How to Step Up Recruitment Efforts via Technology and Sourcing Providers

The recruitment process is one of the essential and crucial moments in building a successful company, team, or business. Although people have been recruiting employees for ages, the process continues to upgrade, improve, and change.

Recruitment has become a more targeted and “scientific” process.

Advances in technology in just the past decade have drastically altered how recruiters and employment managers seek and find the talent they need for their position openings.

Just consider the following changes:

• Internet-based job boards allow both employers and candidates to search for their best matches.

• LinkedIn and other niche-related social media platforms now serve as “matching” venues for employers/recruiters and candidates.

• General social media platforms have also gotten into the recruitment and employment business. The major ones now have groups related to specific business sectors and niches, and recruiters and candidates find one another through these.

In fact, 73 percent of millennials, the largest group of job seekers today, state they found their last position via a social media site.

As Marie Fincher, Employment Manager for Supreme Dissertations, states: “We are always looking for qualified researchers and writers.

Once we established a presence on Facebook and Instagram, our pool of candidates skyrocketed. These continue to be our best sources for talent.”

• Digital scanners now comb through submitted resumes looking for keywords/phrases, in order to screen out the most promising candidates for further review.

• Resumes and CVs are submitted digitally – no more hard copy, snail-mail submissions.

• A mandatory recruitment tool is an organization’s presence on major social media platforms where it can showcase its brand. Today’s job seeker, both active or passive, will check out a company on social media.

Some things have not changed

What has not changed is the need to create exceptional job postings.

Employers and recruiters, especially in highly competitive areas, must craft postings that are engaging, compelling, and will motivate talented and qualified candidates to take a second look.

Writing such a job posting is not easy.

Not only do you have to provide plenty of detail about the position opening, but you also have to present your organization as an amazing place to work.

This can be a tall order if the right individual(s) are not on staff.

For this reason, a number of organizations do outsource this part of the recruitment process. 

Fortunately, there are lots of freelancers (found at sites such as Upwork or Freelancer who have plenty of successful experience writing a job posting.

And a number of professional writing services that have all developed business writing departments that include creative employment posting writers.

At the same time, these writers can craft social media profiles and website content that will promote a company in ways that attract the types of candidates it seeks.

Enter state-of-the-art technology and candidate sourcing providers

Anyone in the HR field is well aware of recruitment agencies and has most likely used them at some point.

The traditional model of such an agency has been to receive job needs from a company and then to comb through their files for likely candidates and/or create job postings for publication in a variety of places.

Often, these agencies will conduct initial screening interviews as well. Ultimately the top candidates will be presented to the company.

Technology as a disrupter of traditional methods

But just as in every other sector of the economy, technology has disrupted the recruitment industry too, and now sourcing providers are offering technology to make the entire process far more “scientific.”

Consider just the impact of artificial intelligence (AI). It has now taken over many of the mundane tasks that recruitment professionals formerly performed.

Candidates can be categorized by any number of factors, and machines will churn through these categories to deliver lists of those who meet all criteria of a position opening. 

Suppose, for example, that a company is looking to increase the diversity of its staff, perhaps by gender, age, or ethnicity.

Or suppose you are looking to convert passive candidates to active ones? Where are they? With the right algorithms in place, AI can churn data from anywhere and present the best matches for further review.

AI can be and is used in almost every segment of the recruitment process, including:

• candidate sourcing

• candidate matching

• finding and hiring remote workers

• receiving referrals

• expanding the talent pool

• reducing or removing bias

AI has seriously changed the way recruiters do their jobs, and it does most of the “dirty work” for them.

Once the technology finishes its selection process, the recruiters are left with only the best candidates to interview and potentially hire. 

The role of sourcing providers

Using this, along with other time-saving technology, sourcing providers are giving recruiters the ability to tap into all that data science has to offer. 

Suppose, for example, that a company wishes to know and understand the level of resentment rejected candidates have after the recruitment and interview process is over, and how to reduce that level.

The research and analytics that AI can offer will point employers in the right direction for follow-up with those candidates so that they see their experience as a positive one.

Resentful candidates talk, and do so on social media – your brand’s reputation can suffer in future recruitment.

According to a 2019 Talent Boards research study, candidate resentment has increased by 40 percent over the past three years.

Organizations must take steps to reduce this.

Sourcing providers offer a suite of cloud-based software solutions for companies that want to:

• Reduce the cost and save hours in recruitment efforts

• Identify and sort candidates by specific skills and talents, through scientifically-based technology

• Strengthen and streamline the candidate review process

• Reduce rejected candidates’ resentment

• Integrate with a company’s current systems

• Receive lists of qualified candidates on a regular basis, based upon the organization’s historical and current needs.

Boosting employer branding

Another amazing benefit that your company can get from using technology in its recruitment process is to improve its own reputation.

The best candidates in your talent pool are looking for a company that will provide:

• great working conditions

• technology in the workplace

• chance to grow and improve

You can show them just how technically equipped, modern, and professional you are by using these latest methods we’ve covered above.

So, if a chatbot handles the very first phase of the recruitment process, the candidates will be more interested in continuing their collaboration with you and potentially becoming your employee.

Technology can show them your company is the right place for them to be, and there’s no reason for them to hesitate about becoming your team member.

The future of recruitment is now

Any organization that wants to save money and time in the recruitment and hiring function, as well as enhance its processes, would do well to make use of available technology and sourcing providers.

They offer the most scientific approach to finding top talent and put control of the process where it should be – in the hands of the company’s internal HR function.

As seen in the examples above, technology and sourcing providers improve the recruitment process for everyone involved.