How HR Departments Can Use Tech to Improve the Recruitment Process

Hiring the best talent for a vacancy can be quite challenging, especially in the current job market. However, technological advancements in human resource management have made things easier. In this article, let’s explore how you can use technology to enhance your recruitment efforts.

Using Technology to Hire Better:

Technology can do quite a bit to help HR departments overcome conventional recruitment and hiring obstacles. The market is flooded with various such solutions. Let’s discuss how some of them can help you with multiple aspects of hiring.

1. Using Sentiment Analysis Software to Enhance Candidate Pool

To hire the right individuals, you must first work towards capturing their attention effectively. Most HR professionals struggle with this area as they don’t know what the top candidates are seeking from a new job or a company.

When you are looking for the cream of the crop, you are searching for individuals in high demand. Thus, you can expect these candidates to be a lot choosier. The vacancies you post must be capable of drawing in the right candidates. This is where sentiment analysis software can help. 

Sentiment analysis software can help you figure out the specific keywords and terms that individuals seem to be looking for in job descriptions. It can also offer insights into which keywords in your job description might be turning good candidates away.

Sentiment analysis software makes it easy for you to construct the ultimate job description. As a result, you will find that your candidate pool looks a great deal more promising than it ever did before.

2. Employ Programmatic Job Advertising to Identify Target-Rich Environments

It’s not just enough to draft the best job description possible. You also need to know where to post such job descriptions. Otherwise, all the hard work you have put into it will go to waste, and you will end up with less than ideal candidates.

To ensure that this doesn’t happen, consider using programmatic job advertising. This type of technology uses algorithms to determine where your ideal candidates head to when they look for a job.

Your programmatic job advertising platform will consider sites where similar job postings appear. However, its work doesn’t end there. Instead, it also finds the sites and postings that have the highest number of clicks. Therefore, if you were to post your job opening on such platforms, it is much more likely to be seen by the right people.

One of the best parts about programmatic job advertising is the fact that it is automated. Once the program has identified the perfect places to post your job, it will immediately place your ad there. 

3. Rely on Recruitment Marketing Software to Snag the Right Candidates

Once a potential candidate has read through an excellent job description, they are bound to be curious about the company that has posted the vacancy. These days, candidates give a lot more importance to an employer’s brand image than they ever did before. 

Candidates prefer to work with companies that have a culture, value system, and vision that aligns with their own beliefs and career aspirations. This is where recruitment marketing technology can be especially beneficial.

Recruitment marketing software can help you build and share your brand image across the right channels. It gives your potential candidates a good starting point for learning more about your company. 

Recruitment marketing can fetch you more applications from people who believe in your cause and are, therefore, likely to be a better fit for your organization. On the other hand, it helps you save time by keeping candidates who don’t share your values at bay.

4. Engage Talent Rediscovery Tools

Often, you end up rejecting perfectly good candidates and are forced to pick one over the other because you have only a few open positions at that time and cannot accommodate all of them simultaneously.  

It’s advisable to keep such candidates on your radar since you have already interviewed them and have a fair idea of their suitability for a job, whenever the opening comes up again. Moreover, these candidates have already expressed an interest in working for your organization, which indicates that they might be willing to do so in the future too.

With such a candidate pool, you can potentially save yourself a significant amount of time, effort, and money. You may end up closing the position almost instantaneously, rather than beginning a whole new search from scratch.

As the name suggests, talent rediscovery tools are excellent for storing and retrieving details related to specific candidates. In this way, even though you had to pass on them at a certain point in time for various reasons, you will still have their information in your system and retrieve it instantly.

This is especially helpful in large organizations that receive hundreds and thousands of applications for a single job opening. Whenever there is a new opening, the HR team can apply the job criteria to an existing candidate pool. The talent rediscovery tool can determine whether or not there is already someone in the system who could be a suitable match.

5. Improve Your Career Site 

There is a fair chance that your company already has a career page on your website. However, in most cases, companies only list their job vacancies on this page and leave it to applicants to email their resumes to them if they are interested in any of the openings. However, not all applicants may follow through with the email, and what you end up with is a wasted opportunity.

