Methods To Transform, Innovate And Evolve Recruitment In 2021

10 ways to stay competitive in securing top talent

Organizational success depends on getting the best out of your employees, who can be viewed as the most valuable asset of an organization. Human resources and recruitment play a crucial role in building a successful organization. Now more than ever, organizations rely on HR professionals to make the most of an ever-changing workforce.

Changes in the staffing industry that were meant to happen over several years have been accelerated by the recent pandemic. According to a study by McKinsey & Company, consumer and business digital adoption have vaulted five years forward in only eight weeks, as a result of Covid-19. To stay competitive in securing top talent, here are some of the latest trends and methods to transform, innovate and evolve your organization’s recruitment process in 2021 and beyond.

The world has been slowly shifting toward global recruitment and a distributed workforce.

However, then came 2020, and everything was fast-tracked. In the current remote working era, prospective candidates are applying to jobs from all over the world, providing recruiters with a limitless and deeper talent pool to select from. Talent seekers are now turning to new and advanced technologies to access a wider talent pool, conduct interviews virtually and streamline the recruiting process.

Although most tasks in recruiting are people-oriented, they can still be easily automated.
Automation and other technologies are changing the dynamics of the recruitment industry, so that recruiters do not have to get involved in routine manual processes. This enables them to take more strategic roles, while the rule-based tasks are automated. There are infinite ways in which technology can help to streamline processes, but it all boils down to what your goal is.

Remote hiring has led to a rise in the usage of online skill assessment practices and solutions. An online assessment provides flexibility for the candidates, as well as recruiters, and simplifies the entire skill assessment process. Online assessment platforms will continue to become more intuitive with time, and our dependability on them will not only continue, but increase more than ever before.

The use of analytics and data-driven metrics is one of the recent and in-demand recruiting trends. The proper use of HR analytics has been proven to enhance several key hiring metrics like cost-to-hire, time-to-hire and quality-of-hire. According to a LinkedIn report, recruitment teams with mature analytics are twice more likely to improve their recruiting efforts and three times more likely to experience cost reductions and efficiency gains.

Analytics enables recruiters to gain insights into the areas of their recruitment strategies that are functioning well or otherwise. When recruiters can easily identify areas for improvement, they can make appropriate changes easily, and effectively.

When it comes to recruiting practices, artificial intelligence (AI) is playing a huge role in the way organizations source, screen and hire new talent. Organizations like Microsoft, Lyft, Uber, Wix.com and WeWork are using AI-based platform to find candidates. Streamlining processes is key and where AI comes in to save the day. Here are a few of the most prevailing and useful options:
 

The dreadfully out-of-date practice of requiring prospective candidates to come to the office for in-person interviews is coming to an end. The pandemic has led to a massive evolution of communication tools such as Microsoft Teams, Zoom, etc. Recruiters can virtually interview a candidate just like they would in a face-to-face scenario, due to these platforms’ high-quality video capabilities, instant screen sharing and whiteboards, and that have bridged the gap between physical and virtual interviews.

Organizations across the globe are adopting this practice. For instance, Amazon canceled most face-to-face interviews to set up virtual interview portals for candidates to connect with recruiters via the company's video conferencing software. Similarly, Google IS interviewing candidates using their own product.

Video interviews are also a tremendous time saver for all stakeholders. Covid-19 realities have fueled the recruitment industry to create an end-to-end virtual recruiting process for the first time. This new trend will continue even in a post-Covid world, because of the effectiveness and cost-saving it offers.

Many proactive organizations are using distinctive experiences to make their hiring process interesting. For example, some organizations are offering a virtual reality (VR) demonstration of their business culture and a virtual office tour of their physical office space. Candidates can do this remotely from anywhere in the world to experience what could potentially be their new work environment.  

Many organizations like Jet.com, Jaguar, General Mills, Deutsche are using virtual reality to attract candidates and give them a glimpse of their organizational culture and office environment.

Social media will be a great place to look for candidates, especially as geographical boundaries are diminished with remote working. Social media recruiting is particularly effective for targeting millennials and generation Z, who tend to use social media as source of all their news, job opportunities, etc. – it’s more than a social platform to them.

According to a survey by the Open University, 79% of job seekers prefer using social media in their job search, and this number increases to 86% for younger job seekers. Additionally, it is a great platform to look for candidates for a some of your organization’s more unconventional jobs.

Standard job descriptions are transforming, with recruiters trying to be more innovative and unconventional. They are implementing new tactics like skipping job titles and designations, while others have even left out the explicit specifications of the job. The objective behind this is to hire candidates beyond just qualifications and skills. This transformation in the thought process of recruiters is catching on and more talent seekers are going for this approach when looking to hire the best candidate. Additionally, such an approach is a fun way to diversify the pipeline and potentially create new roles.

New recruiting techniques demand new interview techniques. One innovative method is holding job auditions (with job audition referring to the simulation or trial of the role for which a candidate has applied) and inviting only your short-listed candidates to complete real tasks.

This enables companies to evaluate the candidates’ skills in the actual job. Some organizations are even going a step beyond this and using virtual reality to simulate different environments and increase candidate engagement. Another trending technique is “on-demand” or “one-way” video interviews, where candidates record themselves answering some basic questions in a quick 15-minute video.

The industry will also witness the adoption of high-tech tools to draw on neuroscience to assess candidates’ soft skills, like teamwork, commitment, flexibility and more; factors that help evaluate a candidate’s job performance. Using virtual interview techniques allows multiple rounds of interviews with a candidate to be done in a single day, thereby closing the position in a single day.

Organizations that combine effective HR management with advanced technology tools outperform those that do not. Organizations must occupy themselves with opportunities for continual self-renewal via modern learning strategies and digital technologies so that becoming proficient in new recruiting methodologies becomes routine. However, no two organizations have the same environments, thus there is no single recipe to follow.