Recruitment technology – technology or recruiting? Which is changing faster?
Honestly, we couldn’t tell you, but it’s a question to bear in mind as we enter 2020 and take a look at the technology that’s changing the face of the industry. Today’s job market is heavily candidate-focused, which means many companies are facing more openings than they can find quality candidates to fill.
In order to combat this situation, many forward-looking companies and HR departments are turning to tech to give them the boost they need to compete for the limited number of candidates out there.
We thought this would be a great time to take a look ahead and give you a glimpse into the recruitment technology we see as poised to have the greatest impact on the recruiting world in 2020.
RPA: Everybody Loves Robots, Right?
Yes, we said robots. But before you go getting pictures of Johnny 5, The Terminator, or the cute little guy above coming to work at that empty desk down the row from you, that’s not quite what we mean. We’re talking about RPA, or robotic process automation. This is a collection of technologies that fall under the heading of artificial intelligence, or AI. These software-based robots are able to be configured to take over the rote and repetitive aspects of nearly any manual job.
There are nearly limitless ways this recruitment technology can be put to work (we bet you’ve already got several in mind, don’t you?), however, there are two that stand out when it comes to RPA use in recruiting: data collection and job advertising.
Data collection
Let’s say you have a campaign going that includes looking for prospects on Twitter, Facebook, and a niche site like Stack Exchange. Now, the big players like Twitter and FB have APIs your recruiting software can interface with to extract metrics. But what about the niche sites? Well, right now you’d be reduced to manually copying and pasting those metrics into your other systems if you want them to be combined with those coming in via API. That’s where RPA can help, after configuration your bots can process the exact same set of clicks and keystrokes on a regular schedule you set. This will improve the reporting functions of your metrics as well as freeing your time to interact with candidates live and in person, all through the power of recruitment technology.
Job advertising
The same process of copy-and-paste rears it’s ugly head again when it comes to getting your job descriptions distributed to the variety of job boards you’re likely using. How many of these boards are aggregators and how many are still manual? What if you could program a bot to do the copy/paste routine whenever a new job is posted in your ATS? How much of your day would that free up for more intuitive and creative tasks?
Gamified Recruiting Platforms
Not a new idea by any means, but the technology has finally caught up enough to let this idea truly shine. At it’s most basic level, a gamified platform isn’t much different from all of the other job boards out there. Job descriptions are posted by recruiters, who then collect applications from interested candidates. It’s that last bit where the differences come out, along with the sense of fun these platforms infuse into the whole process.
Academies, challenges, and assessments alike take the form of games ranging in design and complexity from traditional first-person shooters to full-scale simulations. The candidate can learn the skills they’ll need for their ideal job, while the recruiter has access to their results on these assessments as well as AI-calculated total scores. This allows the recruiter to get a more complete picture of a candidate, from their hard skillset to their ability to work on a team and how good a match they’ll be to the company culture.
ATS: How Integrated is Yours?
Is your applicant tracking system a stand-alone solution, sitting apart from your candidate relationship management (CRM) tool and any other HR systems? Integrating these systems is paramount for a smoothly running recruitment team, not to mention that the further into the 21st-century we get the more you’ll be relying on these systems talking to each other. When a candidate fills out an application, what currently happens to their contact information? Do you have to remember to manually copy it and paste it into a new entry in your CRM? What if that happened automatically? How much time and energy would that save you? Not to mention never losing another great potential new hire to the ATS black hole.
All-In-One Recruitment Marketing Solutions
Taking ATS integration one step further into the future, we find software suites that combine everything you need to conduct successful recruitment marketing campaigns from one dashboard. As a refresher, recruitment marketing (RM) is a recent innovation in recruiting that borrows best practices from the world of inbound marketing. The idea is that by cultivating a social media presence, presenting informative and educational blog posts, and interacting with potential candidates where they already spend their online free time you can grow a thriving talent pool to draw from when you have a new opening to fill.
It’s these all-in-one solutions and the AI/machine learning-based technology that powers them that underpin these advancements in RM. Combining the best pieces of CRM, CMS, ATS, and social media automation you can have your entire campaign under control from a single interface. Your job listings, tweets, and chatbot conversations can all be tracked and linked back to the candidate’s profile so your whole team is fully up-to-date on their status.
Emotional Intelligence: Not Technology, But Critically Important
Yes, we know, this isn’t something you expected to read about in an article about technology. The simple fact is that in today’s job market, soft skills often take precedence. And if your team isn’t up to speed and fully literate in the growing field of emotional intelligence (EQ), then you’re going to lose out on the best and brightest candidates who would have been awesome cultural fits for your company.
So while you’re going about building a solid, well-integrated recruiting department, it will pay off to also get your recruiters some training in this field. The better they can read a candidate, the better able they’ll be to identify those who will fit into the company culture and be able to work well with their new team. And ultimately, that’s the goal of any job search, right? Finding the best candidate to fill the open seat and enable that team to work efficiently and effectively to further the company’s goals.
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