What's the Future of Technology in Recruitment and Hiring

Technology moves so fast in all fronts including the field of hiring and recruitment. As it continues to evolve, it will play an important role in the way companies approach the recruiting and hiring process.
 

Photo by: recruitingblog.com

Recruitment today has evolved from the traditional job boards of not so long ago into the present outreach and applicant tracking systems. Now, the world of recruitment has gone 100% digital.

Link with LinkedIn Way to Go?
Before, LinkedIn was seen as just supplemental to the traditional paper resume and personal interview.  

Now, it is a digital “filing cabinet” of resumes where recruiters may look for potential candidates for a vacancy to be filled up.

The need to come out with ads in the papers primarily to collect resumes from active job candidates is fast becoming irrelevant as evidenced by the thinning pages of help-wanted ads in the classified section of the leading dailies. 

This is one significant development that tremendously decreased help-wanted ads in the newspapers when job announcements migrated to the web.

At LinkedIn, potential job candidates are now being reached out by companies in increasing frequency.  Many of them regularly receive emails from social networks that says “company so and so are looking for candidates like you”.

Technology to Replace Human Recruiters?
Now that recruitment and hiring has gone digital, paper resumes where recruiter used to base their insights on individual experiences, skill and aptitudes are now being replaced by social media and other technologies.  


Experts have noted that digital profiles are able to provide far more insight into a candidate, as many recruiters have realized. From it, recruiters can now assess whether a person will fit and has the right skills for a job.

“This kind of automated outreach”, reports Inc. magazine, “points to what experts expect to see soon from recruiting technology: Advanced outreach specifically tailored to specific candidates and based on more than the employment and education information they've listed on the Internet.” 

Inc. further reported,  “And we can expect to begin answering a big question: Will human managers ever be fully removed from the recruiting and hiring process?”

Not necessarily.  Technology, I believe, will not replace human judgment but merely to aid it in the selection process.  

Despite present recruiting technology today that works by collecting a batch of potential recruits and weeds out those who don’t meet certain qualifications in their resumes or cover letters, there is still a need for a recruiter’s judgment call where a balance between technology and the human touch is reached.

Digital Interviews
There is no doubt that technology will play a crucial role in the hiring process.  For instance, more and more companies will embrace Skype and other video services in interviewing whether one-on-one or panel interviews.

Photo by: cpr-pa.com

More and more employers are utilizing the webcam and video interviews in their hiring process.  One-way videos where applicants record their interviews for later on-demand viewing are also becoming standard practice.  Live, two-way webcam interviews will experience tremendous growth as well in the coming years.

For out-of-town candidates and first-round interviews, the phone call is quickly being replaced by the more-high-tech video interview too, reported Business News Daily.

The Age of the Generation Y or Millenials

Business News Daily added that “more and more of Generation Y will be entering the job market in the coming years, and will soon make up the largest percentage of the workforce. Employers are quickly learning that these workers have different expectations about the hiring process than past generations.”

Raised on technology, they no longer accept “old school” concepts of recruiting and work. Recruiters need to engage Gen Y candidates in new ways to be effective in attracting them.

This is true as well with passive candidates or those who are not looking for jobs but maybe open to new career opportunities.

As technology moves, so is the recruitment and hiring systems.  Each day, new apps and solutions are being developed and introduced to help solve each and every facet of the HR profession. 

The professional recruiter of today cannot afford not to be proactive and be abreast of technology as it affects his or her line of work. Otherwise there is no tomorrow to think of.

Agree?  Let me know what your think.

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