Why the Future of Recruitment is on the Internet

In recent years, more people have gained access to the internet, either by using computers and even more so via the use of their mobile phones. We have grown accustomed to searching for information online, online shopping, and looking at product and company reviews before deciding whether to use their services or not. Naturally, many businesses have taken their recruitment processes to the digital world to find relevant candidates faster and smarter.

New technologies and better communication systems have reshaped the global recruitment process. More than 50% of job seekers read employees’ reviews and the company’s salary information on their smartphones. When they see a job they like, they save it on their phone with the idea to apply later from their desktops. Three out of four people would consider leaving their current jobs for a company with an excellent online reputation. It is no wonder that almost 90% of companies recruit via their social media channels. This trend will continue growing as younger jobseekers use these channels to look for jobs and to learn more about the company.

However, despite the rise of online recruitment processes, statistics show that less than 40% of companies are optimising their career websites and application processes for mobile. Potential candidates are less likely to stay on a site, never mind apply for a job, if the company’s website is not mobile friendly. Nevertheless, if any recruitment website is not user-friendly, the company using it will lose out on good potential candidates. Jobseekers would instead print multiple copies of their CV than to waste their time with unworkable websites.

In this article, we’re going to take a look at the recruitment and selection process, what programs and systems there exist to aid these processes, and why the future of recruitment depends on the internet, and why you should do it too.

1. The Recruitment and Selection Process

Recruitment is the process of sourcing qualified candidates to fill a needed, vacant position in an organisation. A suitable candidate is a person with the ability and attitude that’s required to fulfil the objective of a company. Selecting the right person for the job is a delicate, complicated procedure that consists of a few typical recruitment process steps.

Usually, a recruitment flowchart (also called a recruitment workflow) is a diagram that illustrates the sequence of recruitment steps that need to be followed, should anything happen during the process. Not enough suitable candidates, job seekers not answering their emails or phone calls, and candidates declining the job offer are all aspects to consider where having a recruitment flowchart can combat the issues that come up. Use your recruitment steps to create your recruitment workflow diagram.

1.1 Identifying and Analysing the Vacant Position

A position that needs to be filled by the best candidate needs to be identified and appropriately analysed to create a well-written job description. The job description should be able to tell job seekers everything they need to know about the position, including the job title, a detailed description of the job, the preferred qualification and experience that the organisation requires, whether the job is location-based or remote, and the salary range.

If there’s a way to reflect the organisation’s brand and personality in the job description, it will generate more interest in the position. Not only will it attract and target the candidates with the exact skills and qualifications, but also with the kind of attitude that will most likely fit with the company’s culture, making the choice a little bit easier down the line. On the other hand, when the job ad has an unclear or vague job description, it can lead to more applications from underqualified or improper candidates.

1.2 Sourcing and Reviewing Candidates

Advertising an available position could attract job seekers, but it’s up to the recruiter to source and review active candidates (people actively looking for work) and passive candidates (people not looking for work, but who are open to the right opportunities) that could provide valuable in filling the position. It is important to explore every option that is available to the recruiter.

There are a few tools and sources recruiters can use to source potential candidates:

• Social media
• Online job boards (HR recruitment sites)
• The organisation’s recruiting database
• Referrals
• Recruitment agencies

A diverse range of sources can help to speed up the recruitment process. The choice will be more varied and will save one from relying on only one source that could fail to provide suitable candidates. Plus, HR recruitment software with an ATS can store candidate information, which the recruiter can use to contact them in case a position becomes available in future. Online recruitment software provides higher success rates than old head-hunting methods in that it filters jobseekers that optimise the hiring process that fit the organisation’s needs and objectives.

1.3 Screening Candidates

The screening phase is an essential step in the recruitment process as it narrows down your choice for candidates. Although people are different, potential candidates that apply for the same position should go through the same screening process to ensure fairness that the best and most suitable person will be offered the job.

At this point in the process, recruiters can choose to conduct preliminary phone interviews or even ask potential candidates to answer specific questions per email. These are useful methods to ask behavioural interview questions that allow you to learn more about the person’s personality and how they would act in the open position. Recruiters can also ask about their work history, career goals and verify that they know what the job description of the open position entails precisely.

For certain positions, employers and recruiters can ask candidates to conduct a test and provide their answers by a specific deadline. Doing this is an excellent measurement to filter out candidates who may not have enough experience and knowledge over the technical craft for the particular job.

No matter whether the screening process consists of phone interviews, email correspondences, questionnaires or tests, the method and questions need to be the same for every candidate to ensure the best ones are invited to the interview at a later stage.

