Talent acquisition has undergone tremendous change over the years, especially during this pandemic, where recruiters and candidates wanted a smooth and seamless recruiting process that was fast and hassle-free. Earlier, recruiters faced a lot of challenges in screening thousands of applications for a job opening. This is where an ATS or an applicant tracking system proved helpful for recruiters. With demands for faster, flexible, and dependable HR processes increasing by the day in the modern enterprise, an AI-enabled ATS is something that has become indispensable.
What and Why an Applicant Tracking System?
An ATS or applicant tracking system is a software that automates a wide range of activities related to recruitment. Modern applicant tracking systems are loaded with features such as interview scheduling, assessment generation, and customized import and export of data.
One of the main reasons recruiters have taken to ATS is that it eliminates complexities in selecting the right candidates for the enterprise. An ATS searches and filters through thousands of applications with ease and efficiency to finalise the right candidate pool. An ATS also helps with communicating with candidates seamlessly, something that may pose challenges when done manually. Since many activities in the recruitment cycle are automated, the whole process saves time for recruiters and enterprises. Considering the advantages, a good ATS becomes almost non-negotiable.
How Does an ATS Work?
An ATS helps sift through all the job applications that are submitted online. The ATS collects candidates’ information and stores all submitted resumes in a centralized database. The software makes it easier for hiring managers and recruiters to organize and sort through resumes and search for profiles matching specific requirements.
The new ATS solutions that are presently in the market automatically compare resumes uploaded in the system, with the job description provided and find the best matches. Imagine the time saved for recruiters to focus only on those candidates who are likely to match the job opening in question.
Many advanced ATS solutions have the ability to present candidate information in the form of a summary for recruiters to glance through quickly. There is no need to spend time going through the entire resume. ATSes also provide the functionality to input certain keywords to filter out resumes on particular criteria.
Must-have Features of an ATS
Every organization will have different needs when it comes to recruiting. Obviously, a one-size-fits-all approach cannot be taken when selecting a suitable ATS for your organization’s recruiting needs. What are some must-have features that you will need to look for in an effective ATS that will meet the needs of the organization in terms of functionality, ease of use, and budget? Let’s look at some points that cannot be overlooked when making that choice.
Automated data entry: Ask candidates who are applying to a job about the one thing that irks them to no end, it would be having to re-enter their details multiple times through the application process. This, while irritating candidates, could also cause errors in data entry. A well-integrated ATS solves this problem for enterprises. Applicants no longer need to re-enter their details, saving time and errors.
Seamless candidate experience: Enterprises understand the need for creating a good first experience with their candidates or applicants. Modern-day applicants expect and demand a seamless experience through applying for a job. With an effective ATS integrated into your system, you ensure that your enterprise provides the applicants just that. No more long waits to hear back from recruiters, no more cluelessness on the next steps to follow. An automated step-by-step process ensures that candidates have a positive experience throughout.
Fast recruitment tracker: The main aim of enterprises to go in for an ATS is to make their recruitment process faster and more efficient. The ATS you decide to invest in should, therefore, include features to track candidate screening and shortlisting, providing options to take assessments, aid in the accurate selection of candidate profiles, and offer options for seamless onboarding activities.
Built-in compliance: In a pandemic-stricken environment, the last thing that HR departments want to do is combat compliance issues related to candidate screening and background checks. A good integrated ATS takes care of end-to-end compliance freeing up HR’s time to focus on other activities.
Conclusion
Enterprises invest in an applicant tracking system to make their recruiting process faster, more efficient and help their employees become more productive. Add to it, the seamless experience it could provide to the applicants. Choose an ATS that provides all this, ensuring your recruiting process is at the forefront in getting the best candidates for your enterprise quickly.
How Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) have proven to be game-changers in the recruitment industry
The term ‘Applicant Tracking System’ or ATS is not a new one for recruiters. In use for over a decade and increasingly popular among recruitment specialists, these software systems offer a host of features beyond the ability to just store and sort resumes. Modern-day ATS platforms offer end-to-end candidate tracking capabilities from sourcing to screening, assessments, interviews, offer management, onboarding, and candidate engagement, all in one place.
