Digitalization In Talent Acquisition.
By Damilola Alade
The goal of every organization is to ensure that they get the best talent from the ever-burgeoning pool of talents in the job market. Recruiting the top talent in the market can lead to competitive advantage, efficiency and productivity for the organization. Little wonder that top amongst the list of contemporary issues bedevilling Human Resource (“HR”) Managers in contemporary times is recruiting and retaining top talent. Employers and HR Managers have been known to go to great lengths to get the right people for the job. The introduction of technology in talent acquisition in recent times is playing an important role in that process.
The Way it Was
Hiring someone for a role is usually a long and arduous journey fraught with complexities. The first step which is usually identifying individuals that have the right qualifications by either evaluating submitted credentials or applications or by monitoring previously earmarked potential employees, whether actively seeking or just open to opportunities. Once the right candidate has been identified, informal talks, ongoing dialogues, and structured interviews will ensue between the employer and the candidate. Prior to an offer being made by the employer to the candidate, the employer will need to benchmark industry standards for the level and role under consideration. Once the offer has been accepted, the candidate will then be required to go through detailed onboarding exercises. All these steps leading up to successful recruitment must be adequately documented for reference purposes and to satisfy internal policies and processes. Now imagine if this is done to approximately 250 applicants for 10 roles, this is assuming one is recruiting for a greatly sought-after role in a mid-level company. Managing these steps has traditionally been a labour-intensive and time-consuming undertaking that absorbs a significant portion of the HR Manager’s time and energy.
Digitalization
Digitalization is the integration of digital technologies into everyday life. It is the computerization of systems and jobs for better ease and accessibility. In a business environment, it also means using digital technologies to change a business model. Digitalization of talent acquisition is, therefore, the process of using digital technologies to change and advance talent acquisition.
Direct evidence of digitalization in talent acquisition is the introduction of technology in the form of RPA (Robotic Process Automation) tools. These tools serve to take over high-volume, repetitive operational tasks from HR Managers which often leads to improved accuracy and speed in data gathering and processing. The routine administrative tasks associated with managing the recruitment journey which includes pipelining candidates, capturing data, transferring data from one application to another, processing documents, auto texting and scheduling capabilities, video interviews amongst others can now be handled by RPA tools. One of such tools which have gradually become commonplace (although not all-encompassing) is the ATS (Applicant Tracking System).
The ATS does exactly what its name connotes. Its job is to track applicants coming into the system and allow employers to effectively manage the recruitment processes. The ATS allows the application of search algorithms to search for certain highlighted things in CVs. This invariably helps with whittling down the hoard of applications to more manageable numbers. Regardless of the obvious advantage, there is the risk of eliminating good and diverse candidates from the talent pool because their CV doesn’t contain the keywords that match the predefined algorithms.
Advantages of Digitalization
Besides ensuring that less time is expended in the recruitment process, digitalization helps in addressing key metrics like quality and cost of hire. Other election, assessment and advanced cognitive applications and platforms which are most times cloud-based assist in ensuring that a wider audience is reached. These platforms and applications also help in shortlisting candidates that are a culture fit for the organization by leverage behavioural science and psychology. They are also useful in identifying motives, learnability and predicting future performance.
This is synonymous with other industries and job functions where intelligent automation has been applied to enable workers to spend less time on routine, repetitive work and more time focused on value-additive activities. Specifically, in talent acquisition, rather than expend time in doing mundane tasks like filling out paperwork or responding to basic questions, more time can now be devoted to engaging with candidates at a more personal level.
Debunking the Myth
Contrary to the common perception that recruitment and hiring are being taken over by faceless robots, technology is actually helping to humanize the function; specifically, by allowing recruiters to spend more one-on-one time with candidates HR Managers have found the perfect blend between fast processes born by automation and digitalization and face to face interaction with their candidates that creates a unique, personalized and compelling recruitment experience.
Conclusion
The rise in digitalization in talent acquisition has seen a rapid shift from the “old” to the “new”. Accelerating digital, video, and cognitive technologies have changed the ways HR Managers recruit talent. As AI and other technologies take over the basic, time-consuming tasks of sourcing candidates, human jobs will shift. An HR Manager in this new world can add value by employing technology, building psychological and emotional connections with candidates and constantly strengthening the employment brand.
References
1 Forbes India — Leading Digital Transformation for Talent Acquisition — http://www.forbesindia.com/blog/business-strategy/leading-digital-transformation-for-talent-acquisition/ (accessed September 20, 2019)
2 Deloitte Insights — Talent Acquisition: Enter the Cognitive Recruiter — https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/focus/human-capital-trends/2017/predictive-hiring-talentacquisition.html (accessed September 20, 2019).
