When hiring managers and human resources need to fill an open role quickly, they often fall back on their trusted headhunters to find a candidate that can start immediately. This is common in the digital tech space where technically qualified people are required at short notice. Whist this is a common occurrence the tactics used by some headhunters are questionable. It is not unusual that a candidate is found very quickly who may appear to fit the job description but then resigns or is found not to be suitable after just a few months. Why does this happen and how can this be overcome?
All headhunters and recruitment agencies are sales focused and their employees are driven by commission. The temptation therefore when being presented with and open role from a friendly hiring manager is to find a candidate quickly and to close the sale. In order to do this the headhunter will trawl through his own contacts and use hiring tools to search for matching candidates, an exact match would be unusual but if a candidate looks like they may fit 70% of the role requirements they could be selected to be presented to the hiring organisation. The headhunter then sells the position to the candidate and will fully brief them on what to say at an interview, the objective here is to ace the interview and obtain a job offer. Equally the headhunter is selling the less than ideal candidate to the hiring manager. The candidate falsely aces the interview process and the headhunter gets a quick sale and pockets a large fee of around 25% of the annual salary.
This questionable process could soon be a thing of the past as hiring managers are starting to focus more on the best fit candidate rather than necessarily believing what a headhunter says. Technology in the form of AI recruitment will present a welcome alternative to the old school methods by finding a candidate who is close to a 100% fit by using specific job role parameters and therefore removing the sales focused headhunter. The benefits to the hiring company are vastly reduced costs and less likelihood of staff churn. The process may take a little longer but hiring managers can be safe in the knowledge that they find the best candidate for the role and won’t have the expense of recruiting for the position all over again in six months’ time.
One such company who are game changing the face of recruitment 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 out more speak to 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.