Recruitment technology: What you need to know

Discovering and attracting excellent employees is never simple. On the other hand, it is excruciating to hunt for a job in the era of AI resume reviewers, online evaluations and automated no stacks. Even in just the last five years, technology has changed the job search process dramatically and job seekers are now wondering how to adjust to a tech-driven recruitment environment. What makes it so difficult to adapt? It is mostly because so much of what is happening is happening behind closed doors. We know AI helps with hiring decisions, but what does that mean, and how does it affect the quest for a job? This is the new recruitment technology, but what is it all about?

What is recruitment technology?

Recruitment technology is a group of tools and platforms that can help recruiters and HR specialists in their pursuit of better results. It is continuously evolving and forcing HR to evolve with it as it helps target the right candidates and speeds up the process mostly through the use of artificial intelligence. According to HR Exchange, they conducted a survey for their HR Tech Global report (2019) and in both 2017 and 2018, 25% or more said they used it as part of their recruitment efforts. A Gartner survey (2019) showed that 70% of job applicants shared disappointment with how they were held up to date by the recruiting company during the recruitment process. Although this has always been a pain point in hiring, applicants seem to find such delays particularly galling these days. 

Since the early days, recruiting technology has evolved extensively, and it has become a lot more interactive with the birth of social media. Jobs were found through bulletin boards and newspapers in the pre-computer era, while passive applicants were found via resume archives and telephone sourcing. Job markets were hard to get into in the pre-web era, so applicants had to be specialized. E-mails have emerged as the primary mode of contact, using computers and applicant monitoring systems to find passive applicants. Online job boards and classifieds extended the distribution of job posts in 1995 (the Early Web) and also created resume databases on sites such as Monster, which were accessible to recruiters. Job aggregators made it easier to find work in 2005 (the Late Web) when over 161 million online professional profiles were collected by LinkedIn. The social network made it easier for work distributions to hit fresh networks in 2012 (with over 175 million tweets a day) and to discover passive applicants. 

Source: HR Exchange

Recruitment technology trends

Traditional work interviews leave plenty to hope for. It is dangerous to rely on recruiting executives to handle them without injecting any sort of personal prejudice, and the fact that many busy executives would rather not spend time interviewing candidates in the first place just compounds the issue. From relying on predictive analytics and Chabot’s to utilizing improved applicant vetting methods, and numerous other up-and-coming developments, as a younger, tech-driven generation of employees and managers slides into the drivers seat, the hiring industry sheds old habits and attempts some potentially game-changing new approaches. According to research, the investment volume in HR technology had nearly tripled what was invested in 2017 by the end of the third quarter of 2018. 

Trends around social recruiting, mobile apps and video interviewing are now the norm even though there are some improvements in these areas but they are now entrenched in the talent acquisition process. 95% of recruiters say that hiring will remain as competitive in 2017 as it was in 2015 and 2016 (Jobvite Recruiter Nation Report 2016). According to the Gallup State of the American Workplace Report 2017, the job seekers look for jobs via the following channels:

• Company Websites - 77%
• Referrals - 71%
• Suggestions from Friends or Family - 68%
• Online Job Sites (Monster, Careerbuilder) - 58%
• Publications or Online Sources in a Field - 57%
• General Web Search (Google, Bing, Yahoo) - 55%
• Professional Network Site (LinkedIn) - 47%
• Professional or Alumni Organization -  41%
• News Media - 39%

These are the new trends which are mostly based on recruitment technology. According to Glassdoor, job seekers say they use an average of 7.6 job sites during a job search.  Even though 79% of job seekers say they are likely to use social media in their job search, 18% of job seekers say they check out hiring managers on social media platforms while job hunting  (Careerbuilder 2016).

The prevalence of technology has created higher levels of expectations from job seekers who want a fast, straightforward application process. After finding a job offer, 64% of candidates research about a company online and 37% say they will move on to another job offer if they cannot find information on the company (Careerbuilder 2016). Due to the new recruitment technology trends, 50.5% of recruiters testify that social media has changed their recruiting results (2016 Recruiting Benchmark Survey NACE). The current trends are showing that 29% of recruiters are investing in recruiting via social media platforms, 60% of recruiters are investing in company career websites and 28% of recruiters are investing in recruiting via job boards (Jobvite Recruiter Nation Report 2016).

