Integrating digital crucial for future of recruitment
RECRUITMENT has evolved over the years into niche spaces that focus on specific skills and industries. However, although this narrowed focus is something that has changed from the broader approach of the past; what has always set recruitment companies apart is the speed and accuracy of placements.
As the landscape keeps changing, technology has emerged to help recruiters become more efficient than ever by removing manual processes and enabling them to focus their skills on the human element. This has become a crucial differentiator in finding the right candidates quickly in a fast-paced digital world.
The first stage of any recruitment process is screening through the myriad CVs on record to find those that match the job requirements.
If this process is done manually, it is laborious and can take several days before a shortlist of candidates can be drawn up.
With technology solutions in place, however, this manual process can be made far more efficient.
Algorithms can be used to perform this first-line screening and confirm a basic match of skills and qualifications to the job specification in a matter of hours, not days, which vastly improves turnaround times in the first stage of screening.
This eliminates a significant point of inefficiency and ensures greater accuracy.
When jobs need to be filled, they often must be done at short notice, and it can be frustrating for clients to have delays resulting from inefficient processes and a lack of suitable candidates.
Technology helps address both these issues. Once the initial screening has been done and a shortlist generated, recruiters are then able to apply their skills and knowledge to determine which of the compatible matches might be a fit for the job.
They can also conduct initial interviews with shortlisted candidates via video with a list of basic questions so clients can more easily see the person and a little of his or her personality to determine whether he or she might be a good fit for the job and company culture.
In this way, only pre-vetted candidates need to be called in for interviews, which makes the entire process more efficient for all parties concerned.
Technology also helps to improve transparency throughout the recruitment process, something that has always been a point of frustration for candidates and clients.
With manual processes, spreadsheets and reporting, it is difficult to gain visibility into where exactly in the process a particular candidate or job specification is.
With a live system, the entire process can be made visible from start to finish, and trends can be determined quickly and easily. Recruiters can also see whether a particular job is taking longer than it should to fill and can then investigate the reasons behind this, and take steps to mitigate the delay.
There is no technology in recruitment that can replace people, but technology can be used to greatly enhance efficiency, reduce placement times, and improve the accuracy of candidate matching.
Fundamentally, it empowers recruiters to better utilise their skills to find the right person for a job.
However, the people skills remain crucial, because no software can replace the human ability to understand cultural fit and other, less technically defined elements of recruitment.
The automation of the process does, however, allow for a more holistic approach because it frees recruiters from the labour-intensive, manual first-stage processes.
Ultimately the best person for the job may not be the best candidate on paper, and identifying this needs the right blend of technology and human skills.
A recruitment partner that embraces and leverages technology to provide the best outcomes in the shortest time frames for clients and candidates offers an edge over the competition by ensuring everyone’s time is optimised, and transparency is assured throughout.
This increased agility enabled through the right blend of people and technology is fast becoming crucial for the future of recruitment.