For anyone considering a career move, the opportunities have never been more plentiful. On the flipside, as unemployment rates remain low, employers face diminishing pools of available talent and rising numbers of job hoppers. Deloitte Consulting LLP has reported that 68% of human resources (HR) leaders are struggling to recruit full-time employees across all U.S. industries. It’s apparent that job seekers are the ones with power in today’s hiring landscape.
However, with an abundance of employment options comes distraction as well. The hiring process, depending on the employer, can feel incredibly fragmented and confusing from the job seeker's perspective. This is due in part to the multitude of recruiting technologies that must work together to move candidate profiles through the hiring cycle but don’t always play nicely with one another.
By adding some transparency around the hiring process and the different tools used by recruiters, my hope is that job seekers and employers alike are better equipped to navigate the increasingly complex world of talent acquisition and get to the hire more efficiently, with better care of candidate data along the way.
An Implied Contract Of Trust
Online, personal data is the most valuable commodity, as evidenced by constant, international news of system hacks, security breaches and nonconsensual information trading. The hiring process relies heavily on data sharing, which means that job seekers are placing a lot of trust in potential employers to keep that information secure.
The recently enacted and often-maligned General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has helped put more control into the hands of job seekers by setting a higher bar for transparency over the processing of personal data, including resumes and applications. Though the regulation is only applicable to businesses headquartered or doing business within the European Union, its effects are palpable across the tech industry and are transforming the methods by which data is collected, stored and utilized.
Awareness of how, where and with whom your organization processes job candidates’ online information is critical, especially when transferring specific contact information and work histories. You may not be aware of how exposed this information can become if you aren’t paying attention to the various data exchanges throughout the hiring cycle.
Complex Doesn’t Have To Mean Complicated
On average, businesses now use about 24 recruiting technologies (registration required), with the biggest challenge being poor integrations between systems. To ultimately attract and engage better hires, employers must place greater priority on the candidate experience when curating their business’ HR technology stack, starting with strong cross-system integrations.
Utilizing a talent acquisition platform as a central technology hub helps securely pull together each piece of recruiting data from assorted sourcing and screening tools and can then seamlessly transfer that information directly to a human capital management (HCM) or enterprise resource planning (ERP) system once a candidate transitions to an employee. In addition to saving recruiters from lost time and compliance risk, organizing HR technologies in this way saves job seekers from wasted time and frustration, too.
The Job Seeker’s Journey
Nothing is more aggravating for a job candidate than having to enter and re-enter the same information on different websites, leaving bits of personal data all over the internet. In the job seeker’s online journey to their employer of choice, accuracy and simplicity are paramount.
The lion’s share of online searches, including job searches, start on Google. Accordingly, the 2017 debut of Google for Jobs majorly disrupted the way candidates find and apply to open roles. Before they might have visited a variety of job boards and professional networking sites, creating multiple profiles and hoping to find a match for their interests so they can apply.
With Google for Jobs, it’s now easier than ever to perform a simple search and be provided with everything you’d need to know about a job, including its requirements, exact location and where to apply. From the search results, candidates can click to the employer’s career site (the candidate-facing portion of the talent acquisition platform) and complete the application -- creating a direct data-sharing relationship with that employer, instead of a third-party job board site.
With the latest job seeking tools enabled, employers stand a much better chance of not only getting candidates to apply but also to stay engaged all the way through the interview, offer and onboarding stages. Modern job seekers want the ability to set communication preferences for call, text or email messages, based on their schedule and comfort-level with speaking to recruiters. You may want to consider implementing an artificial intelligence-powered career site chatbot that can answer candidate questions any time of the day, for example.
Overall, the hiring process can and should be more rewarding and consistent on both sides. As a study from iCIMS suggests, more than two-thirds of employed Americans agree that the application, interview or offer process would make or break their decision on whether to take a new job. When the demand for talent is so high, that matters enormously. Don’t drive your next great hire away because of a lackluster experience.
