Human resources today has access to the same digital technology that have been available for years to marketing leaders to build brand, find and land new customers. These tools include chatbots, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and soon blockchain.
These technologies can do the near-impossible for recruiting: make the job application process enjoyable and more about career development.
HR leaders can build employer brand just as effectively as marketing leaders build a company’s customer brand. Employer brands align with the company’s customer brand but are focused on the job applicants and the company’s current workforce. Research shows both brands lead to more customers because in many cases job applicants are customers.
HR builds employer brand by telling stories of the company’s purpose and the societal good from its products and services. One of the most effective ways to build brand is by letting employees talk about the cool work they do and what they like about their teams, work culture, and careers. Finally, HR builds employer brand by communicating the competitiveness of its pay and benefits.
By smartly using these new digital tools, HR leaders can transform HR and make it more strategic, more analytical, and an essential partner for driving profitable growth in companies.
Innovative, early HR adaptors have found that by using the new generation of applicant tracking systems such as iCIMS, the job application process can be reduced to minutes and not an hour. Through chatbots, such as AllyO and Entelo, HR can automate much of their recruiting administration, track metrics, and have instantaneous communications with job applicants. When a job candidate is not the best fit for one job, their technology can recommend other jobs they are qualified for with a link to the job posting. Finally, this technology allows recruiters to survey job applicants about their experience. These surveys help recruiters build employer brand.
With artificial intelligence search tools such as ThisWay Global, recruiters can find and hire qualified passive job applicants quickly and without bias. If they are not ready to make a move now, smart recruiters will develop relationships with them to lure them when the time is right.
Technology alone, however, is not a silver bullet.
Before investing in technology, business and HR executives need to recognize that recruiting is as vital a business process as engineering, marketing, sales and manufacturing. Recruiting in many companies needs to be leaned out and measured along each step in the recruiting process to identify its breakdowns and gaps. Everyone in the process needs to understand their role and be trained for it.
In addition, HR needs to put in place the learning of empirical research to rapidly screen and interview its candidates thoroughly, cost-effectively, and without bias.
Finally, HR needs to build compelling investment proposals that illustrate how finding and hiring qualified new employees faster with improved process efficiencies and digital technology will accelerate the achievement of business goals, reduce costly turnover, and provide a return on investment.
Learn more about how you can hack your recruiting by purchasing my new book: Hack Recruiting: the Best of Empirical Research, Method and Process, and Digitization. You can buy it online at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Archway Publishing.
Those who buy Hack Recruiting before October 1, 2019, will have access to my new, valuable video podcast series with leading HR technologists and practitioners. Send me a copy of your receipt to VA@VictorHRConsultant.com with the subject line. “Enroll me in the new video podcasts series!”
Victor Assad is the CEO of Victor Assad Strategic Human Resources Consulting. He conducts HR assessments, and consults and provides hands-on support to improve HR capability, cultures of innovation, leaders and teams.
In addition to buying his book, ‘Hack Recruiting’, subscribe to his weekly blogs to learn the latest about digital technology and overcoming HR and work culture obstacles.