1.4 Shortlisting Qualified Candidates

After obtaining and scouring through the applications and placing the candidates through a screening process, it is time to shortlist the best-qualified candidates. Employers don’t always have time to conduct hour-long interviews with over 20 job seekers. Therefore, it’s a good idea to shortlist three candidates that fit the position and company culture best in your professional opinion.

1.5 Interviewing Potential Candidates

The next step in the recruitment process is the face-to-face interviews. This step can also be done via Skype if circumstances make it difficult for the candidate to visit the employer physically at the time. It is a crucial step for the candidate and employer to get to know each other. The employer and recruiter can get a better sense of the person behind the professional and their work ethics by their body language and answers to the interview questions.

Candidates not only need the proper skills and knowledge for the position but must also be able to fit in with or be able to adapt to the company culture. Ask the candidates about their interests outside of work or what their hobbies are to get to know them more. Make the interview process less subjective and more balanced by letting at least one or two people join you. It’s a good idea for all forming part of the interview process to have a copy of the interview questions with a type of scoring system. The scoring can be numbers based or a feeling you got from the candidate’s answers.

Some employers prefer to have candidates conduct skills-based assessments and undergo psychometric tests after the interviewing process instead of during the screening process when there were not many suitable candidates, from the beginning. It can then be used in conjunction with the interview answers and scoring system to compare all the candidates later on. It is also crucial for recruiters to do background and reference checks after the interviews to ensure the candidates do have the skills and experience they listed on their CVs. If no bridges were burnt, previous employers or co-workers could provide invaluable insight into a candidate’s work ethic, personality and how they handle stress in difficult situations.

1.6 Selecting the Right Candidate

The last step in the recruitment process is for the recruiter and employee to select the most suitable candidate. Sometimes the candidate might want to negotiate the salary. Thus it is essential to discuss this with the client beforehand as to not make any false promises. However, sometimes the top candidate could decline a job offer, in which case the recruiter has to go back to the other suitable candidates or start the whole recruitment process again.

The positive of having a panel of more than two people conducting the interviews is that it negates on-the-spot decisions. It doesn’t matter how much one person might like or dislike a candidate, discuss the options and impressions by comparing notes. A second round of interviews may sometimes be necessary if too many good candidates are a close match and they need to ask more questions to make a final decision.

2. Old School Recruitment

While some aspects of recruitment have not changed since the 20th century, the online world has made the process faster, easier, cheaper and more comfortable. Paying for job ads in newspapers every week that don’t always reach the right candidates and receiving numerous unrelated CVs in the post box or through the fax have almost become absolute. Recruiters no longer have to go through the headache of playing detective to find candidates and their contact information for their lists.

Active job seekers were the primary source of new hires and only when they made themselves known and available. It would have proved difficult for recruiters to head hunt a potential candidate by using their current employer’s landline. Eventually, when they made contact, and the candidate accepted the offer, their job was done, and they could move on to the next person on their list.

Today all you need is the proper keywords for your search engine and the candidate’s email address or mobile number. Plus, both active and passive job seekers’ information are available on a variety of online platforms. To find the best candidates, however, recruiters have the additional job of scouring sites and platforms that are not linked to job openings – in other words, where passive candidates are not looking for work, even though they may be open to better opportunities. What’s more, you are most likely not the only recruiter reaching out to a potential candidate anymore. As access to the internet has grown, so has the competition between companies and their recruiting processes. That’s one of the reasons why a company’s online presence is so significant.

Networking is still considered to be one of the best ways to find a job for most people. The difference today is that you don’t necessarily have to network and make connections in person thanks to phones, emails, social media platforms like LinkedIn and other communication websites like Skype. That’s how you get to know some of your best remote workers without ever meeting them at your office. Even when we can reach more people from different countries (Serbia for example), it is still important to add a personal touch to our communication.

The internet in many ways has made a recruiter’s job more comfortable, but that doesn’t mean that it didn’t come with its challenges:

• Submitting the same job ad on multiple job boards, which costs time, and time is money.
• Building and maintaining a careers site also takes valuable time from the recruiter and website developer.
• The recruitment process can create an influx of emails and document attachments, which can lead to confusion and a lowered memory space.
• When there’s no application programme in place, candidates send CVs that are different in lengths and templates, which increases the screening part of the recruitment phase.
• Some CVs may miss relevant information like past experiences and necessary keywords. These uncertainties add to the screening phase time.
• Some candidates that are not suitable tend to apply out of desperation. Recruiters then waste time going through irrelevant applications.
• Tracking applications with emails and Excel spreadsheets can quickly become an organisational nightmare.

