Companies across multiple industries around the globe have been forced to come up with strategies that could push their businesses forward while providing safety to the workforce in the past couple of years.
Increased digitization at the peak of the recent health crisis from COVID-19, coupled with the fast evolution of technology, opened up all kinds of possibilities for organizations worldwide to continue operations remotely.
A study by Gallup showed that four out of 10 workers from a study group of 12,000 employees in the United States are now either working hybrid or completely operating remotely. Moreover, as they move forward into the post-pandemic era, almost seven out of 10 workers from the study group prefer to remain hybrid or fully remote.
Employers responding to this surge of new expectations from job-seekers and employees - especially for greater flexibility in their work life - have tried to work around establishing hybrid and remote work arrangements as part of their long-term working strategy. However, this has also come with its own teething issues, especially for recruiters and hiring managers.
Therefore, recruiters, HR professionals, and companies must learn to shift their mindset around the hiring process, post-pandemic.
To help you get a better start at winning a recruitment game within hybrid work rules, let’s take a look at how hybrid work has affected the recruitment industry, and how a tool like an Applicant Tracking System can help you handle challenges and ensure the success of your talent acquisition strategy.
Hybrid Work in the Recruitment Field
Employers and recruiters have embraced a variety of hiring processes that are built off cloud technology in order to help them attract the right talent and establish relationships with those who have potential. Post-pandemic, hybrid recruitment - a combination of both in-person and virtual recruitment - has become commonplace, allowing recruiters and HR professionals to accomplish their goals without excessive rigidity.
The goal for recruiters, however, is to not merely execute hybrid recruitment for the sake of doing it. Especially not because it is perceived to be trendy.
Keep the long-term in mind and outline the value that comes with in-person and virtual meetings when engaging with the workforce of the future.
For forward thinking recruitment professionals, this is a prime opportunity to combine the power of technology - particularly intelligent software - with human decision-making to push the hiring process towards efficiency.
Recruitment tools with Artificial Intelligence, for instance, automate the process of screening CVs, easing the tedious day-to-day tasks of a recruiter, while minimizing human errors that could occur as a result of fatigue or oversight.
With AI implemented at the core of the remote hiring process, recruiters and HR professionals can reduce the cost of hiring while eliminating bias and human errors, unlocking the potential to increase diversity in their talent pool.
The benefit is two-fold. Candidates would naturally also benefit from the contributions of an AI-powered tool in the hiring process, as it drives faster and more seamless communication. The end result is what every recruiter aspires to achieve: a better candidate experience.
With these two methods, recruiters are presented with more opportunities to discover candidates from any part of the world, and in any time zone. The possibilities are endless in the search for talent.
How Hybrid Work Changed The Recruitment Process
However, hybrid work is also tailgated by some challenges that could slow down the hiring process. Let’s take a look at the challenges of hybrid recruitment and how an ATS can help you overcome them.
Team Members Are Separated, Sometimes
The most obvious perk of remote and hybrid work is that you can complete your tasks from anywhere you like.
However, when it comes to a job that calls for close collaboration between team members, such as recruitment, this perk can potentially become one of the worst downsides. Getting everyone from the team on the same page - especially when one colleague may be working from a different time zone - can become a particularly frustrating part of the hybrid recruitment hiring process.
Without clear and timely communication, one of your team members might, for instance, end up repeating the work that you’ve already done. At the same time, it could be risky to execute a wde virtual recruitment strategy alongside in-person ones without a tool that can help organize and manage the pipeline in a timely and efficient way - the best profiles could fall through the cracks.
Also, while working apart, it might seem like a good idea to work independently when someone is not available and let your ‘recruiters’ instinct’ guide you when it comes to selecting the right profiles.
In today’s competitive talent landscape, the need to find the right talent with the correct skills is more pressing than ever. Your unconscious bias might remove the right talents - individuals who can perform best at their capabilities in your positions - from the candidate shortlist.
In the worst-case scenario, you might already have the perfect candidates for the roles in your talent pool, but human error kicks in just in time to make you forget about these individuals. Without a proper tool that helps manage your database, there is a high chance that profiles of the right candidates may be lost or damaged.
It takes a second opinion from your teammates to reassure individuals you’ve selected are the right fit for the roles. They may be able to see some certain qualities of the candidates that you’ve missed.
Working remotely, it is important to have a communication portal that allows all team members to stay up on the progress. Without it, by the time your teammates’ comments arrive on your desk, it might be too late as unqualified candidates made it to the shortlist instead of the qualified ones.
Gaps in Communication and Trust-Building
Virtual recruitment may provide the benefit of speed and allow recruiters to search for hidden talents across the globe. However, contacting, communicating, and relationship building will all be done virtually without an in-person experience which could serve as a stronger trust-building method.
Successful recruitment is based on trust and close relationships between recruiters and candidates. Setting two parties apart, it will be hard to cultivate the bond needed to sustain long-lasting relationships.
Moreover, without a proper tool to help recruiters manage their hiring process, conducting recruitment remotely might bring more hurdles than you had initially anticipated.
First of all, communication. Recruiters will never be able to respond to all of the candidates’ messages and emails while handling multiple projects simultaneously. At the same time, overlapping appointments are inevitable. Without a tool to manage your calendar, clashing job interviews are almost a certain result. This will set the hiring process backward, as you will have to reschedule and manage your appointments all over again. And there’s no guarantee that the same issue will not occur again.
All in all, it provides nothing but a bad candidate experience which hurts your brand as well as leaving candidates no interest in reapplying for jobs and collaborating with you again.
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