The first two decades of the 21st century have completely transformed the kind of business opportunities available worldwide, and the rapid rate of technological advancement is arguably the number one reason behind this transformation. It would be difficult to name an industry or line of business today that does not in some capacity or another rely on technology to sustain its day-to-day operations.
In these circumstances, tech professionals are some of the most sought-after individuals by recruiters worldwide, and a company or organization's tech recruitment strategy may determine its success or failure.
How to Streamline Tech Recruitment in 6 Steps
Your organization's tech recruitment process will not only determine the kind of talent you attract and eventually hire but also influence how potential employees perceive your organizational values and principles.
Streamlining your tech recruitment process is of utmost importance for two primary reasons. Firstly, it drastically reduces the incidence of bad hires. Hiring individuals who are unable to do justice to the position offered to them and their responsibilities will hinder the achievement of organizational goals. Such hires are usually the result of a haphazard hiring process.
Secondly, a streamlined tech recruitment process ensures efficiency and prevents wasting valuable company time and resources. Here are 6 basic steps your organization can take today to streamline tech recruitment.
1. Planning and Preparation - Identification of Talent Pipelines
The first step to streamlining your tech recruitment process is planning and preparation. The team responsible for recruiting professionals must fully understand exactly what kind of individual the organization intends to hire. This includes a clear understanding of the demands and responsibilities of the job on offer, desirable qualities, minimum qualifications, and other such criteria that determine a candidate's performance in the selection process.
There must be complete agreement between all stakeholders within the organization that recruitment to a particular position is necessary. There must also be alignment with respect to the responsibilities and job description of an employee hired to the aforesaid position. Organizations must treat the involvement of senior employees engaged in the selection process as part of their official responsibilities and must make the necessary adjustments to their working hours and deadlines.
Another critical aspect of planning and preparation includes the identification and maintenance of talent pipelines or talent sources that offer the most promising prospects in terms of eligible candidates.
In the ever-growing world of business and entrepreneurship, there is a high chance that most of the top companies in your field are on the lookout for highly talented IT recruits who will add value and efficiency to their functioning. It is therefore very important to have a pool of potential candidates that you can market your brand and company to.
Online platforms like LinkedIn, on-campus recruitment from colleges, and social media are highly effective candidate pools. Companies may also choose to look at professionals in other industries with the requisite expertise who may consider switching positions or organizations in return for better incentives or work experience.
Furthermore, one aspect of planning that can never be ignored is internal recruitment. An organization must always first attempt to find out if any existing employees are fit to be promoted or hired to fill the vacancy since these employees are usually well-versed with the organizational values and prevailing work culture.
Also Read: How iMocha Help You Ace Campus Recruitment? The Recruiter’s Guide
2. Use of AI and Automation
Artificial intelligence (AI) and automation tools may be the most helpful weapons in your organization's arsenal if you are looking to streamline the tech recruitment process. Apart from the fact that seamless AI integration and automation reduces the scope of error and promotes transparency, it also saves valuable company resources that would otherwise be wasted on tedious and repetitive tasks.
One of the best examples of AI integration is using chatbots to converse with potential candidates and obtain crucial information such as whether or not they meet the basic requirements, age, contact information, etc. Nowadays, automated tools can also take over the interview schedules for your company and help save valuable time and resources.
There are several other stages of an application process that may be automated since they do not require the interference of tech recruiters. For example, if basic requirements are met, a chatbot may be developed to send the job application to the interested individual directly. You may even conduct completely automated tests containing MCQs or technical theory questions and allow AI to grade and assess the performance of interested candidates.
Additionally, AI programs may scour through hundreds of CVs and applications and identify the most promising candidates. Such programs may also be able to eliminate or reject certain applications based on pre-existing criteria that are provided by the recruiters.
Moving to a data-driven approach will allow for a variety of recruitment options, such as talent rediscovery. This means that an organization can maintain a database of past candidates and identify past interviewees who may be perfect for the job position being offered.
The primary aim of AI is to mimic human intelligence and make our lives easier, and when used right, it can make your overall recruitment process seamless and effective.
3. Marketing and Preliminary Screening
When an organization attempts to hire new tech professionals - especially in circumstances wherein the candidates are highly sought-after and are attending multiple interviews - it effectively competes against other organizations to get candidates on board. This is why good marketing is vital to the tech recruitment process.
The first step would be to create a positive, nurturing company culture that facilitates a harmonious work environment. If the job experience your company offers does not meet the expectations of the talented candidates that you are trying to recruit, they are less likely to want to work for the company.
Therefore, it is very important for a company to maintain a positive culture that effortlessly attracts talent. This can be achieved through various means, such as including employee testimonials on the official website and allowing workplace visits on designated days for potential employees. Efficient job marketing must ideally also involve advertisements, social media promotions, and listings on job aggregator websites.
