Implementing a Digital Recruitment Service Strategy

Almost 4.4 billion people use the internet and only a fraction have ever used a digital recruitment service strategy. The reasons they use it vary from contacting friends, shopping, or booking travel plans. Looking for a job is no exception. 79% of job seekers use online resources and information to help their job search. This means that as an employer, in order to find the best candidates, you need to be online. The competition for quality job candidates is growing every day. Recruiters for jobs can no longer simply post job vacancies on job boards to find the right people. This article is going to discuss how you can build a digital recruitment service strategy. 

Digital recruitment strategy is taking over its non-digital counterpart. Most successful corporates, agencies, and business have long shifted their traditional recruitment strategies to technology-oriented path. And if your organization has not started leveraging the benefits of digital recruitment process, it is time to rethink and reorganize. 

According to 2019 Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends, 70% of the recruiters stated that talent acquisition is a major problem and it is going to remain so in 2019. The report also says that ineffective recruiting technology and creating an appealing job offer are some of the reasons that lead to a challenging recruitment process. 

Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic has shown the importance of hiring remote, which accentuates the use of the right technology.

Therefore, the use of technology in recruitment is rising and recruiters are going to use it more in the coming years. Most of HR Professionals expect technology to play an increasing role in recruiting activities in the next three years, with 87% expecting the increase in the role of technology for sourcing, 83% for screening and 75% for candidate assessment.

What is Digital Recruitment 

Digital recruitment refers to the use of technology and the internet to find, attract, analyze, select, and hire job candidates. This includes online job board advertising, posting on career websites, mobile recruiting, using online assessments, and social recruiting. Many companies utilize one or a couple of these tactics, but do not have a true digital recruitment service strategy.

These days, recruiters for jobs are utilizing more marketing tactics than they are traditional HR processes. This starts with thinking of candidates how marketers think of customers. Then, recruiters should use this to create an ideal candidate persona. From there, you can determine the best way to attract these ideal candidates. Recruiters for jobs may actually find teaming up with the marketing department beneficial. Likely, they are already using some of the tools that you may need. Plus, you can help each other achieve your objectives.

In a nutshell, digital recruitment is a holistic approach that leverages technology to help recruiters complete the cycle of recruitment. Starting from advertising to attracting the right talent for the job, from screening to conducting assessments and hiring, are all parts of digital recruitment methods.  

Recruiters use various digital platforms for this purpose- social media sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, jobs and career portals, company websites and so on. Although organizations are already using one or more ways of digital recruitment methods, they are facing various challenges to make the most of it. 

That is why, corporates and agencies need to create a strong and effective digital recruitment strategy that would save time and resources, and at the same time, help find the best talent.  

 Once you hire your employees, you want to keep your employee retention high: find out the best ways to reduce employee turnover. 

Advantages of Digital Recruitment

Recruiters will gain a more extensive reach by utilizing digital recruiting processes. Using digital tools, you can reach potential workers outside of your geographic area. Plus, you can reach passive candidates who may not be actively looking for a job.

Automating parts of the recruitment process will increase the efficiency of the recruiting process. From finding, selecting, and hiring employees, this can all be automated, saving you significant time. 

Setting up a fully optimized digital recruitment strategy will cost both time and money. However, your ROI is typically higher than when using traditional methods. When used effectively, companies can expect to hire top candidates in a shorter time period.

Tips for Building a Digital Recruitment Strategy

Create Relevant Content

Having a profile of your ideal job candidate will help recruiters for jobs come up with what content they should be creating. For example, if you are specifically looking for people of a certain generation, your approach should be tailored to them. Their online habits, interests outside work, general lifestyles, and expected income are just some things to consider. The more research you can do into them and their interests, the better you can target your content. In general, one of the most enticing pieces of information to include is testimonials from current employees. You can also publish salary reports for people within your industry and post exciting, relevant industry news.

 

Next, you will want to decide where the best place is to share your content. Having quality content will only be as effective as where you share it. Where is your ideal candidate going to look for information on your company? Some options are your company website, your social media profiles, your email newsletter, or external blogs. For assistance in creating effective content, SEO Design Chicago is here to help!

Have a Social Media Strategy

If you don’t yet have a social media presence, or you don’t update it regularly, you need to start now. Employers who started using social media in the recruitment process saw a 49% improvement in candidate quality.