On the one hand, recruitment cycles are getting shorter and more dynamic. On the other, hiring managers expect to hire increasingly within narrow bands of specializations and experience. These factors act as a forcing function for recruiters to cast increasingly wider nets to source qualified candidates. Besides, online interviewing and remote hiring have become the norm in these COVID-stressed times. In such conditions, a good ATS can be an invaluable aid for talent sourcing specialists.
Here are four key ways ATSs help recruiters, especially for remote recruitment:
Transparent recruitment workflow:
1. No-code customization:
With candidates, talent sourcing specialists, HR teams and hiring managers all scattered remotely, a single system that transparently tracks the recruitment lifecycle and offers data and information on demand becomes imperative. Fragmented Excel spreadsheets or isolated trackers just will not do the job. This is where a best-in-breed ATS excels.
As organizations grow, the variety and complexity of hiring go up in tandem. From niche hiring of CxO-suite candidates to volume hiring of 10s of thousands of freshers, HR teams grapple with a myriad of flows and cycles. Good ATS platforms provide no-code customization capabilities that allow recruiters to develop recruitment process flows just right for their evolving organization.
2. Reduced costs of hiring:
Think back to college hiring of even a few years ago. The operational and logistics costs of entire teams travelling across a country in hiring season, lugging servers, and setting up shop in college campuses were immense. Such exercises are tremendously streamlined today, courtesy ATSs, forced partially by the pandemic.
3. Industry-standard data security:
Data, they say, is the new oil. Databases of tens of thousands of candidates and information about their qualifications, tests were taken and personal information can be invaluable in the wrong hands. It is the expectation of every stakeholder in the recruitment journey that data stored in an ATS is secured in a bullet-proof manner. The best ATSes guarantee this.
Such reasons make it inevitable that recruiters and HR specialists evaluate and adapt the best ATS in the marketplace. Advanced ATS capabilities like fraud-proofing assessments, virtual interviewing capabilities, and digitized onboarding, not to mention analytics and reports are features that are emerging as game-changers in the world of HR.
ATS software is evolving rapidly to meet the demands of HR teams and hiring managers worldwide.
Applicant Tracking System (ATS), the name is self-explanatory, right?
But is that all that an ATS does? Not anymore.
Most ATSs have evolved to become the heart of an efficient recruitment process. Organizations use ATSs to streamline their recruitment process right from sourcing to screening, assessments, interviews and offer management. An ATS is, in fact, a talent management system that allows you to hire the right people efficiently and effectively.
So why are some organizations still reluctant to adopt this tool that would empower them to hire the best talent available? It could be because of some common misconceptions about ATSs. Let’s take a look at some of the myths that abound around ATSs and see if there’s any level of truth in these stories.
Myth 1
All the ATSs are the Same!
A common misconception about ATSs is that they are all the same. That would be like saying that all cars are the same. After all, they take you from point A to point B, right? But would you buy a two-seater sports car for your family of seven? No, you’d get a MUV or SUV.
The same applies to ATSs. For example, some ATSs could be designed to take care of your campus recruitments while few others might be suitable for lateral recruitments. You might have some niche requirements that require a highly customizable ATS. So, when looking for options, please make sure to articulate your specific requirements and ensure that you are choosing the right ATS for your company.
Myth 2
It’s Just a Resume Dump Yard
Some people think and say that an ATS is just a database for resumes. Not true!
It’s much more than a database. Will a database automatically sort resumes and fish out the most relevant one? Will just a database allow you to automate the entire hiring process?
That’s what an ATS does. It helps you streamline and automate your entire hiring workflow.
Myth 3
ATSs are for the Big Guys
Don’t fall for this one. You’ll be told that an ATS would be an unnecessary expense for a small business.