According to Jobvite Recruiter Nation Report 2016, the top social media platforms recruiters use to check candidates include:

• LinkedIn - 87% 
• Facebook - 43% 
• Twitter - 22%
• Blog - 11% 
• Instagram - 8% 
• Youtube - 6% 
• Snapchat - 3%

The most popular social media platform for recruitment is LinkedIn. 

59% of recruiters also use search engines to look up candidates (Careerbuilder 2021). Recruiters will also disqualify candidates if they find evidence of the following on their social media profiles:

• Provocative or Inappropriate Content - 46%
• Alcohol and Drugs - 43%
• Bigoted Content (Race, Religion, Gender, etc.) - 33%
• Bad-mouthing Previous Company - 31%
• Poor Communication Skills - 29%
• Oversharing - 60%
• Marijuana - 71%
• Selfies - 18%
• Typos - 72%

There are other emerging recruitment technology trends which include Predictive Analytics, Chatbots, Enhanced Vetting, Artificial Intelligence and Artificial Intelligence. Analytics assist an employer in analyzing current workers and top performers and predicting which candidates may translate into high-performing employees. Predictive analytics can take human resources into a burgeoning array of strategic directions. More HR managers are turning to high-end, customized chatbots to make recruiting more efficient and to produce better outcomes. The rapid growth of instant messaging and automated chatbots that can integrate into existing ATSs and HRISs [human resource information systems] will allow recruiting and HR teams to start scaling workflow processes. Chatbot-based recruiting solutions are gaining favour among recruiters and hiring managers even as the unstructured human side of recruiting can be difficult to squeeze into a technology-based system.

Delving more extensively into a job candidates background is a short-term task that can pay long-term dividends. Recruitment processes differ for every organization depending on size and budget but using behavioural assessment tools to identify personality traits and how candidates may fit in with existing teams the process can be made easier. The use of artificial intelligence is growing across the business landscape, with recruiting and human resource practices increasingly being affected. An online survey of 484 human resource professionals by the HR Research Institute and sponsored by Oracle found that in two years, 77% of HR organizations will be using AI for talent acquisition to some extent. AI is creating major efficiencies for recruiters and offering an improved candidate experience. Machine learning and natural language processing (NLP), the ability of computers to understand and respond to human language, are examples of AI technologies that are \"hot\" in the recruitment space right now.

Source: Workforce.com

With applicant databases that grow in volume every day, mining for top talent and being able to efficiently and promptly respond to top talent has gotten more challenging. Trained algorithms can surface candidates for a particular job in seconds, versus the hours that a recruiter might spend looking for that same talent. This extra time given back to the recruiter allows them to spend more time focusing on the needs of the client and getting to know their candidates on a deeper level. Using matching technology and NLP, recruiters can identify and respond to top candidates more quickly than ever before. 

The recruiting industry is currently at ‘peak boutique’ with a lot of little players showing a lot of innovation. For companies wondering whether to implement these new technologies today or wait until they mature, I urge them to think about their recruiting pain points, and whether a best-in-class solution is an answer. If one of these tools solves your recruiting problem and creates daylight between you and your competition — that can give you an edge at least for a while. The integration of artificial intelligence, machine learning, gamification, and chatbots into recruitment platforms is the subject of new trends. All of these are still cutting edge, and in the coming years, we expect to see a lot more acceptance. Employer branding has a significant impact on hiring talent according to 80% of recruiters (LinkedIn Global Recruiting Trends 2017). 46% of Glassdoor members read reviews before they speak with a company recruiter or hiring manager and 86% of Glassdoor users read company reviews and ratings before deciding to apply for a job (Glassdoor US Site Survey January 2020). Remember that the best channels to build an employer brand:

• My Companys Career Site - 61%
• LinkedIn - 55%
• Third-party Website or Job Board - 40%
• Facebook - 35%
• Campus Recruiting - 31%

(LinkedIn Global Recruiting Trends 2017)

Kudzai Derera is a Consultant at Industrial Psychology Consultants (Pvt) Ltd, a management and human resources consulting firm.

LinkedIn: https://zw.linkedin.com/in/kudzaiderera           

Phone: +263 242 481946-48/481950

Email: kudzai@ipcconsultants.com        

Main Website: www.ipcconsultants.com