3. Online Applicant Tracking System

Big organisations sometimes hire for several positions at the same time and can receive hundreds of CVs for each job opening. Since the internet has made applying online much more accessible, many job seekers (even the under- and unqualified) apply to see if they maybe stand a chance. This led to recruitment and managers needing a system where all CVs and relevant documentation are kept on one platform and help with organising the applicants, highlighting the top candidates in a big pool.

3.1 What is an ATS and How Do They Work?

An ATS is an HR-based software that helps to manage the recruiting and hiring process, including job postings and ads, and sorting through all the applications. This HR interactive recruitment system offers relief to many headaches that come from old school and even digital recruitment. CVs and candidate information can also be stored on an ATS long after the original job has been filled or has expired. Recruiters and employers can then search and sort through them, depending on the system they’re using.

Fortunately, some ATS systems can automatically compare a CV to the job description and place each applicant in automatic rankings based on how well their CV scores, which can fast forward the process if employers are pressured for time. A common way to filter CVs in an ATS is by searching for specific keywords in skills and titles, similar to search engines in one HR recruitment system. A recruiter can do a simple or complicated keyword search. For example, they can insert the word “writer”, and the system will isolate candidates that have done the job before. A longer phrase can also be used for a complex search, like “medical writer”, which will only show candidates that have written in a specific niche.

Some recruiters still prefer to scan through every CV that comes through the ATS themselves, as an unoptimized CV that contains only a few relevant keywords can be overlooked by the system. Still, the average recruit or HR professional takes six seconds to decide whether they want to push an application through to the screening process or not.

3.2 Why you should consider using an ATS

There are a few good reasons why more than 70% of large companies use ATS software and why even small to medium-sized business can benefit from it too:

• An ATS can integrate with multiple job boards and post job ads to all these sites plus social media networks simultaneously with a single submission instead of posting on every single website separately.
• Maintaining a careers page on the company website is much easier and less time-consuming. You don’t need to contact a web developer every time you need to make a change or an update.
• The system collects, organises and displays applicants with the information you need in one convenient place for everyone with access, the same way social media profiles would show your contacts and connections. The team can screen candidates and move them through the workflow process with changes that will reflect for everyone.
• The software can break different CV templates down and present the data they contain in a standard format that can be easily viewed, which makes candidate comparisons fast and straightforward. Missing information can also be spotted this way.
• The ATS can be adjusted to filter out unqualified applicants or highlight the must-have skills and experience levels that can aid recruiters in the screening process.
• Instead of using cluttered emails spammed with irrelevant applications and spreadsheets to track candidates, an ATS enables you to add notes and comments to each candidate and their documentation. With email trails discussing the applicants, it is easier to lose track or miss a potentially good candidate’s application.

Job boards still have a strong presence in many countries, but many of these sites contain many inactive members with outdated information. An ATS can publish relevant job ads on these platforms with higher numbers of passive candidates. People using these networks may not necessarily be actively looking for a job, but they may respond to a job post in their feed if it’s relevant to them and sparks an interest.

4. Recruitment vs Human Resources

Many people consider a recruiter and a human resource (HR) professional to be the same thing. Although they may seem like to have similar roles, a recruiter is someone who works under the HR department.

4.1 Recruiters: What Do They Do?

Recruitment is a process that happens anytime a vacancy opens for a specific role. This process can be undertaken by an HR professional as part of their duties, or they sometimes hire a recruiter to take over the recruitment process responsibilities of the organisation.

The recruiter’s responsibilities are to identify and secure the most suitable job candidates for an employer. They tend to work with HR to define the company’s staffing needs, write job descriptions and design a recruitment workflow. However, they only deal with candidates

Their tasks typically involve the following:

• Using analytics to identify market data like salary ranges.
• Publishing open vacancies in print media, job boards, websites and social media platforms.
• Searching websites and other sources for suitable candidates.
• Networking with co-workers and other professionals to identify potential candidates.
• Screening applications for the right candidates.
• Conducting screening interviews and skills-based testing if applicable.
• Executing background and reference checks.
• Arranging an introduction with the candidates and the organisation’s hiring team.