The truth is those small businesses need an ATS more than a large organization with large HR teams does. When you have limited resources with many people wearing multiple hats, a system that could bring efficiency to the process could be a boon. If you choose the optimal ATS that suits your business, it will turn out to be cost-efficient for you.
Myth 4
It’s too Time Consuming!
Yes, like any other new system it will take some time to implement. Ensure that you choose an ATS that offers support and training for your HR team. Also, ensure that it has a modern and user-friendly interface. However, once you’ve set it up and started the process, you’ll notice that it saves your team’s time significantly.
Myth 5
It’s too Expensive
Now you’re being penny wise and pound foolish. An ATS is quite cost-effective in the long run because it allows you to streamline your entire hiring process. It empowers you to find efficiencies in the most unlikely places.
Myth 6
You’ll Lose Your Personal Touch with an ATS
Many recruiters feel that automated processes through an ATS make the entire process mechanical, without the human touch.
This is far from the truth. An ATS is just a tool that helps you automate your hiring process. The decision to hire a candidate still lies with the hiring team. In fact, the ATS simplifies the entire process of keeping in touch with the candidate.
Myth 7
You are Doomed If Your Team isn’t Technically Savvy
Like any other new system, your team will need initial training. Ensure that your ATS partner is capable of efficiently hand-holding your team initially. You do not need any specific skills or technical knowledge to work with an ATS.
Myth 8
ATSs are Not Secure
Data Security and Privacy are key factors when choosing an ATS. Do check out the data security and privacy policy of the ATS before going ahead with it. For example, HirePro’s Campus Hiring Workflows is 27001-certified and GDPR-compliant. All the customer data is hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS). We apply strong password policies for data access. Data can be deleted/extracted on request or as per contract. Personally, identifiable information is encrypted at rest, and data transfers are encrypted using HTTPS or SSH. Audit trails and logs are maintained for all activities.
Myth 9
You’ll Need to Change Your HR Processes
Yet another myth! Most ATSs are web-based SaaS systems that will not interfere with any of your HR processes. Of course, you might have to adjust your hiring processes to optimise the efficiencies that a given ATS is configured with.
Myth 10
ATSs are Not Customisable
Many HR managers feel that ATSs are off-the-shelf products that cannot be customised to your requirements. ATSs are customisable to suit your requirements. In fact, this could be one of the questions in your checklist when you are out shopping for an ATS.
Most ATSs have been designed to enhance your hiring team’s efficiency and get you the best results possible at the optimal cost. You just need to make sure that you are choosing the right one for yourself. If you do your due diligence and assess several systems with a checklist of what you want and what you don’t, you’ll surely find your ideal ATS. Maybe a JD for the ATS would work!
Imagine this: You are a recruiter at a Fortune 500 company in charge of hiring for multiple positions. You receive hundreds and maybe even thousands of applications for each of the job openings. The ideal thing would be to read through each of the applications carefully in order to find the best fit for each opening? Is it possible, though? No! unless you have all the time in the world at your disposal! What if you had state-of-the-art software that could do that and more? It would take care of sorting resumes, store and process them, assess legal compliance, handle analytics, report creation, and manage job postings with built-in features like recruiting email templates, automated interview scheduling, and onboarding tools? Sounds like futuristic mumbo-jumbo? Not at all! Super efficient Applicant Tracking Systems (ATSs) are all the rage currently. These are integrated platforms that enable efficient management of the entire recruitment process.
What is an applicant tracking system?
Simply put, an applicant tracking system is a talent management system that streamlines the application, recruitment and hiring processes. It is a computer-based hiring tool that is used by recruiters and employers to manage every stage in the recruitment process with ease. Among the long list of things that it can do, it first and foremost acts as a repository of the resumes of potential candidates and helps hiring teams automatically and quickly screen through the resumes and find top candidates with the appropriate qualifications.
A Jack of all trades!
How does an ATS work? In companies that use ATSs, when an applicant applies for a job online, their resume does not directly go to a recruiter. Instead, it goes to an ATS for processing. The ATS stores all resumes received and organizes them for easy retrieval. It also takes care of screening the applications, based on previously determined keywords, eliminating candidates who are not qualified for the job.