This also goes back to who you are looking to recruit. For example, if you are looking to hire Millennials having a strong online brand is extremely important. Up to 80% of Millennials look for a good “culture fit” before sending an application to potential employers. Give these candidates an idea of what working for your company is like. Videos and images are some of the best ways to capture their attention.

To directly target your ideal candidate, utilize the targeting capabilities on platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn. Facebook’s targeting tools allow you to get very specific. This can really work to your advantage. In addition, Facebook and LinkedIn both offer guides that can help you get started with targeting your audience.

Social media is also a great way to attract passive candidates. These are people who have a job right now but may be casually looking for another job opportunity. They may be looking for more responsibility, a more attractive work environment, or higher pay. Through your social media, you can show them what your company culture looks like and how they fit into it.

Over time, you can analyze which platforms are giving you the best results and tailor your approach accordingly. 

Think About the Candidate’s Experience

Many recruiters for jobs get caught up thinking about how to make this the most efficient experience for them. In doing so, they neglect to think about the candidate’s experience. Digital recruiting processes should be established to make the recruiting process as efficient as possible, for both the recruiters and for the candidates. Recruiters for jobs should go through the application and selection process themselves, so they can understand the candidate’s experience. 

One aspect of this is ensuring your career site is optimized for mobile devices. Almost 90% of job seekers think mobile devices are critical to job hunting, while only 20% of employers say their career site is mobile optimized. It should not be hard for a candidate to find information about the job vacancy or get through the application process on their mobile device. If it is, they will simply go to the next job posting.

Similarly, if your career website requires a long questionnaire, this should be streamlined at once. Candidates much prefer a quick application process that doesn’t take a lot of time to fill out. Plus, a longer application process generally increases your bounce rate.

There are other general guidelines recruiters for jobs should follow to ensure candidates have the best overall experience. The first is communicating with the applicants clearly and regularly. This will show that you have respect for them and help you build a rapport. You should also provide updates about the status of their application. Tell them whether they have made it to the next round or not. They should never be confused about where they stand in the process. Lastly, stick to your hiring timeline.

Consider Your Reputation

Reputation is everything. This is not just about your reputation as a company overall. Your reputation specifically as an employer is vital to getting high-quality candidates. This is another area where marketing and HR may overlap. 

You should first create a strong employer brand online. Make sure your content and messaging are consistent on all of your online platforms. This will help you build a stronger, more memorable brand for potential employees. Make sure your photos are current, all relevant links work, and the description of your business is 100% accurate. Creating cohesive branding across platforms will also eliminate any possible confusion.

Managing your reviews is also important to maintaining your reputation. Just like you can get customer reviews, you can get employee reviews. Ignoring a negative employee review is not the best approach. You obviously don’t want to start an argument with them or reply passive-aggressively. Still, show them that you read it and you heard what they were saying. This is a chance for you to emphasize your commitment to constantly improving. It will show anyone who reads it that you listen to what employees say and you are committed to rectifying issues. 

Create Feedback Loops

Recruiters for jobs should not be afraid of asking candidates what they think about the process overall. Encourage them to share their comments and opinions, positive or negative. This will give you a starting point for how to improve and continue refining your digital recruitment strategy. This should not be a one-time process. It should be continuous as you keep posting job openings.

Track Recruitment Metrics

You cannot improve what you don’t measure. To continue optimizing your digital recruiting processes, decide on what your performance indicators will be. Is the goal to improve the quality of new hires? Perhaps it is to gain more applicants for each job opening? Is it to improve your reputation as an employer? Setting specific objectives will allow you to continue to improve your digital recruitment strategy. 

Be Prepared for What’s Next

Many employers have had to adjust to the rise in popularity of video interviews. Luckily, these save both time and money for recruiters. Allowing candidates to interview from their home, or wherever else is convenient, saves both you and them time. There are so many services available now like Skype, Google Hangouts, and Microsoft Teams that make this extremely easy. 

Other new technology may not offer the obvious benefits that video interviews have. However, they are still going to be important for recruiters for jobs to utilize. Keeping up with these advancing technologies will help you stay ahead of the game. Virtual reality has been used as a way to offer candidates more exciting and engaging content. It also shows the candidate that the company is innovative and creative. Artificial intelligence has also been used to reduce some of the burden on recruiters. It can be used to review previous applicants to determine whether they may be a fit for a job. When dealing with large volumes of applicants, it can be used to quickly scan applications for keywords and experience. 

