Over the past ten years, the role of the corporate recruiter has evolved dramatically—and for the better, I might add. The challenges that recruiters faced a decade ago when much of their focus was on the time-consuming process of going through resumes by hand—not to mention that we’re talking paper resumes here—have been eclipsed. Now, technology has advanced to make corporate recruiting more social in every aspect of the job.
Here are the top four things that we’ve seen evolve in the course of ten short years.
Even though there are a lot of people looking for work, when it comes to the highly skilled candidates you need, you’ll find that they hold a lot of weight today. This is especially true for startups and technology companies, who depend on a lean but highly functional staff. The talent war is real, and unless recruiters are willing to get into the ring, they won’t be able to land the best talent.
And with the two-way street of social media, candidates will review, directly compete with, or slander your company’s practices if something isn’t handled in a positive and responsive manner. No longer is throwing resumes into the black hole an acceptable practice, nor is not responding to emails about an open job requisition. You need to cover your bases and answer all inquiries, even if only with an automated response.
Before, recruiting meant cold-calling and employee-jacking, and the focus was never put on the company’s employer brand. There really wasn’t a need for this in the past, when companies were able to hire people left and right because of the health of the economy and the fact that technology jobs were in abundance. Recruiters today need to sell their employer brand while they are shopping for staff. This means telling the story of who you are as a company and why an employee would want to work for you over other companies.
Having the right technology to enable you to develop your program into something successful has never been more important then it is today. The HR tech industry has become increasingly integral to managing ROI and to recruiting more effectively. The type of technology available in today’s recruiting era, from online assessments to niche job boards, is light-years away from where it was ten years ago, and if you want to succeed you need to stay abreast of the new developments.
When Facebook launched over ten years ago, recruiters would never have believed that they would actually be holding virtual job fairs on it. But, fast forward to today—it’s happening, and it’s happening in the top-tier Fortune 500 companies. If you’re a recruiter and you’re not using social media, you’re doing something terribly wrong.
Like most of our world, corporate recruiting has been completely transformed by technology in the last ten years, and we’ve only scratched the surface of what’s out there. If you aren’t paying attention to the above-mentioned trends, you need to start doing so. You can’t fight the tide, and you’ll find that by embracing the changes you can get them to work to your advantage.
4 Comments
I remember my first recruiting job – no computers back then and so they gave me a phone (still with a cord) and a yellow pages to cold call for clients. Just look at us now! Sometimes I feel myself like a dinosaur because recruiting process and technology has evolved so rapidly over so short period of time – and I have been a witness of it all!
I agree that in the nearest future an employee will be in charge of the whole recruiting process. I mean think that job seekers will attract a massive traffic of recruiters and employers on the basis of their skills and talents. Employees will become more visible and be in a better position to ‘sell’ themselves. This might reverse the current trend as employees will be able to be on the plain view via different social media networks for recruiters to choose them.
Nevertheless all the technological progress the recruiting process must concentrate relationship. What I mean is that recruiters must focus on making the candidate experience better by making it more meaningful and interactive.
Having just gone through recruiting on the recruitee side, I really feel these principles have a high impact on the company ability to attract talent especially long-term. Streamline the recruiting process, protect your company brand, make the recruiting experience consistent company wide. If you don’t, the talent will not come long-term.