There are, however, a few tasks that they are not responsible for, such as:

• Creating the job opening – The employer decides when a role needs to be filled, after which they would advise the recruiter or the human resources (HR) department. The recruiter may assist in describing the position, but it is up to the managers to provide the details of what they need from the candidate.
• Allocating the recruiting resources – While recruiters work with the process, the information and salary ranges comes from what the organisation is willing to provide.
• Providing support to employees after they accepted the job offer – Normally, the recruiter’s job is done once the employer has chosen their preferred candidate and the candidate took the offer.
• Providing training and development programmes – A recruiter is not responsible for an employee’s skills management and growth or their management. It only matters whether the candidate has the skill set that the organisation needs at the time.
• Assisting with employee appraisals, promotions and company growth – The recruiter must find the best candidates to take the company to its highest productivity. But since the recruiter is not tasked with employee wellness, they are not responsible for their promotions and well-being.
• Dealing with staff issues and disciplinary actions – The employer and their HR department are the parties involved when it comes to any problems or conflict situations.

4.2 What is HR’s Responsibility?

HR personnel, on the other hand, support employees within the organisation from the hiring process until they leave the company. HR is a broad field that may include recruitment (depending on the size of the company and the necessity or frequency of new hires needed), but also other specialised administrative tasks.

The HR department is usually responsible for:

• Administering compensation and organisational benefits.
• Enabling and monitoring communications with the employees.
• Maintaining compliance with applicable employment laws.
• Implementing and maintaining HR IT systems.
• Overseeing the recruitment process of new employees.
• Creating and conducting performance appraisals.
• Creating and implementing training and development programmes.
• Interviewing candidates.

Depending on the size of the organisation, the HR professionals can have specialised tasks to concentrate on or act as generalists in smaller companies. People working in this department need good communication and leadership skills as they are the middleman between the employers and employees. They must also show high ethics, fairness and empathy as they need to resolve conflict and negotiate in many situations. In most instances, they need to be good multitaskers as they often have to switch between a range of tasks, such as producing new company policies, assist with new hires, solving problems and dealing with other kinds of paperwork.

4.3 Should We Onboard a Recruiter or HR Professional for Our Team?

It is never an easy task to hire a new candidate, as the right ones can quickly change the success of the organisation or waste time and resources. While a recruiter’s objective is to find the most suitable candidates during the recruiting process, HR carries the responsibilities of covering not only the hiring process but also all the aspects and procedures that follow after an employee has accepted the job offer. However, both teams are equally important as they both carry the responsibility for the outcomes of the employee as well as the employer. One can not go wrong with having both of them on your team or as part of the recruitment process outsourcing.

5. Recruitment Process Outsourcing

Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) is when an organisation outsources all or part of its recruitment processes to an external service provider. RPO is an industry that emerged from traditional recruiting and has grown over the last couple of years. An RPO is more than just a recruitment service provider in that it takes responsibility and ownership of the design and management of the recruitment processes with consulting elements to provide people-process-technology solutions.

RPO gives the employer a chance to concentrate on their products and services, and also on their staff, while the service provider focusses on not only getting the best candidates but also look at turnover rates, technology, scalability and the time it takes to fill a particular position.

There are a few reasons why your organisation could benefit from using an RPO:

• Efficient recruitment – When your brand awareness improves, it will reduce the hiring time and lessen your organisation’s lost in productivity due to open vacancies.
• Cost reduction – Agency fees, internal resources, lack of knowledge and compliance will be a few aspects that an RPO can take care for you by decreasing your average cost per hire.
• Quality improvement – An RPO can source more quality candidates and reduce staff turnover, which improves an organisation’s productivity.
• Short-term needs – When there’s a new project, product or service that requires new staff, they can be sourced quickly and efficiently.
• Long-term workforce planning – The cost and quality of permanent and contingent staff improve at the organisation.
• Additional access to sources – Some employers need candidates with limited skill sets or who specialise in a particular niche. An RPO can access and leverage more channels where others have not bothered to look before.

The right RPO service provider can reduce hiring times by 40% and save costs of more than 50% for an organisation. It blends dedicated recruiters with technology and best practice hiring processes to transform an organisation’s talent acquisition function. Thus, if you want to focus on your employees and the work you do, contact Anomadic to automatise the HR and recruitment process for you.

Employers and recruiters should embrace the internet and other technologies to help them find candidates. Just like job seekers, recruiters have a variety of means to communicate, promote, share and connect. The more recruiters and companies write their own content and share on social media, the higher their rankings on search engines, the more value for their brand and the more likely they’ll attract quality candidates excited and eager to become part of their team.

The internet is still key to the success of fast, quality recruitment in less time for most businesses. But it remains the onus of the employers and recruiters to keep the human aspect of online recruiting and remote working and not allow technology to be the only answer.