The information of the shortlisted candidates on the ATS’ database helps recruiters to review the applications. The ATS is then used to send automated messages and schedule interviews. As the candidate moves through the hiring process, the candidate’s resume, video interview recordings, and other vital documents are all available on a single interface of the ATS. The recruitment team can review all these assets as per their convenience and keep the candidate informed about their progress. Interview scheduling is efficient as ATSs integrate information from candidates’ and recruiters’ calendars. ATSs can even add candidates to the payroll once they have been hired!
Features Galore!
ATSs come with a plethora of features that make them attractive for hiring teams the world over.
Integrations with job sites –
Job posts need to be up on as many job boards as possible to maximize the reach and get more eyeballs for the posting. An ATS enables you to create a job posting and instantly get the posting up on all the major recruitment sites like Indeed.com, Monster, and Naukri.com.
Career Page hosting –
Career pages are excellent opportunities to showcase the brand of the company as well as display openings. ATSs have the ability to build branded career pages as well as integrate with an existing career page if the careers page has already been set up.
Interview scheduler –
ATSs help in contacting shortlisted candidates and scheduling interviews with them. Candidates not turning up for interviews have been a cause for frustration for many a recruiter. ATSs have the feature of automatically reminding candidates about scheduled interviews, thus reducing the probability of interview no-shows.
Onboarding tools –
Relationships with candidates who have been selected and hired into the company, need to be nurtured right from the get-go. An ATS can step into the game to help with the process of onboarding, personalizing emails sent to welcome the new hires and as well as track the submission of onboarding documents of hired candidates.
Analytics –
Since ATSs track every step of the hiring process, they are able to gather a large amount of data. This data can be used to calculate metrics and generate insightful reports that reveal bottlenecks in the recruitment process and thus help speed up decision making. The reports can be a good source of information about the channels and advertisements that resonated the most with potential candidates.
Exploring the Whys
Narrows down the applicant pool:
Sorting through thousands of applications to decide the best fit, used to be a nightmare for recruiters. That is no longer the case now with the ease that ATSs provide. ATSs sort through large applicant pools and highlight top candidates for the role. With a competent ATS in hand to do the job, recruiters can get rid of spreadsheets and paperwork. ATSs also help in enriching the resource pipeline by building large talent pools with their resume storage feature. Even if certain good candidates need to be rejected due to an inadequate number of openings, their contact information and resumes can be stored in the ATS to make it convenient to reach out to them once there are open positions. This way companies have a ready list of short-listed candidates as soon as the next job opening comes up!
Saves the business time and money by speeding up the recruitment cycle –
Using an ATS is a huge time saver for recruiters since it automates many of the tasks that earlier had to be done manually. This helps recruiters with both focus and productivity. They can focus on just the top candidates identified by the ATS and use the time saved productively.
Improves quality of hire –
ATSs reveal where the best candidates came from. That way, companies can focus on recruitment channels that work the best for them without wasting time, money, and effort on channels that do not provide the required results.
Boosts employer brand –
Companies have to constantly step up their game to hire the best talent. Hence, a good ATS experience is crucial to onboard the best candidates. A top-notch ATS can help retain the personal touch with timely and personalised communication with candidates.
Facilitates collaborative and streamlined hiring –
Earlier, hiring meant shifting between different systems and tools to hire candidates. A recruiter would have to use an unending list of tools – Excel spreadsheets, calendars, email software, job boards, company web pages, social media, the list was unending! With an ATS all these are integrated and accessible through a single software! Moreover, the progress of the candidate through the hiring journey can be shared among decision-makers such as hiring managers and team members easily, enabling them to make informed decisions on hiring the candidate.