You can optimize your career page by including an application form or procedure on it. In this way, when people land up on your page, they will be able to instantly sign up with your company and apply for the available open positions. 

This will not only hurry up the application process, but it will also ensure that you do not let candidates slip through the cracks, only because they did not have a simple, straightforward path to apply for the job.

There are a variety of recruitment software solutions and applicant tracking systems that can help you revamp your career page and make the most of it.

6. Cut Down on HR Queries by Using Chatbots

Once you post a job, your HR department may receive a barrage of inquiries. More often than not, candidates have similar doubts and queries, and it can quickly become extremely tedious for the HR team to answer the same questions repeatedly. 

Fortunately, chatbots can help you along this process. Not only can you use them to address doubts and queries, but you can also use chatbots to let candidates apply for the open position. You can also use chatbots to screen candidates and set up interviews.

According to a survey, over 20% of candidates didn’t mind having a chatbot answer their initial queries about the interview process. Almost 30% of these individuals had no issue with organizing an interview via this option as well. Around 25% of candidates said they would be quite comfortable with the chatbot assessing their skills.

Chatbots are a quick and easy way to handle the more mundane aspects of the recruitment process. It will leave your employees more time to deal with the more crucial elements of their job.

7. Run Online Background Checks

Background checks are critical, and yet organizations rely on age-old techniques to carry them out. Gone are the days when you would have to dedicate resources or hire agencies to run from pillar to post to verify various details about a candidate thoroughly.

These days, there are a variety of free and paid websites that allow you to find public evidence on virtually anyone. All you need is the name of the candidate and a few other simple details, and in return, these websites will provide you a comprehensive insight into a candidate’s background.

8. Consider Gamification Strategies for Complex Roles

Certain positions are relatively easy to fill within a company. It is a simple matter of considering qualifications and experience and seeing how well they match the job requirements. However, some jobs require candidates to have more complex skills such as creative problem-solving capabilities, the ability to think quickly on the feet, and more.

As you can imagine, it isn’t always easy to identify these capabilities with the help of a traditional interview. In most interview processes, candidates are generally aware of the standard questions and come prepared with their answers.

Gamification techniques put candidates in a more realistic situation, which tests a number of their skills simultaneously. While this may require an investment, it can help you save money in the long run by ensuring that you hire the right candidates.

9. Use Mobile-Friendly ATS Systems

Did you know that around 45% of individuals look for jobs on their smartphones? About 89% of candidates believe that mobile devices are essential to the overall recruitment process. Despite these numbers, companies are still not moving fast enough to make the recruitment process as mobile-friendly as possible.

When you select an ATS software, ensure that it is mobile-friendly. It should enable candidates to view openings on their mobile phones and immediately send in their applications in a few taps. While this may seem like an unnecessary luxury, you will be surprised by the additional influx of applications when you give candidates this option.

10. Consider Hiring Software That Removes Bias

Nowadays, most companies are striving towards creating a diverse workplace. Recruitment practices need to evolve to ensure that individuals of all genders, races, and ethnicities are given equal opportunities in every stage of the process.

Unfortunately, this is easier said than done. Many mainstream hiring tactics allow for several biases, especially when there is human intervention. To overcome this, you may want to consider software that minimizes the scope of any bias or prejudice. If your company is committed to improving diversity in the workplace, an applicant tracking system is undoubtedly worth considering.

From removing or blurring information related to gender, race, or anything else that can compromise a candidate’s opportunities, to automating various processes to eliminate human intervention from the process as much as possible, recruitment software solutions and applicant tracking systems come with multiple features that can minimize hiring bias. 

Wrapping Up:

As you can see, there are many kinds of HR software solutions, programs, and several applications that can significantly improve your recruitment and hiring processes. If you want the best candidates with as little effort as possible, then these are the tools you will need. 

Have you used any of the products or applications discussed in this article? Are there any other such innovative technologies in HR management and recruitment that we have missed? Do let us know in your comments!