Preliminary screening is necessary in tech recruitment in cases where there are a large number of interested individuals applying for the position on offer. Most companies do not make their job listings excessively restrictive to ensure that they do not miss out on ambitious and driven individuals who are perfect for the job merely because of certain minor requirements.
Even if interested candidates do fulfil all the basic prerequisites to apply for the job, it might be a logistical nightmare to interview each and every one. In such cases, video conferences and telephonic interviews may be the best option for recruiters to better understand and evaluate candidates without wasting precious company resources and time.
After the completion of this preliminary screening, the best-suited candidates may be invited for a final round of in-person interviews at the company office.
| Also, consider top 25 tech recruiting tools to streamline your hiring process. |
4. Simple and Efficient Application Process
The word "streamline" means to make something simpler and less complicated. Any effort to streamline the overall recruitment process would therefore be pointless if the application process that candidates need to undergo is overly complex or tedious.
Lengthy, winding applications that require hours and hours to fill out may make recruiters' jobs marginally easier but, in many cases, will put off promising applicants from applying to the position.
One of the other prevalent factors that lead interested and qualified individuals not to fill out a company's application is the lack of mobile compatibility. For a world that is constantly on the move, recruiters must ensure that their job applications are easily accessible on any device.
Establishing an Application Tracking System (ATS) should also be at the top of a company's to-do list if it is looking to streamline the application process. An ATS provides recruiters with all the information they will ever need about job applicants from current and past recruitment drives, making the recruitment process less tedious. Information on past candidates with the requisite skills and qualifications may easily be accessed and used to reach out to them.
Additionally, the data stored in the ATS, when combined with AI-powered analytical tools, may provide valuable insights about the recruitment process derived from past campaigns, which enable the creation of a better and more efficient recruitment strategy for the future.
An ATS reduces the need for the manual filing and storage of applications, which is otherwise an incredibly resource-draining exercise. It also saves a lot of paper, so one can add eco-friendly to the list of benefits that an ATS offers to companies.
5. Objective and Modernized Assessment
In most cases, physical testing of all applicants with traditional paper and pen tests is undesirable since it is expensive and time-consuming. With the use of simple assessment techniques that can be applied online, recruiters may be able to get a fairly accurate picture of an applicant's aptitude and quality without having to incur the high logistical costs of physical assessment patterns.
In order to ensure that remote assessment techniques are properly applied, proctoring must be strict to eliminate malpractice. Recruiters may choose to opt for open-book forms of evaluation that eliminate the need for proctoring altogether.
Objective assessment is also key to uphold the integrity of the entire selection process, and identities and affiliations of the applicants should ideally not be revealed to those within the organization who is in charge of evaluating the tests. In addition, the use of AI-powered, automated tests could eliminate any chances of bias in the evaluation of the applicants.
6. Efficient Interview Process and Consistency in Selection
An organization's tech recruitment process ends when the recruiters take the final call in choosing a particular person for the job. Arguably the most important part of a recruitment process is, therefore, the final selection of candidates to fill the advertised vacancy.
Tech recruitment requires face-to-face interviews more often than not before a hire can be confirmed, and it is therefore important for the interview process to be effective and free of any limitations.
Ideally, an interview should be an effort to gauge the ability and qualities of the interviewee and compare them to the organizational requirements and expectations. Every interview must be short and direct, the questions asked must be relevant and appropriate, and long interviews should be avoided at all costs.
Companies often waste valuable time interviewing candidates because the questions being asked are not aptly designed to help evaluate the candidate. Making the interview more natural and encouraging the candidates to express themselves is also important.
Finally, the candidates must be selected in a transparent and consistent manner. All applicants must be treated fairly and equally, and any final call taken by the recruiters must be based solely on the performance of the applicants in the interview or other forms of assessment.
This ensures that bad hires are not made because recruiters ignored protocols or made exceptions for certain candidates. Moreover, allegations of discrimination or lack of transparency may prove to be very damaging to the company's reputation and may, in fact, discourage individuals from applying for jobs at the company in the future. Transparency and consistency in selection, therefore, are a must.
Additionally, rejection of applicants must also be done in a manner that is dignified and not disrespectful to them. Those who have not been selected must be politely informed of the same and may also be assured that their applications may be considered for future job openings at your company. This will encourage such individuals to approach the company again and participate in future recruitment campaigns.
To Summarize
A streamlined tech recruitment process is beneficial not only for your company but also for applicants and candidates. It provides an opportunity to drastically reduce the risks of bad hires while at the same time saving a considerable amount of company resources.
If your company is looking to start a fresh recruitment drive, the above pointers may be kept in mind while designing a tech recruitment strategy that is certain to attract able and skilled individuals who are most capable of contributing to the fulfilment of your organisation's objectives.