Ensures Legal Compliance –
In countries such as the United States of America, there are hiring laws that need to be adhered to, failing which companies are penalized or even sued by those affected. Keeping track of why certain candidates had to be rejected can be quite taxing if done manually, but becomes a breeze with an ATS in place. The technology associated with an ATS helps a hiring team stay on track with compliance requirements and mandates. The Byzantine layers of laws and regulations for each country and state can be more easily complied with an advanced ATS.
Exploring the Why Nots
ATSs have often been at the receiving end due to the fact that they are designed to search for specific keywords and work backgrounds, and not explore candidate skills. This means that extremely qualified candidates who are trying to switch careers might not get shortlisted for the next round and might slip through the cracks. This is a loss for the company since candidates who come from a different industry and background might bring different skill sets and perspectives and prove to be excellent in the job.
Apart from that, integrating an ATS with other tools that your company uses can be a challenge and could require significant development time.
These disadvantages notwithstanding, the fact is that the benefits offered by ATSs far outweigh the problems and they have become a must-have for most organizations irrespective of their size.
Here to stay!
Employers and recruiters rely on the ATS to collect, scan and shortlist all the job applications that they receive for a particular position. It is clear that ATSs have revolutionised recruiting and are absolutely indispensable. To get a leg up on the competition, it is crucial to find an ATS that fits the needs of your organization.
We use sophisticated software for accounting, sales, marketing, and communication. Yet when it comes to hiring, we tediously wade through emails and spreadsheets to find information about that one candidate that got away! Hiring may seem like a complex and challenging task with many moving parts, but it doesn’t have to be.
Virtual recruitment is gaining unprecedented momentum in the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic. Applicant Tracking Systems (ATSs) have emerged as integral parts of an organization’s toolkit to reorganize and track candidate information. Organizations may turn to Salesforce when they need a customer relationship management platform or to Marketo when they need a marketing automation platform. Similarly, they are used to turning to ATS platforms to help recruiters and hiring managers stay organized and efficient.
A brief history of applicant tracking systems
In the pre-ATS era, recruiters and hiring managers depended on countless files and address books to keep track of applicant resumes and contact information and facilitate the scheduling of interviews. ATSs were born when Human Resource (HR) departments were searching for easier ways to keep candidate information.
Over the years, ATSs gradually evolved into secure software systems to store candidate information in one place. Eventually, recruiters and hiring managers didn’t have to worry about finding or losing candidate information. But there were still some limitations—they still had to search outside their ATSs for emailing and scheduling interviews with candidates.
What does an Applicant Tracking System do?
Fast forward to the present, and the modern ATSs have transformed from being mere document management systems. They are now integrated platforms that connect to several other platforms and help teams manage the overall recruitment process. Right from finding candidates to onboarding them, ATSs allow teams to handle the complete recruitment process with ease.
An Applicant Tracking System (ATS), also known as a talent management system, is a secure and centralized software system that streamlines the entire recruitment process. The information stored in the ATS database helps teams organize and manage data and keep track of job candidates. It empowers teams to manage job postings, target suitable candidates, and communicate with them. It also stores their resumes and screens them. Moreover, an ATS allows recruiters to schedule interviews, check references, collect interview feedback, extend offer letters, and complete the entire new-hire paperwork process
End-to-end automated and AI-powered processes and workflows in modern ATSs provide a seamless digital experience to all stakeholders in the recruitment process. It allows them to safely and securely access and uses specific information stored on the platform. AI-driven ATSs can also handle high-volume recruitment requirements and speed up the hiring process. The advanced and customizable analytics and reports provided by an AI-enabled ATS platform help efficiently track each candidate’s stage-wise conversion.
Let us now explore some of the important reasons why you need an ATS.
The Need for an Applicant Tracking System
To save time and money
An ATS allows you to do more work in less time by automating several tasks that previously required manual work, such as inputting data into spreadsheets. For example, when candidates fill in their resumes, the ATS will automatically import all the candidate data into the platform, store the data, create profiles, screen applications, and eliminate unqualified candidates. Your work is made easier as you will now have to choose the best candidate from the list of most qualified candidates filtered by the ATS.
