviews — have the potential to quickly become vital components of a recruiting strategy.
Automated Digital Tools
Applicant tracking systems (ATS), job sites (LinkedIn, Indeed, etc.), automated talent sourcing and pre-vetting platforms and more can help expand your talent pool and simplify the hiring process by saving you time and resources that you and your team would otherwise spend thumbing through resumes. Some digital platforms offer homes for millions of resumes, assessments, company reviews and advice from experts in related fields, helping potential employees better prepare to succeed on your team. Once a candidate has officially started the hiring process, tools like voice introductions and interview prep and one-way interviews can help employers, too – especially in the remote workspace. By simplifying the sourcing and vetting process and allowing your team to review applicant information when it works best, these tools help ensure you’re getting top talent — even if you can’t meet with them face-to-face.
Artificial Intelligence
With the click of a mouse, AI-powered software can scan hundreds of resumes on job sites or your ATS, and automated assessments that adapt questions based on candidates’ previous answers can rule out ill-fitting potentials during pre-selection — even before you involve a hiring manager. AI-powered recruiting can also provide a superior candidate experience and significantly reduce the 42-day hiring timeline that’s standard for in-house recruiting teams. Chatbot, automated post-application emails and targeted ads help keep top-tier candidates from falling through the cracks due to endless back-and-forths, maintain open communication and encourage progression to next steps – or even retain for future opportunities.
Video/Mobile Assessments and Interviews
Once you source potential candidates, video/mobile assessments and interviews can help optimize the vetting process so you can hire the right person more quickly. Even more helpful, some platforms like LinkedIn even offer skills assessments that can be displayed on a job-seeker’s profile once passed or as required by a potential employer to complete an application.
Some companies, like Instant Teams – an innovative remote team marketplace powered by proprietary technology and processes – also use one-way communication to further assist with the interview process. Including a one-way video interview as the first post-application step is becoming increasingly popular: Candidates feel empowered to submit the best version of themselves without pressure, and your hiring manager can review the footage when and where it works best — no more scheduled interviews or weeder questions.
Tech and Remote Work Recruitment
While recruiting technology advancements are assets in any work environment, they can be even more valuable for fully remote teams. For companies that are open to team members from a broad range of locations — and aren’t dependent on 100% in-person sourcing or vetting tactics like job fairs or in-person interviews — tech-based hiring solutions can more efficiently open the door to find your ideal candidate.
