'Hire Smarter' utilizing talent acquisition technology

The success of any organization — whether small or big — depends on its employees, which is closely related to the talent acquisition process.

We know how acquiring the right talent can be a challenging task. Back in 2012,  U.S. employers had spent about $140 billion only on recruitment activities and this expenditure continues to increase every year. Even after investing time, money and effort, more than 63 percent of HR managers have complained that their candidate search results don’t match the context of what they are looking for.

For decades, organizations have deployed the same traditional method, i.e. if there is a demand for X role, then immediately find someone to fill that gap. But this approach will no longer work.

New technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning are making their presence felt in the talent acquisition and recruiting system. These are the keys tools needed to make smart hiring decisions. Besides, leveraging these technologies will enable leaders to streamline the transactional side of recruiting.

Poor recruitment efforts result in unqualified job applicants, lack of diversity, and they are more likely to quit if hired. In fact, you may also miss highly qualified candidates because they were unaware of a job opening.

That’s why there is an urgent need to do the ‘Smart’ hire. But how? As talent acquisition is becoming global, the whole recruiting process has become more structured.

Today’s technology-based talent acquisition process is driven by a solid AI strategy. It helps recruiters and HR teams to reduce the effort, time, and resources required for sourcing and hiring talent.

This talent acquisition technology helps with recruitment marketing as well as sourcing. The talent acquisition team has a strategy in place which aligns with company goals. It helps to identify, target, and attract the most qualified candidates for the role. The tools provide:

• Big data to help managers know their candidates’ needs and how to obtain them. It also helps with talent acquisition analytics. HR managers can closely monitor the new employee, and by using existing analytic data and using an efficient HR software they can preemptively anticipate their future success.
• Global sources for talent acquisition, which can be accessed through professional online networks, corporate websites, and social media profiles.
• Recruitment objectives, rankings, and suggestions based on requirements, and unbiased applicant assessments. The best part is--it can all be from the employer’s list of candidates or a pool of over 10 million people on the web.

Some of the popular technologies or services used to recruit in today’s business world include applicant tracking systems (ATS), job boards, and recruitment agency.

• Applicant Tracking System (ATS)
  ATS is a software that assists in the recruitment process by centralizing incoming candidates. It selects only the best-suited resumes from among thousands which companies receive for a specific position. It could be from anywhere — submitted by recruitment vendors, referred by employees, or being sourced on job boards.
  The system has the ability to source for any job requirement automatically across a variety of different job boards. It filters the applicants based on predefined keywords and phrases, scores them based on relevancy, and sends out the most qualified ones.

• Job boards
  Job Boards are nothing but the digitalized version of traditional print job advertisements. You can find job vacancy details at the daily newspaper or physical boards in public places like the university career center. Similarly, companies post job descriptions on the job boards. Candidates can apply directly on the job board, or sometimes they are redirected to a company’s career site to apply there.
  Job boards are integrated with the company’s ATS for a seamless application process.

• Recruiting agency
  Recruiting agencies helps companies find the right candidate. Employers provide the agencies with the requirements of their ideal candidate. The HR experts then help create a talent acquisition strategy that reflects your company’s brand. It enables you to attract, source, recruit and hire quality candidates.

AI is revolutionizing talent acquisition by helping recruiters work faster and smarter. It is automating administrative tasks and generating powerful insights.

• Cost-effectiveness
  Automation of tasks will bring opportunities for businesses that will benefit the workforce, clients, and suppliers. For starters, it will help reduce costs through efficiencies by taking over the high volume and labor-intensive tasks. And at the same time, it will help improve the quality of work by eliminating the chance of human error.
• Speeding up the recruiting process
  Every recruiter needs time to identify job openings, sources, and recruit candidates to fill up the vacancy. No matter how big, every company has limited resources. Moreover, if a recruiting team is not able to hire quickly, the business is directly affected.
  But the advances in talent acquisition technology come to our rescue. By automating administrative tasks, it improves their recruiting efforts and thus, makes the overall process productive. It frees up workers’ time to focus on delivering more critical services to the client first.
  In short, AI helps in locating and engaging highly qualified candidates as quickly as possible.

AI is here to enhance our jobs and not eliminate the human factor involved.

There’s no reason to fear the AI-driven talent acquisition technologies. Their purpose is to enable us to become smarter, faster, and more productive with the whole recruiting process. But it can’t do more than that.

For instance, it can’t replace the relationship-building touch required to find the right candidate. So even with the ever-evolving landscape of talent acquisition, technology can’t take over the complete role of humans involved.

To conclude, it will not take over your job. Instead, it will automate the labor-intensive tasks, thus giving you more time to focus on things that really matter.