Automating manual tasks using ATS is also highly cost-efficient. For example, an ATS allows you to find and track highly qualified candidates. This reduces the money spent on recruiting strategies, advertisements, and other ineffective channels. With an ATS, you can easily build and maintain talent pools and reach out to candidates in the pool as and when a job opening arises.
To streamline, customize, and configure your hiring and onboarding
When you implement an ATS, you will not need to rely on multiple tools such as emails, excel spreadsheets, calendars, social media, your company’s website, mobile phones, candidate interviewing tools, and candidate assessment tools. An ATS simplifies, streamlines, and unifies your whole recruiting process in one single platform, removing the need to switch between different systems and tools. It also makes team collaboration easy.
Each type of business has its own unique hiring needs and requirements. The hiring and onboarding process of a retail store is very different from that of a manufacturing company. With an ATS, you can customize and configure your preferences and processes in innumerable ways. What’s more? You can also opt for add-on features and plug-ins, such as video interviews, pre-hire assessments, and remote proctoring.
To increase efficiency and productivity
An ATS increases speed and efficiency by allowing your team to access and review the database at the click of a button. For example, an ATS enables you to accurately search your talent pool for candidates based on specific categories, such as location, education, skills, and work experience. It also supports the standardization of candidate data as well as the entire recruitment process, thereby allowing you to optimize the recruitment cycle to find the best candidates and make the right hiring decisions every single time.
An ATS is armed with many advanced features and functionalities that improve your productivity. For example, it allows the automation and streamlining of repetitive tasks such as posting jobs on multiple job boards and sending integrated template-based emails for communication with candidates. Further, an ATS also promotes collaborative hiring. It allows your team to comment, share features, and give feedback about candidates. This positively impacts individual and team productivity and improves the decision-making process.
To improve the quality of hire
A mobile-friendly ATS increases your pool of applicants and reduces the time taken by an applicant to fill in a job application. This helps decrease their drop-off rate. ATSs enable you to screen and qualify candidates in a smarter and better way. Thinning out the candidate pool with preset minimum requirements, such as years of experience and assessments based on personality and relevant skills, helps vastly improve the quality of hire.
An intelligent AI-powered ATS offers several advantages. It accurately and objectively analyzes resumes, removing human bias in the selection of candidates. It automatically ranks candidates based on your criteria and transparently presents candidate data for fast and straightforward comparisons. The custom analytics and data-backed reports generated by an AI-driven ATS help you easily and seamlessly manage and monitor the whole recruitment process. Using the data on job posting click-through rates, engagements, demographics of applicants, and more, you can further optimize the steps and procedures of your hiring process.
To improve candidate experience and boost employee retention
Most often, candidates attribute poor candidate experience to not having received regular status updates and continuous communication from employers. An ATS can significantly improve the overall candidate experience by enabling you to automatically schedule interviews and communication and launch personalized email campaigns without losing the human touch. For example, ATSs have built-in recruiting email templates that can be automated and sent in bulk.
Making a candidate feel welcome and valued right from the application stage to the onboarding stage and beyond boosts the employee retention rate and prevents drop-outs. An ATS enhances employee retention by making applicants feel like they are a part of the company from the get-go. An ATS allows you to maintain a well-designed, mobile-friendly, and SEO-optimized career site which candidates find easy to use. It also provides customization and branding options that help candidates establish an emotional connection with your company.
To get valuable insights with actionable analytics
An ATS with robust built-in analytics enables you to automatically track and measure every step of your recruitment process as well as every single one of your candidates. The ATS can gather and compute this enormous amount of data based on specific recruitment metrics. It creates well-designed, visually appealing, and easily comprehensible reports to provide you with insightful data.
Actionable analytics and reports provided by an ATS help you make better decisions. ATS reports can reveal which job posting stood out the most, which channels attract the best candidates, or what is your time to hire or cost per hire, and more. An ATS could help identify bottlenecks and problems in the hiring process based on which adjustments and improvements can be made. This helps you make course corrections by taking the necessary steps and optimizing your hiring process.
