New times, new rules. In the digital age, companies must constantly adapt to remain successful. HR departments and recruiters have to be innovative in order to cope with the variable flow of applications, but also with the global health crisis that has had a heavy impact on traditional working conditions. The notion of e-recruitment is now on the lips of all modern organisations who are looking for ways to attract the best profiles in their field of expertise. Forget the old recruitment practices and make way for e-recruitment.
But what does this mean? What are the key issues in this process and what solutions are available to recruiters to optimise their process? Why use e-recruitment: e-recruitment solutions? What are the advantages of e-recruitment?
E-recruitment, what are the challenges?
The challenges associated with recruitment in a company are high and can have a considerable impact on the company if they are not carried out efficiently by human resources. In recent years, recruitment techniques have evolved considerably. Companies, anxious to save time without losing the money invested in this process, are developing new methods to meet the new expectations of the labour market.
The digitalisation of activities is no longer in question for managers. It represents a necessary turnaround for companies wishing to make a place for themselves among the privileged. In this context, recruitment is no exception to the rule.
E-recruitment can be a clear answer to the needs of a society in which everything has to move very fast. However, its use must not under any circumstances neglect the individualisation of exchanges with candidates and the need for them to create and maintain a personalised link with the recruiter, right from the start of the process.
So what are the challenges of successful e-recruitment?
Above all, a targeted approach and qualified profiles. Saving time by limiting time-consuming and costly processes, obviously, but certainly not at the expense of quality! The recruitment tools must accompany the recruiter’s decisions, but the approach must remain human and personalised to be successful.
In this context, the employer brand is a key card that should not be overlooked for effective e-recruitment. In concrete terms, this means that the company’s brand image must be cared for, maintained and updated. Monitoring, benchmarking, all means are good to make yourself visible and attractive to talent.
More than just a presence on the net, mastering digital tools will allow you to gain in efficiency by capitalising on feedback. Continuous improvement of the recruitment experience is indeed a major asset in an e-recruitment approach.
The interest of e-recruitment also lies in the possibility of acting proactively by creating pools of qualified candidates. These CV libraries will prove to be very useful in saving time during future recruitments. Searching for an application is greatly simplified.
Like any effective project, e-recruitment requires a significant initial investment and learning process. But it can be the key to success if the commitment to it is real and built in.
Stages and solutions of an e-recruitment process
Job advertisement and sourcing
Also discussed in a previous article “How to advertise properly” In the context of e-recruitment, the Internet now offers companies multiple solutions for easily distributing job offers and sourcing talent. Amongst these many and varied choices, it is not always easy for the recruiter to target the right platforms and use the right recruitment tools, even though these are necessary for the success of the process.
At this stage of the process, there are two key success factors:
Firstly, visibility. And why? Because the more the offer will be relayed, the more likely the company will be to reach the objective it has set itself to recruit candidates online.
However, having a high visibility is not a guarantee of quality. Internet offers the opportunity to reach a very large population, but is of no interest if the target is not defined beforehand. The aim is, in the end, to save time and money! Visibility factor alone is therefore not sufficient in communication.
Thus, targeting qualified and experienced candidates is the second challenge of this stage of the process.
So how do you go about it?
Use social networks!
It’s no longer a surprise to anyone that social networks such as Facebook and LinkedIn are great tools to help with recruitment, and more specifically with the distribution of advertisements and the sourcing of candidates. Adapted to the corporate world and its codes, they now allow very precise targeting of candidates, whether they are active or passive. Recruiters can thus directly reach qualified candidates with the required experience in the appropriate sector of activity.
Posting on the right job boards, choosing the right job site
Job boards, whether free, paid or specialised in a specific sector of activity, help to give a wider visibility to job offers. The choice of platform will often depend on the budget allocated to recruitment, but will also have to take into account the community that each of them has. The audience of these platforms will therefore often guide the company’s choice for the dissemination of advertisements.
Publish on the company’s website
This last option will only be effective if your HR policy takes into account the employer brand and if the candidate experience is well thought out. We will come back to this point later.
These e-recruitment tools also have the advantage of being able to make changes to publications quickly. They also offer recruiters the possibility of being proactive by maintaining pools of candidates from which they can draw if necessary when recruiting future employees.
Meeting and testing the candidate
Online interview and test tools exist on the web and in turn serve the recruiter at the heart of the e-recruitment process. They are a good help for the job interview.
Screening
For pre-selection, some software offer tools prior to the formal interview, in which the candidate is asked a number of questions within a limited time and has only a limited number of attempts to register. This is a solution to reduce the number of candidates.
A good way for the recruiter to sort out valuable profiles while testing the candidate’s ability to react under pressure. Two examples are Easyrecrue and Visiotalent, both of which are accessible from our Jobaffinity recruitment software.
Video conference interview
Many live video conferencing platforms such as Zoom or Houseparty have emerged and their use is increasing exponentially following the global pandemic. Recruiters and candidates can meet remotely for e-recruitment purposes.
Personality tests or skills tests
In addition to the traditional recruitment method, tests are used to validate the behavioural and technical skills of a potential future recruit. These often include Assessfirst or CentralTest. These tests generally confirm or invalidate the information obtained during a recruitment interview. They also aim to shed light on the candidate’s development potential. This will also facilitate the integration of the successful candidate.
Inbound recruitment, the 3.0 method
Inbound recruitment aims to introduce techniques and tools from digital marketing into the recruitment process. It consists in linking an offer to other relevant information about the company. Just as we would convert a prospect into a customer, we will try to convert a visitor into a candidate thanks to a good story-telling. The idea is to sell the merits of the company by reinventing the candidate experience in order to encourage them to take an interest in the company, to adhere to its values and to immerse themselves in its culture in order to recruit them. Candidates are seen as potential customers.
These techniques help to give credibility to the recruiter by engaging, among others, rare and key talents for the company. These modern techniques require a thorough understanding of digital tools but can pay off in the long run.
Benefits of our e-recruitment platform Jobaffinity
To facilitate your recruitment, Jobaffinity centralises all the stages of your recruitment process. Our ATS application management system allows you to, among other things
- Post each job on specialised sites,
- Manage a large number of applications and respond to candidates,
- Manage the entire recruitment process,
- Create your career site…
It is the ideal online recruitment tool to manage incoming applications,search for the best candidates and the best talent. Also, it is very quick to set up.
It does not require any training and you can integrate your data with a dedicated module adapted to the different recruitment professions.
