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In the past one-and-a-half years, lockdowns were implemented across the world, including India which is still enforcing them to control the spread of coronavirus. In the middle of 2020, organisations across sectors and the world over adopted digital technology at an unprecedented scale.

Against the post-pandemic backdrop where businesses have taken the entire range of their operations to the online medium, talent recruitment and management are no exceptions.

Far from being a temporary fix to a global disruption, the digital renovation of the recruitment process has emerged as key to resolving existing and emerging bottlenecks while achieving optimal results.

Technological integration is not only allowing HR managers and recruiters to transcend geographical barriers by hiring top talent remotely from across the world, it is also empowering them to accelerate the onboarding process, minimise the turnaround time, and optimise the assessment and evaluation process efficiently and cost-effectively.

Here’s a look at how technology has simplified and augmented the hiring process – from job posting and acquisition to evaluation and onboarding.

Diversity of hiring platforms

Recruiters have a range of platforms – including LinkedIn, Glassdoor, Upwork, and Indeed – at their disposal to reach out to prospective candidates. The absence of monopoly enables constructive competition and continuous innovation, which implies that employers can seamlessly connect with stellar talent across these platforms.

With industry-specific platforms catering to developers, writers, data engineers, etc, companies can now access a larger, diversified, and highly-skilled talent pool to pick candidates who are the perfect fit for the job requirement and the work culture.

Moreover, features such as ranking candidates based on their skill set and industry experience make it easier for recruiters to identify and shortlist top professionals in a hassle-free manner.

Hiring beyond zip codes

Before the advent of digital technology, firms were limited to choosing from their immediate locality when it came to talent acquisition. Access to remote areas was limited by geographical constraints and only those capable of overcoming the socio-economic barriers could apply for job roles – not only in cities in a country but also internationally. This resulted in a workforce that primarily comprised of homogenised mindsets, experiences, and outlooks.

Equipped with cutting-edge remote working technologies, employers now have the option to hire the best talent, irrespective of their location anywhere in the world. Armed with advanced videoconferencing and collaboration tools, recruiters can conduct the interview process smoothly and efficiently.

As a result, companies have the opportunity to test and acquire adept professionals from across socio-economic, regional, religious, and even national backgrounds to create a connected, diverse, and progressive work environment.

Finding the right candidate is easier

Previously, recruiters had to depend on intuition and experience to determine the true value of candidates. It is difficult because, in a meeting, a candidate always puts their best foot forward, limiting a recruiter’s access to information necessary for driving an unbiased evaluation where strengths and weaknesses are analysed efficiently. It is precisely this need-gap that the integration of technologies such as AI, machine learning, and data science is fulfilling.

Using a combination of these tools, employers can analyse a wide range of data.

Efficient AI and data science algorithms not only provide a better picture of a candidate to enable deeper assessment but also help in reducing the turnaround time.

Deep learning-based evaluation of prospective candidates provides companies with an unparalleled solution that supports the entire cycle of sourcing, vetting, matchmaking, and managing talent completely – and that too remotely.

Automated scheduling

The conventional application process involves candidates submitting their resumes to firms. This process, however, is not immune to human errors, such as a profile going unnoticed during manual vetting. The tech intervention has brought about a sea-change into this dynamic.

Active intelligence and IoT-based systems can select appropriate profiles and automatically schedule interviews. Selected candidates receive a notification of their advance into the next rounds of interviews, while rejected candidates are informed about their application status so that they can pursue other opportunities.

Using advanced software, recruiters can send out mechanical and/or customised emails to job aspirants with the information of their interview results, test scores etc, something which is difficult and extremely time-consuming to do manually.

The software schedules the date and timings, and upon receiving the email, Google Calendar promptly adds the event to the professionals’ schedules. In the meantime, employers can deploy AI-driven chatbots to answer FAQs and other queries before and during the interview.

Facilitating a personalised interview experience

New-age professionals possess evolved sensibilities and preferences, and hold organisations to a high standard. When applying for work at brands, modern individuals are not seeking financial benefits and incentives alone, they are seeking good experiences.

As a result of this shift, companies the world over have begun focusing more on delivering improved employee experience to attract and retain the best talent. This experience of an employee begins not with induction but with the interview itself.

An interview is as much the examination of the skills and capabilities of a candidate as it is their introduction to a company and its processes.

In view of this fact, discerning enterprises are leveraging a suite of advanced technologies to deliver a seamless, customised, and memorable interview experience to all candidates to drive brand recall value. Be it sending out personalised emails, real-time notifications on the application status and interview progress, or allowing candidates to communicate with recruiters via chatbots, everything reinforces a brand’s commitment to its employees.

Beyond delivering superior customer experiences, these solutions allow employers to drive customised assessments to best measure the value that individuals can bring to the table.

Smarter, smoother, and more accurate skill assessment

Technology allows job seekers to learn new things while also benefitting from a more efficient hiring process. It is difficult to accurately analyse a prospective employee’s skill level by only relying on physical documents and artificial credentials. Qualities such as personality, commitment, ambition, aptitude, and efficiency cannot be gauged from words on a screen or a paper.

With the aid of modern technology, on the other hand, companies can test for the skills and competencies of individuals like never before.

Using AI-based assessment platforms, employers can track employee progress and the time spent on a project, or test to conduct advanced analysis of skills as well as a candidate’s ability to work in a high-pressure environment.

For instance, advanced recruitment service providers lay out facilities such as integrated development environments (IDEs) to empower enterprises to drive a comprehensive assessment of developers, programmers, and coders. Such tools can also combine the existing information of developers with their test scores to match them with the right companies.

Promoting diversity through unbiased AI filtering

AI-driven tools such as applicant tracking systems (ATS) can enable recruiters towards unbiased and accurate decision-making by removing the human element from the process until the results. Standardised selection process complemented by AI filtering allows skilled and capable candidates to hold the battle for the positions on offer and shine through.

By eliminating manual intervention, the HR department can afford time and resources to concentrate on projecting a positive image of the firm to build a greater brand value, while delivering exceptional recruitment experiences.

(Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of YourStory.)