With the challenges that the coronavirus pandemic has caused in the recruitment sector likely to continue into 2021 what are the key aspects to focus on going forward. Candidate availability has increased as unemployment has risen but some industries are still experiencing a shortage of quality candidates.
Nowhere is the shortage of quality candidates more apparent than in the digital tech space. This is true amongst all disciplines but the highest shortage tends to be in the ‘developer’ and similarly technically focussed roles. 2021 is going to be a year for hiring managers and recruiters to give more emphasis to the candidate’s experience of the selection process if they are going to attract and recruit the best talent available for these types of roles. The entire recruitment industry does not have the best reputation in the eyes of candidates who consider recruiter’s behaviour in the same vein of occupations done by lawyers and real estate agents.
It is therefore not surprising that the recruitment industry should be focusing on improving the candidate experience in 2021. This requires a shift in attitude by recruiters, hiring managers and human resources to start seeing candidates in the selection and recruitment process as valued customers. In the same way that a marketing or customer services team deals with an organisation’s own customers.
With this in mind what steps can be taken to improve the candidate experience to improve the candidate’s perception of the recruiting organisations brand experience. At first contact the recruiter should clearly communicate the scope of the role, the benefits and crucially the timing of the recruitment process. Doing this helps to set the scene for the candidate’s expectations of what will happen along with a clear written role scope and rewards on offer. Candidates often have questions and recruiters should answer these in a timely manner in the same way customer services deal with customer queries. Even if a candidate is unsuccessful providing useful feedback is always appreciated and where possible this should be from the interviewing manager to give that personal touch.
Recruiters should be avoiding all the following bad practices that irritate candidates the most:
- No firm salary range or benefits listed.
- Vague job description and role requirements.
- Not answering candidate questions (by email or phone).
- No concreate timeline of events in the selection process.
- Ignoring unsuccessful candidates.
Recruiters and hiring managers will always claim they are too busy or lack resources to make these improvements in the candidate experience but in the day of technological advances in hiring tools, particularly in AI recruitment these are just becoming lame excuses. Investing time in creating a solid job description and candidate profile with detailed salary and benefits will assist in reducing applicant numbers with a higher quality candidate shortlist.
One such company who are game changing the face of recruitment by providing a robust process to ensure more efficient recruitment using any channel is Hire Digital, a start-up recruitment company with a global presence that has invested heavily in Artificial Intelligence (AI) to manage the digital tech recruitment process. Their talent management software platform gives digital talent recruiters a strict criterion for posting job adverts and descriptions and their AI works in such a way that it generates a much smaller more targeted candidate list by using up to 40,000 attributes. They key to this is efficiency, recruiters spend less time generating job advertisements and trawling through hundreds of CV’s to get their shortlist, Hire Digital tech can rapidly access up to 1bn talent globally.
Hire Digital is an AI technology with a human touch that is completely revolutionising the recruitment and selection process. It’s two times faster, 50 % cheaper and ten times more accurate than traditional hiring tech. To find https://www.linkedin.com/in/robinbrohl/out more speak to Robin Brohl at Hire Digital he is a real person and would love to engage with you and help you streamline your recruitment processes.