The ultimate guide for resilient recruitment practices

It holds true for all the departments. When a disaster of this magnitude occurs, there is a lot of information circulating amongst the employees, and most of it is untrue. It creates an atmosphere of tension and uncertainty.

In such scenarios, the HR leaders need to up their communication game and keep the recruiters informed. They need to notify the recruiters about any strategy changes with regard to hiring. Besides, it is also a time to reach out to their teams as often as they can.

By being honest and circulating frequent information, the leaders can ensure that the team’s performance is not affected.

To maintain a constant flow of communication, recruitment teams need to design leaderboards, and dashboards and invest in information portals. It will automate and simplify the task of spreading the right information to everyone involved.

Agility calls for quick adaptation to the changes in one’s surroundings. An agile and resilient recruitment team can make all the difference during difficult times. Such a team is also more efficient when hiring demand surges.

As you hire recruiters, go beyond the resume and experience. Try to focus on the mindset and attitude of the recruiters. Try to understand how they will respond during challenging times.

Apart from this, organizations also need to foster a culture that supports agility. Having a vision and a future mindset will help them to create a desirable environment.

Job fairs have become popular in recent times. By attending one such event, recruiters and hiring managers can meet dozens of candidates in a single day. As they interact one-on-one with qualified applicants, they can also understand the talent market. Moreover, it brings the possibility of meeting non-traditional talent with unusual backgrounds.

For recruiters, it is also a brand awareness exercise. Attending such events allow them to create an impression on job seekers.

When disaster strikes, recruiters may not be able to attend these events. Instead of missing this opportunity, they can attend virtual job expos. These are the online events where job seekers and recruiters can meet and interact via chatrooms, webinars, emails, etc.

Some of these events are more advanced that require the organizations to set up virtual booths. These are web pages on the company’s website that mimic a booth and have videos and presentations.

By investing in technology, organizations can enjoy the job fairs even when making personal visits is not possible.

With online job boards and job sites, the outreach of openings has already increased. Recruiters of large organizations receive thousands of resumes in a month. When they have to process these resumes manually, the recruitment process slows down. The efficiency goes for a toss and is evident in recruitment metrics.

The problem compounds during challenging times. In such situations, engaging talent and strategizing for future needs may take precedence. Recruiters may want to focus more on the problem at hand.

In such situations, a software tool that automates screening can give them the required bandwidth.

Screening systems can identify talented candidates from a large talent pool. Since these are based on AI, these tools can match resumes with job descriptions. They can understand patterns and learn to align with the preferences of recruiters.

Recruitment chatbots go the extra mile and conduct first-level of interviews.

impress.ai is a highly-competent tool that further ranks the candidates for the greater convenience of recruiters.

Interviews have traditionally been face-to-face interactions. When the candidate is from another city, the general practice is to fly down the applicant for interviews.

However, in the current times of social distancing, the interview process has changed and how. The interviews have moved to the virtual world with video interactions becoming the norm of the day. However, it is a learning curve for everyone involved.

Apart from the technological challenges, there is a mindset change that is required. The hiring managers need to understand the nuances of a video interview. For instance, they may be biased toward a candidate who has a quiet surroundings or has a nice voice.

In one-way video interviews where the questions are pre-recorded, the recruiters need to prepare a list of thoughtful questions. The answers should not only help them shortlist the candidate for the next round, but also give a glimpse into their personality.

As remote working will become more acceptable in the corporate world, the need for virtual interviews will increase. Apart from being a cost-effective option, they can also reduce time-to-hire.

Candidates want regular status updates and frequent communication from the organisations. When they are kept in the loop, they feel engaged. With a positive hiring experience, they are also more likely to apply in the future.

In the absence of technology, candidate experience is only as good as the recruiter. More often than not, the job of a recruiter is pretty hectic. From engaging candidates to negotiating offers to building relationships, a lot is going on in their lives.

When the status updates are automated, it is one huge responsibility taken off their shoulders. Moreover, it ensures that the organization follows a standard response process. And that too, without any misses.

AI-powered chatbots are extremely useful in enhancing the candidate experience. They can mimic human conversations and provide relevant answers to candidate queries.

Such technology promises consistent experience across the spectrum.

SHRM found in a survey that 92% of organizations conduct background checks. It is done either at pre-employment or at a later stage. The survey also found that companies value background checks. More so, for technical positions.

Traditionally, reference checking has been a manual and repetitive process for the recruitment teams. The flip side is that the other party can sometimes voluntarily share some information. These messages can create a bias in the minds of the hiring managers.

Automated reference checking tools can become one of the strong pillars of resilient recruitment practices. They make the process person-independent and add more value to the process of reference checking.

These systems are smart and learn about the candidates from the responses they get. Most of these tools use behavioral science to understand candidate traits. Secondly, they have a large database to compare these traits with other successful people in similar positions.

When onboarding is manual, the recruiters have to intervene to ensure that everything is in place. Right from desk allocation to network accesses to email configuration has to be done manually.

If the recruiter is unable to attend the office, all of this goes for a toss. It sours the first-day experience of the employees and can also impact retention.

By automating the onboarding process, organizations can ensure that all the resources are in place. It creates a positive experience for new employees. It also empowers them and shortens their transition time from training to becoming fully productive.

Automated onboarding consists of having all the resources online. For instance, building online training dockets for new employees is much more useful than classroom orientation sessions.

With stress-free onboarding, the recruiters can also focus on other strategic aspects of their jobs.

Resilient recruitment practices are the way forward. In the new normal, organizations need to empower their teams to ensure business continuity in all circumstances. As remote working will become the new normal, recruiters will also have to change their ways of working.