To improve your company’s image
Every company considers and evaluates several factors like cost, learning curve, and desired automation level before implementing an ATS. An ATS system offers far-reaching and long-term benefits that make it a must-have tool for companies to boost their image in a rapidly evolving human resource landscape and a highly competitive market. It also adds to the company’s employer branding efforts.
The job market today is highly candidate-centric. With companies vying for top talent, candidates have developed specific preferences on what kind of companies they are inclined to work for. Candidates prefer to work for companies that use the current technology to their advantage. Delivering a modern, organized, and engaging candidate hiring process not only adds value to your candidates but also enhances your company’s brand image.
Conclusion
Initially, ATSs were developed to manage job applications. The Recruiting Software Impact Report by Capterra states that today, more than 75% of modern recruiters and talent managers use ATSs. From large corporations to medium and small-sized enterprises, ATSs are gaining popularity across the board. Modern ATSs allow hiring teams to not only store information but also attract, engage, and nurture candidates. By easing recruiters’ administrative and manual workload, an ATS helps them perform better in the candidate selection process and deliver overall improved hiring results.
HirePro’s Campus Hiring Workflows is a best-in-class AI-powered platform that automates and manages your talent pipeline by driving the entire hiring lifecycle. An ISO 27001-certified and GDPR-compliant ATS, it is 100% configurable, does not require custom coding, and gets smarter with the evolving needs of your organization.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) refers to the simulation of human intelligence, where aspects such as cognition and cerebral abilities are programmed into machines. Today, we witness the large-scale adoption and integration of AI in domains of process management, organisational tasks, health care, finance, data security, education, and others. The algorithms used in AI utilize real-time inputs, analyse data and provide instant results. It finds a premise in three fundamental concepts – machine learning, deep learning and neural networks. In the information-age, data is intellectual property and Al capitalizes on it. When one has the best data, amplifying it with AI yields successful outcomes.
Human Resource technologies have adopted AI in facilitating recruitment, employee engagement, performance management, workforce management, and processes alike. Sourcing from an ambitious talent pool necessitates the use of strategies that increase productivity and efficiency in hiring processes. Millennials use a variety of social networks to advance their careers and apply for employment. As reported by the USA Today, McDonald’s had 250,000 positions to fill in the summer and they used Snapchat to attract Millennials into saying “I’m lovin’ it!” with their hiring process. Applicants applied with Snaplications, 10-second video submissions where applicants explain what makes them the perfect fit for the job. Similarly, At Havas Chicago, interns have been brought on to work through Social media. Jason M. Peterson, CCO of Havas Worldwide, credits social media contests on platforms like Snapchat and Instagram for finding great interns who understand the importance of creating “insta-content.” Therefore, keeping an eye out on these social networks might well be worth the effort.
It is not just millennials whose lives are dominated by upcoming technology, those who want to hire them have been keeping up too. In fact, a survey conducted by Gartner reported that 23 percent of organizations that had adopted AI, were utilizing it in recruiting. AI, machine learning, and data analytics are powerful tools that help assess the skills and abilities of candidates for better decisions.
Predictive analytical models are capable of identifying stronger candidates over the conventional recruitment processes. AI tools based on such models offer a pool of candidates helping the recruiter scout the right candidates.
Talent assessment platforms help assess and evaluate the cognitive abilities, skills, as well as specific behavioural qualities of prospective candidates on campus.
Recruitment analytics offers a wider scope for on-campus recruitment. It involves parameters arrived at through customised assessments for every different role and ensures filtering candidates with desired skill-sets.
More advanced tools like video-based assessment, psychometric tests, integrated in the process, can ensure better outcomes through a 360-degree view of the candidates. This helps filter and take forward candidates into induction and employment thereafter.
Institutions globally are adopting automation to drive value. According to the McKinsey Automation Survey Report in 2018, 57 percent of 1,300 institutions have already started leveraging automation and another 18 percent are projected to do so in the coming years.
