The signals are red on the job market. Sectors are particularly affected, such as hotels and restaurants, where many employees are now on short-time work. Young graduates are also impacted by the crisis. According to Apec, the decline in the volume of offers for young graduates in the first half of 2020 was 41% compared to the same period a year earlier (1). Consequence for recruiters: you face a greater influx of CVs for each ad posted. Your problem is to select the right candidate in view of the quantity of responses received. In this article, we give you the solutions to help you meet this challenge!
Selection of applications: how do you proceed today?
Today, for each job posted, you can receive several hundred applications per day. Your schedule does not allow you to open all the CVs received. You only manage to process a few dozen applications per day, i.e. the first ones to arrive in your mailbox.
Where is your main difficulty?
You can’t access candidate information quickly because you have to open each email and then each CV as an attachment. This way of processing applications is long and tedious. You then contact each selected candidate one by one to interview them. You have to cross everyone’s agendas and this can be a real headache.
As a result, you waste too much time on tasks where you have no added value, while your bright spot is reading CVs and dealing with candidates.
What are the main risks?
You are aware that by doing so you risk missing the ideal candidate whose CV may be in the last messages received.
You are less reactive and attractive than your competitors. The best applications may escape you to their advantage! The recruiter evaluates but he must also know how to seduce.
You don’t have the time to send negative responses to other candidates, which can tarnish your employer brand.
How to manage quantity in a qualitative way? Our answer!
Here is how you can better control the tasks during the selection phase, especially those with little added value!
How to write a good advertisement to get qualified applications and select the right candidate
Start by filtering the applications by writing your offer correctly. This will help you attract more qualified applicants. This will simplify your selection process. Agree internally on the job description, be punchy in the writing, especially with a catchy title, show the advantages for candidates to join you according to the profiles and present your company in a dynamic way. If you want to know more, we give you the right advice to get there in our blog: “How to write a job offer well.“
Ask the right questions at the outset to make the selection process easier.
We encourage our clients to put a first filter on the application form. For example, if a driver’s license is required to perform the assignment, ask the question at the outset. If the candidate does not have it and it is a mandatory prerequisite, the recruiter can then explain the refusal quickly. This will be understood by the candidate because the answer will be motivated. The application is thus processed quickly and qualitatively.
Access information in one click!
Instead of opening each email and each CV, with a tool like Intuition Software’s Jobaffinity, CVs received are automatically stored in the software and are immediately displayed in your account. You can review each CV and search by keywords or geographic areas.
Set your priority criteria
For some recruiters, the distance between home and work is an important factor because it is often the primary cause of absenteeism. With a digital application processing tool, you have the possibility to set up data to select the right candidates. Each client can customize their filter according to their priorities and access the most relevant applications. The search is made easier because the data is automatically cross-referenced. You save precious time in contacting candidates before your competitors do.
Make an appointment with a single click
Instead of contacting each candidate one by one, we recommend to our clients to send a link to facilitate the booking of appointments with candidates. You give access to an electronic agenda with dates and times agreed upon in advance between the different interlocutors. As soon as a slot is taken by a candidate, it is removed from the proposals.
Online appointment scheduling allows you to act quickly and to face the competition.
Build a solid CV database to select the right candidate
We advise you to keep the applications received even if they do not correspond to the position you are looking for. The constitution of a CV database is essential to facilitate your future recruitments. It allows you to build up a pool of applications with people who are already interested in your company.
With a solution such as ours, from the moment applications are received, they are stored in a CV library in agreement with the RGPD. This way, you can distinguish those that are new, in progress or that have already received a negative response. You can search for candidates by keywords like on a search engine. You can also search them by job analogy or find people you have already met in interviews. Your HR communication is thus much more qualitative because there is a real follow-up of the relationship with the candidates. You can come back to them in a personalized way and make your relationship evolve.
Do you want to leave more time for the human and the relationship in your recruitment?
Ask for a demonstration of Jobaffinity!