Why Business Recruitment is Moving Online
How do you usually go about finding people when a vacancy arises in your organization? Recruitment is a process that many business owners hate. It often has to be done at short notice and it can take up a lot of time and energy on top of all the daily work that still has to be taken care of. Recruiting online is a relatively new phenomenon that you may not have given serious thought to, but it can change the picture. It streamlines the whole process, gives you much more control over who you reach and can even save you money. Could it be the right option for you?
Speed
Ordinarily, recruitment requires a lot of separate tasks like printing, posting, making phone calls and even visiting agencies. With online recruitment, you can do it all from the comfort of your desk, which makes it much faster and more convenient. As soon as you’ve posted a job advert, people can see it, and as soon as they send applications, you’ll see those. You may even choose to do all or some of your interviewing using an online interface like Skype or Zoom so that you don’t need to spend time looking after candidates on your premises – something that makes even more sense for businesses employing remote workers. Sometimes you may prefer to take longer to be sure of finding the right person, but where speed is of the essence, you may even be able to fill a position on the same day that you start looking.
Reach
Traditional recruitment techniques usually only reach a few hundred or a few thousand people, only a small percentage of whom will be interested in the role you’re offering. By advertising online, you can reach tens of thousands. There are lots of ways in which you can skew your reach towards people with the right kind of skills or experience, or people in the right geographical area. You can also target minority communities to make sure that you fulfill your diversity requirements. This has the additional advantage that when you tap into groups of people who usually find it hard to secure employment, you’ll find those who are ready to be very loyal and that will work hard for an employer who treats them well.
Selectivity
If you’re advertising for a complex role that requires somebody with exactly the right type of skills and temperament, you may find that your best option is to go through a professional online recruiter. Joanna Riley set up Censia because she realized that employers were having trouble reaching the right people for the type of position on offer, partly because there were only a few suitable candidates out there and partly because it takes a long time to filter those people out from piles of applications from individuals who are not the right fit. Censia uses artificial intelligence to examine tens of thousands of online profiles extremely fast so that notice of a vacancy is only sent to the right people but, because of the scale of the targeting, reaches enough of them to give a good selection pool.
Discretion
Sometimes it’s necessary to fill a position without the wider public learning that it’s vacant – as when, for instance, a much-admired senior team member decides to step down and you don’t want a perception of instability to damage your share price but just want to keep things running smoothly while letting people become aware of the change gradually. In cases like these, targeted online recruitment, whether it’s carried out through an agency or directly, provides a discreet means of reaching the right people without the visibility of a traditional job advertisement. It can also be used for headhunting, letting you find the right people without their current bosses getting wind of it too soon.
Affordability
Even if you decide to get professional help, recruiting online tends to work out much cheaper than traditional recruitment methods. Not only can you save overall, you can expect to get access to a larger number of high-quality candidates in proportion to what you pay. At the most basic level, posting recruitment ads online is generally free even if you place them on specialist pages, and keeping everything electronic means no costs for printing or posting. This makes things much easier if you’re running a small business and it’s a struggle to free up cash for additional expenses.
In light of all these advantages, it’s easy to see why online recruitment is growing in popularity. It’s also just one more facet of the way many of our daily activities are moving online, and that’s likely to make it seem more and more like the obvious, default option going forward. Getting to grips with it now will ensure that you don’t get left behind.
As our second lead editor, Anna C. Mackinno provides guidance on the stories Great Lakes Ledger reporters cover. She has been instrumental in making sure the content on the site is clear and accurate for our readers. If you see a particularly clever title, you can likely thank Anna. Anna received a BA and and MA from Fordham University.
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