Till just a decade ago, recruitment was all about credentials. A CV dotted with names of the right institutions and companies the candidate has worked for, a stack of impressive academic credentials and work experience certificates, and glowing referrals from past colleagues were essentially all that were needed for a candidate to stand out from the rest in the eyes of a recruiter.
More parameters to evaluate
With changing times, the list of things to consider when evaluating a new candidate has lengthened considerably. In addition to academics and work experience, HR professionals must also look at personality, charisma, ability to learn fast, a fit with the culture of the organization, and a lot more. While this has meant there are more things to be evaluated, fortunately, as in many other situations, technology is at hand to offer some aid.
Potential for technology in recruitment
It is estimated that only about half of talent acquisition professionals use technological tools to discharge their responsibilities more efficiently and effectively. Applicant tracking systems, online assessment tools, and video interviews are among the options that offer much scope to improve the recruitment process. What is interesting to note is that 90% of respondents polled by Korn Ferry were not worried about AI taking away their jobs, and nine in 10 recruiters want to work with new technologies.
How technology has impacted hiring
The impact of technology on recruitment can be seen in the following ways:
Social recruitment
Recruiting through social media is one of the fastest-growing channels to source talent. From a fringe concept, it has grown substantially in the past few years. The following are the things to note here:
- Social media offers a different perspective of a client, outside of professional and academic aspects. It could help a company know what makes the candidate tick and judge how well the candidate fits with the culture of the company.
- Job openings can be presented very attractively on social media, more so than on traditional media tools. This attracts more candidates, facilitating a better selection process.
- Targeted marketing of companies becomes easier, and they can reach the candidates matching their profile requirements more quickly and efficiently.
- People are on social media more frequently and for longer durations than other online tools. This offers more opportunities to engage with them.
Security through blockchain
Keeping HR data secure is one of the prime concerns of talent acquisition professionals. Filing cabinets are far too old-school, and antivirus and security software can only do so much to protect online records. The advantage of blockchain is that data can be stored in a decentralized fashion with no security concerns, by definition. Blockchain makes the system more secure, along with the added advantage of transparency, as anyone with access rights can access the data at any time, without any fears of data tampering. It becomes easier to store data on work performance, training programs and other candidate data securely, leaving more time and energy to focus on better assessing candidates and their fit with the organization.
Using mobile apps to get closer to candidates
For a HR professional, delivering the right information to the relevant candidate is among the more challenging components of the recruitment process. Seamless communication is of the essence, often not facilitated by traditional, common means such as email and telephone calls due to – among others – delivery issues. By requiring all candidates to use the mobile app, the entire data set comes in through one channel, allowing analyses by recruitment teams as well as data science professionals. Interviews can be more thorough and emphasize more on character analysis, due to time freed up from sourcing and segmenting the data by conventional means.
Storing data on the cloud
Data storage, security and accessibility are perpetual challenges for HR teams. Job openings could be advertised well and excellent recruitment campaigns could be run, but the risk of data being compromised does not go away. The problem often lies in the fact that traditionally, data has been stored on physical media, which is prone to manipulation and by definition takes up physical storage space. Cloud storage avoids all this by keeping all but the most trivial information on the cloud, minimizing security requirements at the user end. It also works out to be significantly more economical than buying and running hard drives or other physical storage media.
The big impact of big data
Big data implies a big influx of – well – data to companies. Data science tools allow the talent acquisition team to analyze and understand candidate requirements and expectations better, and facilitate a more accurate match between these and the requirements of the job(s) at hand. New hires too can be monitored better, with analytics allowing a projection of future performance and thus letting HR professionals plan better.
Technology has clearly already had a significant impact on recruitment, and there will be more to come in the near future. Human resource professionals would do well to enroll for talent management training programs that train them well and certify their abilities to work with the newest technology.