Digital recruitment service strategies are not one size fits all. Your geographic location, your industry, and the size of your company will drive what strategies you should be using. Reach out to SEO Design Chicago for help with any step of implementing your digital recruitment strategy.

Steps to Strengthen Your Digital Recruitment Strategy 

There are several ways to improve your digital recruitment strategy, and one of the best ways to keep it efficient is to remain data-driven and persistent. Consider these steps to improve your digital recruitment strategy and get the best candidates on the market.

1. Analyze your company’s recruitment data 

It is a good idea to analyze your company’s existing digital recruitment strategies and performance. In order to do this, collect information about sourcing platforms and other tools and technologies your company currently uses. 

 2. Conduct a competitor analysis

How about comparing your organization’s recruitment strategies with your competitors’? To pull this out easily, you can apply for jobs in your competitors’ sites and see how they execute the whole process from an applicant’s point of view. 

3. Meet your recruitment team

Ask your in-house recruiting team or recruitment agency team about how they write the job description, the screening process, what tools they use for assessing candidates, and how they interact with candidates. And most importantly, find out whether they keep track of the work in a unified platform for later use. This will help you get to know the current state of your digital recruitment strategy. 

4. Do a candidate source research

To build more effective digital recruitment strategy, you need to ensure your job advertisements are noticed by applicants. There is no point in posting jobs at those sites where number of visits by jobseekers is less. At the same time, you must also see your recruiting team are active on social sites, job boards or third channels where you get your applicants from. 

5. Connect with peers and colleagues 

The more you interact with your colleagues from similar fields and build relationships with people in the similar field, the better you become when it comes to digital recruitment strategies. You can also search online and follow successful recruiters, seek advice from them, and share ideas.

6. Reward employee referrals

Employee referrals are good for business. It is a known phenomenon that high-performers always refer other high-performers. So, create an employee referral program that is central to employee recognition.  

Use employee recognition technology to let your employees know that their efforts are appreciated and their contributions are valued. And by incentivizing your employees for their referrals, you are not only attracting top talent, you are also retaining your top performers and boosting employee morale for better productivity. 

How Make The Most Of Your Digital Recruitment Campaign 

Once you have the data from the previous steps, you would be in a better position to apply best strategies into your digital recruitment activity. To be able to fully utilize digital recruitment process, focus on the following key areas.

1. Create mobile-friendly website and careers page

Do you know more number of job seekers are using their mobile phones instead of a computer to apply for jobs? According to Economic Research report published by Glassdoor, 58% of users use their smartphones for job search. And that is why, you need to create a responsive website and its careers page with a mobile-friendly UX design. This will increase the number of applicants, as per Glassdoor research team. 

2. Go social

Going social is not a matter of choice, the question is how you can do it better than others. If you stick to posting job advertisements to your website and job portals and not on social media, your chances of finding the right talent is far less that you can imagine. Post jobs with attractive, accurate and creative description on social sites like LinkedIn and Facebook. According to Robert Walters Whitepaper, 54.1% of applicants check professional social sites for career opportunities. 

3. Customize recruitment plan

You need to customize your recruitment plans keeping the organization goals and objectives in mind. There are thousands of different methods to use when it comes to digital recruitment but not all are suitable for your company. You should be in a position to determine what strategy works best for your organization and go with it.  

Use BoardFlo, a Kanban style collaboration tool, to create your digital recruitment strategy with your co-workers’ input. 

4. Aim for a better candidate experience

The role of HR recruiter has shifted from traditional paperwork and manual interview process to more progressive roles. Recruiting agencies, human resource managers and organizations are now leveraging the power of technology to give their candidates a better experience. Your organization can use an applicant tracking system (ATS) to streamline the entire process. This will save your organization its valuable time and from huge expenses. 

The Future of Digital Recruitment Service Strategy 

Digital technology is already reshaping the recruitment process. It is meant to empower recruiters by bringing in more transparency into the whole system. 

As we have seen, research shows that the role of technology will grow in all aspects of recruitment. This is great, as it will ensure that the first step of your future employees’ experience is positive. 

With the changes that COVID-19 brought, we ought to see companies switching to search for remote workers, which will surely accentuate the role of technology even more.