Technology is stealing the hearts of business owners and HR teams across every sector, but is this a dangerous love affair to be involved with? A dependency on tech overlooks the fact that recruitment is about establishing connections between humans. Potential candidates and talent acquisition teams alike are looking for long-term relationships and people they can collaboratively work with day upon day. It is pointless to hire a candidate that technology reassures is an ideal fit on paper, to then find they are not a good culture fit in your team.
Are we allowing the obsession with technology to cloud our judgement?
In a recent survey, you might be surprised to find out that 49% of recruiters admitted that technology has made it harder to make human connections and 81% of candidates say that recruiters need to work on their people skills.
For this love affair to ever succeed, the goal by talent acquisition teams should be to leverage data and automation to make the recruitment process more effective, without neglecting a personal connection. Candidates, especially high-profile professionals, expect a productive and seamless transition when joining a new company. Technology such as AI and machine learning can certainly reduce the work early on and we are even seeing psychometric testing being utilised to delve deeper into what makes a candidate tick, however there has to be a human (and humane!) interaction involved.
What can you do to ensure the human element is not lost?
You’ve seen a fantastic CV and are keen to invite the candidate in to interview but remember that what you see on paper doesn’t always translate to in-person experience.
A key stage of any internal hiring process is usually to establish a character fit for a role. This is a stage you cannot do without humans; it has to be initiated by those who will be working with the candidate.
“What is disappointing is that HR technology investments have been spent overwhelmingly on tools to support the quantitative aspects of discovery, without enabling the qualitative aspects of cultural fit.”
So, what can you do to avoid this?
- Inviting your employees whether they have been at the company a month or five years, to step forward and talk about their experiences, on a personal level, is one way to answer a candidate’s big question; is this the right place for me?
- Adjust your approach when advertising for a new vacancy in your company. Remember, senior candidates will not fall for the usual ‘salesy’ telephone pitch. Make the job search about them, their goals, their stress points, what are they lacking and why have you approached them? Have a conversation, not just a checklist of if they can do the job or not.
- Don’t forget diversity! Remember men and women are reading your job posts. Masculine-worded job advertisements are less appealing to female candidates. Without even realising we can sometimes make a role sound more like a roll-call in a regiment line-up rather than a job that would welcome a woman’s perspective.
Good communication skills, a creative mindset, the ability to respond to working with different team members and a loyal character, are all vital when recruiting for a new employee, but they cannot be shown on a computer screen. We are still fighting to connect when searching for talent and the physical distancing we are experiencing, requires more than ever a human approach, so we can avoid cutting ourselves off from the high-quality candidates.
Technology-driven, but people-centric
Referment is a technology-driven recruitment solution but we pride ourselves on a human-first mentality. Every person we send across to you has either been personally vouched for by members of our network of industry professionals, or has come through as a direct applicant. Regardless of a candidate's “source”, we speak to each individually via a combination of telephone, email and Zoom/Video calls and before the current lockdown we were strong advocates for in-person meetings before sending anyone through to hiring managers.
If you’d like to know more about our recruitment process or have any questions about how we can help you hire your next great employee feel free to reach out here. We look forward to hearing from you!