Article: How can mobile technology and assessment improve the quality of hiring

HR Technology

How can mobile technology and assessment improve the quality of hiring

Lets look at some of the ways that mobile technology and assessment can improve the quality of hiring
How can mobile technology and assessment improve the quality of hiring

Today’s new-age mobile recruitment platforms provide options like posting unlimited jobs for free, saving hiring costs, evaluating candidates via scientific assessments and regular communication. It is nothing short of a dream come true for a recruiter. The days of people walking into offices with a hard copy of their resume asking at the reception if the organization has a suitable opening for them have given way to more swift techniques and this generation now has an instant solution to hiring needs as well!

There has been a paradigm shift from the way recruitment was approached from being merely about announcing jobs to a keen focus on the quality of hire. Research finds talent acquisition managers say that quality of hire is still the best gauge of the recruiting function's performance.

Scientific assessments are the key to making objective hiring decisions and ultimately giving orgnaizations a people edge in the market. As recruitment evolves and technology enables make recruitment more effective the need for integrating the mobile optimized assessments in the mobile recruitment strategy become a major imperative for recruiters.

There is little that one’s mobile cannot do and taday’s generation turns to its convenience for everything - from looking for the right place to buy food, to ordering groceries that will be delivered to the doorstep by the click of a button, for directions, and for relationships. And why not, when the world is so well connected by this  comparatively tiny gadget? 

Here are some of the ways that mobile technology and assessment can improve the quality of hiring: 

Outreach: The power of the mobile is all pervasive now, with data packs being available from leading mobile companies at rates that most people can afford. This gives a recruiter a level of outreach that is incomparable to all other forms. While proactive applicants surf for potential jobs, mobile allows a company to immediately reach a passive candidate as well. It is easy to tie up with talent management organizations with a native mobile app to communicate with potentially suitable candidates even if they are not actively searching for jobs and engage plus evaluate them further. Imagine this scenario: Candidate X is on her long commute back after a grueling day at work. Her work is so terribly hectic at the moment that she has no energy when she gets home to turn the laptop on again to surf the web for suitable jobs and send her resume to 200-odd companies, not knowing whether any of them will respond. As she gets into the cab, she receives a notification on her LinkedIn account that says that companies Y and Z are looking for people with her skills and experience. What do you think X will do? There is a clear case for organizations to consider investing in building the mobile layer in their recruitment process so that the candidates have the option to apply and get evaluated on their mobile as well anytime, anywhere.

The quality of hire is therefore not restricted to any particular pool of applicants applying actively for jobs. The probability of hiring someone who is far better suited to the role is automatically increased when you have reached out to so many more probable candidates.

Candidates’ ease of access: Linked to the above, but necessary to mention separately, is the ease of access that mobile technology and assessment offers to candidates. With the pace at which the world is moving today, and the time that everyone does not seem to have, mobile technology and assessment helps make the entire process far more accessible to the candidate. It is also more likely that the candidate will actually complete the assessments and submit it to the company, when they have the option to apply as soon as they see a job opening that interests them. Additionally, various organizations have now turned to asking for easier forms of screening like quick video resumes – there is just so much more an applicant can say through this medium, and so much more that a recruiter can understand. Advanced mobile applications like Pearson TalentLens’ Hire.Me enable a candidate to upload profile information and undergo job relevant mobile-optimized assessments just when they come across the job opening, without having to switch devices. It makes a candidate more willing to, and more likely to, stay engaged throughout the process, therefore automatically reducing your dropout rates. 

The power of data - both at the candidate and source level: Like other forms of technology, mobile recruitment will automatically give you far more easily accessible data to refer to improve your hiring. This could be in two ways - one is at the candidate level where your pre-screening data like assessment scores, demographics, performance trends can be presented in an easily-understandable way, and the other is at the source level where data can continuously explain what aspects are making a greater positive impact. The latter helps continuously improve the mobile application strategy, while the former makes it easier to take shortlisted candidates forward to the ‘human’ levels of recruitment. 

It is not likely that the human would become redundant aspect of ‘human resources’. There is also a long way to go for technology in the recruitment process – both, for the candidate and the recruiter experience. However, what is sure is that if the appropriate areas in the recruitment process are automated, there is great power of reach and accuracy that technology can add to hiring quality.

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Topics: HR Technology, Recruitment, Assessments, #MobileAssessmentWeek

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