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Often, procurement departments are used only in the background as a call center or business budgeting function, with the sole purpose of nurturing people and accepting bids. This attitude and practice could not be further from the truth. Quality employees provide the foundation for cohesive and successful teams. Many companies cling to outdated hiring processes that often prevent recruiters from acquiring the best talent.
Outdated recruiting practices can undermine your recruiting efforts
This year, 82% of American employers plan to hire new people. However, employers still face challenges in finding the right candidate, with 61% of employers saying the biggest challenge is finding qualified and experienced workers. It's time for organizations with antiquated recruiting practices to abandon them altogether and start looking at recruiting as a strategic function.
Although, of course, shedding old habits means replacing them with new ones. There are four key areas that require innovative and new recruiting solutions: talent discovery, candidate experience, data and reporting, and HR decision-making.
Let's dive into ancient practices that should be in the history books and how organizations can use technology to strategically manage their recruiting efforts.
The right tools to find the best talent
Many recruiters still manually search job boards for good candidates, but find it difficult to specialize in all the positions they need to fill.
Misunderstanding the employer's position means losing good candidates.
For example, if potential candidates aren't using the exact keywords the recruiter is looking for, they might miss the mark.
This is where technology can help. AI-powered resume validation can analyze resumes, use data from past hiring success, identify the best candidates and guide them to the next stage of the hiring process.
Taking it to the next level increases recruiters' chances of finding the best candidates because they no longer rely on intuition; they have historical data of hundreds, even thousands of applicants.
In addition to artificial intelligence, other technological advances in recruiting have made finding the right candidate for the right role a smoother process. For example, some travel nurse recruitment methods combine an organizational strength application program and a human recruitment approach to place nurses where they are most needed in their chosen specialty.
How to reduce the possibility of bias
An important point to note here is that to reduce the possibility of bias, it is important to detect trends that may lead to data corruption and adjust the algorithm accordingly. We all remember the sex worker Amazon and how it turned out.
Candidate Experience: From Fragments to Wholeness
Candidate experience has never been more important in the virtual world. And while 80% of respondents to our 2021 Remote Employment Trends Survey said interviewing and hiring are now completely out of the question, that means moving away from technology skills and creating a unified candidate pipeline.
The truth may be harsh, but it's important to hear: Companies that continue to use multiple hiring management systems and interview tools are ignoring the candidate experience.
With all of these different platforms at different stages of the hiring funnel, candidates often feel overwhelmed and frustrated by the sheer number of platforms they have to deal with.
A candidate can connect to an applicant tracking system to apply, complete an assessment in a separate tool, complete a Zoom or Google Meet video interview, and conduct email communications.
Now some recruiting tools
Meanwhile, the contractor is forced to handle various tools and switch from one platform to another to gather information, which inevitably affects the efficiency of the operation. This data is spread across different platforms making it difficult to find and can be lost completely by employers.
The answer here is simple: companies that invest in an integrated platform take care of everything.
After all, a one-stop platform will save you a lot of money. You want your platform tool to take you from screening to conversation. You'll set yourself and your company apart from your peers when it comes to candidate experience and make life easier for the recruiting team.
These tools can automate the process from step to step.
For example, they can automatically schedule an interview with someone who has passed a skills assessment, or automatically send an offer email to someone who successfully completed a recent interview.
Not to mention, using a single tool allows companies to customize their online environment to fit their brand, which is important for consistency and professionalism in front of the candidate.
Companies using white label recruiting platforms can create a more accurate image of their company when there is no physical workplace to visit.
Data is everything, and so are employers
The reality is that most employers do not have access to extensive information to make decisions. This needs to change.
Recruiting often boils down to investing in data and reporting technology.
Historically, little emphasis has been placed on the use of data analytics for strategic decision-making within a function, and other departments, such as sales or marketing, have been equipped with these technical skills as standard.
However, data and reporting are essential to procurement success, and the often hidden business function of procurement should not be left out of the information revolution.
Useful information can influence hiring decisions.
Consider how long the average candidate spends in the hiring funnel. View high-quality candidate rankings and all candidate-related data from multiple sources. Each step of data processing takes time. See your app conversion rate and each candidate's experience score.
Armed with this knowledge, recruiters will be able to determine the success of their recruiting efforts.
You need to make sure they reach different groups, assess candidate experience, and more. Given the importance of diversity and inclusion (one of the hiring trends of 2021), companies must use analytics to support these efforts.
Eliminate bias in talent decisions
People are inherently subjective, and the same is true of employers, even if they are honest. This means that, ultimately, decisions based on interviews are subjective.
There are many unconscious biases that the interviewer can reveal in this process. Unconscious biases can include:
- Similarity bias (when you prefer people who share characteristics with you or someone you like).
- Attribution bias (our inability to determine the causes of certain behaviors).
- Conformity bias (allowing others to influence your opinion).
Unwittingly, recruiters often avoid qualified candidates and hire unsuitable candidates, all because of their own internal biases.
Additionally, most interview performance data is not collected with candidates, and is used in aggregate and objective evaluation for decision making. Instead, they are fragmented across platforms and documents, complicating the process.
behavioral concepts
AI interview platforms can provide employers with objective information about behavior during video interviews and an objective assessment of candidates' social skills and learning abilities.
These tools improve an individual's decision-making ability by highlighting areas where the interviewer's opinion may be biased.
Advanced AI platforms can evaluate an interviewer's performance by providing data on time spent on each interview topic, the interviewer's speaking time with the candidate, and whether inappropriate questions are asked.
All this allows the interviewer to identify the gaps in his approach and improve his performance.
closure
It is time for procurement departments to break away from old habits and use technology to drive strategic procurement. With virtual hiring on the rise and remote work uninterrupted, what better place to start than now?
Featured Image Rights: Pexels; Thank you!
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