When it comes to hiring, businesses face a dual challenge. On the one hand, businesses want to cast a wide net to find the best and brightest talent. On the other hand, the wider the net you cast, the more rocks you have to sort through to find the gold. Technology, however, can help. Here are 5 ways that technology is revolutionizing recruitment.
1. Online job boards
Where businesses were once limited to either hiring locally or paying moving expenses to bring in talent from out-of-state, many businesses can now choose from the best talent around the globe. Not only can online job boards help you recruit from anywhere in the world, but they can also help you recruit from outside your industry. The days of getting a degree in a particular field and spending the rest of your life working in that field are slowly going the way of the buffalo. Tomorrow’s jobs will be skills based rather than field of experience based.
2. Online testing
Realistically, people can put all kinds of things on their resumes, but it doesn’t mean they have the level of skill or experience in a particular area that you need. Not only can online testing asses the skill level of potential candidates, but it can also tell you a great deal about them that just an interview alone never will. Online testing can tell about their personality, what kind of culture they work best in and how well they deal with stress or interact with customers. Many businesses are now using online testing to screen candidates before they can even submit a resume.
3. Social media
Generally, people don’t go looking for a job until they are dissatisfied with their current job or find themselves without a job. If you want to get the best and brightest, however, you need to find a way to reach people that already have a job, not just those that don’t. Ultimately, the best employees are likely to be those that are already employed and that their current employers don’t want to lose. Social media can help you reach out to those employees.
4. Turn employees into recruiters
Every one of your employees has a wide network of friends, relatives and professional contacts that might be an ideal fit for your company. No one knows better than your employees the kinds of skills and traits that necessary to work for your company and if any of their friends, professional associates or family members have them. One of the most effective recruitment strategies might be tapping your employee’s resources. They are not likely to recommend that their most talented friends, colleagues or family members come and work for your company, however, if it is not run well or if they are unhappy working there. Technology can help your business run more smoothly, which can turn your employees into one of your best recruitment tools.
5. Minimize human biases
Human biases are perhaps one of the biggest obstacles to effective recruitment and hiring. Many people think they are not racist or sexist, but those are by far not the only two types of bias that can affect hiring decisions. For instance, a recruiter that graduated from Yale may have an unconscious bias against graduates from Harvard or Dartmouth or candidates that didn’t graduate from an Ivy League university. Similarly, a white female may have an unconscious bias against Latinos but not necessarily Asians, African Americans or Latino men. The truth is, we all make decisions every day on the basis of bias and we can’t overcome them by simply denying they exist. AI and machine learning can help minimize these biases in recruitment.
As the global marketplace expands, more and more businesses are also expanding their recruiting nets. The same technology that is allowing employees to work from anywhere is also allowing businesses to recruit from anywhere. Soon, your next employee could just as easily come from Zimbabwe as from the suburbs of your city. Technology can help you find them.
