How HR Department Can Use Technology to Enhance the Recruitment Process

In the last 10 years technology has changed every industry radically – some have grown exponentially, some have changed shape and some others have all but perished. As the HR industry flirted with technology, recruitment took centre stage. Afterall, it is one of the toughest HR challenges to solve. The war for talent is showing no signs of abating and every organization is trying to outwit it’s peers to reach the best candidates out there.

Today, technology is being applied to all stages of recruitment, right from resume sourcing to screening to interviewing to candidate profiling and predictive analytics. Automation of routine tasks is freeing up recruiters’ time, allowing them to make a paradigm shift from reactive to proactive sourcing.

As recruiters become more and more tech-enabled, they are able to engage with stakeholders like  hiring managers, candidates and employees, in much more sophisticated and effective ways.

1. Talent Search

Attracting the right talent is the first piece of the recruitment puzzle. It is also the biggest time guzzler in traditional recruitment. Between posting jobs, managing the job posts to making sense of the data, the recruiter was left with little time to engage effectively with hiring managers or candidates. The job had started to resemble that of a postman.

While hiring managers were worried about the long delays in hiring, candidates applying to jobs felt their resumes were going into a blackhole with no information on next steps.

Today, easy availability of technologies like Automated Job Advertising is helping free up recruiters’ time. Mobile-optimised careers sites with features like autofill or Apply with LinkedIn make it simple for candidates to find and apply for roles.

Applicant Tracking Software have also undergone a makeover, enabling features like candidate segmentation. Recruiters can now blend predictive analytics and data-driven methods to create the best pipelines and keep the focus on the warm talent pool i.e candidates most likely to engage.

Further, the rise of social media, the shift in workforce demographics, and easy access to information have transformed how candidates approach employment prospects. So, another technology that is disrupting talent sourcing is recruitment marketing - think job ads, paid media, social media, etc. Many organizations are using these to showcase their Employer Brand and increase brand awareness.

 2. Candidate Screening:

It is well known in recruiter circles that most of the people who apply for a job are actually underqualified. In the past, recruiters had to manually sift through thousands of such resumes to arrive at a small number of relevant candidates.

Not anymore. Automated pre-screening systems eliminate candidates who do not meet the basic requirements of a position.

Further, advanced analytics like most efficient sources of hire, time-to-hire by role and candidate origin, rejection analysis etc. are enabling recruiters to work more intelligently. They can now focus only on candidates most likely to succeed.

Insight from current employees makes it possible to ascertain what makes an employee successful, how to identify the right candidates, and what makes your company appealing to potential future employees. Once identified, this information can be leveraged in recruitment to identify best fit candidates.

Some companies are already testing waters by using the technology to screen entry-level employees. They have candidates playing neuroscience-based games to assess traits like memory, risk preference/aversion, focus etc., followed by video recorded interviews that are analyzed by AI for things like keywords, intonation, and body language etc. All of this can happen on a smartphone or tablet.

Another Rec Tech startup is using algorithmic analyses to filter applicants. The applicant matching system creates a detailed ‘fingerprint’ for every candidate using neural networks and machine learning, factoring in personality, interests, skills and demographic background in addition to traditional criteria such as qualifications and experience.

3. Interviewing

While traditional, in person interviewing, is not going to fall out of favour (and it should not) anytime soon, technologies like video interviewing – both live and pre-recorded, are bringing immense flexibility to the process. Video Interviewing allows employers to connect with candidates anywhere in the world, regardless of location or time zone. The in-built time and cost savings also make these platforms attractive from a budget point of view.

Interview scheduling has been such a big administrative burden for recruiters that they spend on average ⅔ of their overall hiring time on it. Sometimes it can take up to 2 hours to schedule a single interview. With pre-recorded interviewing option, recruiters no longer need to play secretarial ninjas – find slots and booking calendars for the always busy hiring managers and candidates.

Video interviewing also boosts compliance in recruitment through superior process transparency and improved consistency. Consistent interview questions leave less scope for unconscious biases, and a uniform scoring system creates much-needed structure and accountability in interviews.

Many organizations don’t use full-fledged video interviews but request pre-recorded candidate introductions along with resumes/applications. These intros are then analysed using AI based applications for any potential strengths or red flags.

4. On-boarding

Not every candidate will join your organisation. But every candidate will have an opinion about whether your organisation is worth joining. – Deloitte researchers

And this opinion can/will be shared ad nauseum on the worldwide web for anyone to see. It is common today for candidates to look up reviews of potential employers on websites like Glassdoor that offer insights into an organization’s culture, benefits offered, and even information on the kind of compensation you could expect. We have officially entered the era of consumer-grade Candidate Experience.

A great candidate experience is defined by timely feedback. If you look at it from a jobseeker’s point of view, the job search can be tiring and frustrating. Finding open positions, applying, and then preparing / appearing for multiple rounds of interviews is time-consuming and takes a lot of effort. Organizations that reward that effort by providing meaningful feedback, even to unsuccessful candidates, set themselves apart by making all candidates feel valued.

This is perhaps the simplest application of technology in the whole process with immense benefits in Employer Branding. Simple tech applications can keep candidates informed throughout the hiring process. Recruiters can send tailormade automated messages to applicants depending on what stage of the process they are on and if they have applied previously. This allows multiple touchpoints with the same candidate, keeping the opening fresh in their minds.

Rec Tech can also be leveraged to increase the speed of hiring. The right technology can help recruiters speed up the whole process from interview to offer.

From hiring candidates to onboarding new employees, video can help make every step more engaging. Hiring companies can use Clipchamp, a web-based video editor, to create job posts, company culture videos, welcome messages, team introductions, and other videos to simplify yet boost the experience.

5. Parting Thoughts

The last decade in recruitment truly belonged to Artificial Intelligence (AI) or should we say, the promise of it. Afterall it is the only truly exciting thing since the advent of internet job boards.

The technology has been portrayed simultaneously as both the answer to all of recruiters’ problems and their nemesis. The reality lies somewhere in between. While it can be remarkably useful in pre-screening candidates and streamlining the candidate experience, it is not without limitations. For starters, AI does not make purely unbiased decisions. Because the machine is trained to find patterns in previous behavior, any human bias that may already be in your process – even if it’s unconscious – can be learned by the system and then repeated.

So, where does that leave the current crop of Rec Tech solutions? Well, as the technology matures and early adopters gain perspective on its strengths and limitations, we can expect it to play a supporting role behind the scenes – rather than take centre stage, at least in the recruitment process.

Finally, we must remember that the end goal of all Rec Tech remains the same: to attract the right people for a role. The success of your recruitment tools must be measured by calculating pre- and post-conversion rates, time-to-hire, and cost-to-hire. Resourceful recruiting boils down to one question: are you getting your money’s worth?

Author:

Dr. Neha Manchanda is a founding team member of GreenThumbs. She is an Organizational Psychologist & experienced Executive Search consultant. She has been a strategic partner to numerous global and Indian conglomerates, helping them identify and recruit top talent for their businesses. Over the last decade, she has successfully helped close several key positions at leadership levels. She also serves on interview and selection panels of various companies and institutions.