Automation can have the students for the candidature and placement department in the process flow of filling in applications, generating candidature codes, assessment dates scheduled and subsequently tag them to automated processes of assessment.
An applicant tracking system (ATS) is a software application that facilitates the electronic handling of recruitment and hiring needs. ATS automate multiple HR processes like:
Job Posting
Resume screening
Pre-interview testing
Interview Planning
Interview Evaluation
The challenges include the delay and reluctance to shift to automation in AI. The implications are loss of employment opportunities in HR domains. Other factors are internet infrastructure on campuses, students’ access to devices, digital literacy, regional inconsistencies and non-uniformity in the spread of factors considered.
Under the given circumstances and the unevenness attributed to various factors of adoption – the transition phase from manual to automation seems rather difficult. But with growing competition – the skill-sets of resourceful candidates remain in the market for a limited period. AI helps plug gaps in high volume recruitment processes, amplifies efficiency in quality candidature and capitalises on the relevant parameters that are heavily data-driven. HirePro’s Campus Hiring Workflows, powered by AI offers a seamless transition and adoption with end-to-end process automation, remote automation with speed and accuracy, superior candidate experience, virtual onboarding, detailed analytics, security, and compliance.
Campus recruitment is the practice of engaging, assessing, and hiring young talents from college campuses. Campus recruitment is among the key strategies for staffing at organizations with high recruitment needs since colleges house a large pool of young candidates.
Processing large volumes of applications can be a laborious task, and the need for efficiency has triggered a migration to online recruiting solutions. Online campus recruitment solutions have been around for a while, albeit at a lower scale. However, the onset of pandemic and social distancing guidelines has caused campus recruitment to shift completely to the digital space. The pandemic forced a transformation that an ageing traditional campus hiring process was slowly but surely inching towards. This change is benefiting both the employer and the candidate.
Digital Transformation
Digital transformation is the use of digital technology to manage business processes. It is the transition from a non-digital, manual process to a more refined, automated process. Digital campus hiring typically utilizes software applications to source, engage, interview, assess, and hire students. A good system ensures data capture at all stages, to analyze and determine indicators of a successful digital hiring strategy. Shifting to digital campus recruitment renders the following benefits-
Efficiency:
Manual processes are tedious and prone to errors. With the use of technology, recruiters can automate their tasks, increase throughput-rate, and fill vacant positions more quickly. In a digital landscape, organizations and professionals can leverage the power of tools available for recruitment. For instance, there are AI-based applications that analyze a candidate’s soft skills using interview footage.
Productivity: A traditional university hiring process puts an immense burden on resources. Companies scramble to allot budgets, schedule activities, and expend personnel to be on-campus. Moving all the processes to an interactive digital platform helps save time and valuable resources.
Reach: Recruiters use of tools such as social media platforms and email bursts, helps reach a broader talent network which is quite unlike the limited reach given the space constraints of traditional on-campus recruitment. Not only the recruiting professionals, but the students also benefit from this accessibility.
While digital transformation in university recruitment seems lucrative, change implementations are often met with resistance. A successful transformation often faces resistance due to the lack of a well-defined plan and change management technique. Goal setting, prioritizing tasks, and creating responsibility matrices are one way of negotiating the former. The latter can be dealt with a change management plan, executed by members with exceptional leadership and people skills.
As markets around us propose technology-oriented solutions, it is evident that there is a demand or preference for it, downstream. Digital solutions in campus recruitment alleviate management issues, making the gritty logistical processes extinct. The tools enable seamless planning, execution, and delivery. Information technology and online systems have added immense value to business processes and if you are looking to do the same with your campus recruiting efforts, HirePro has dedicated and comprehensive campus hiring solutions. Having realized the pain points of campus recruitment, we have designed our sophisticated products to address operational densities by means of automating workflows. We are here to deliver efficiency, reliability, and convenience across your campus hiring processes.
To capture the best amongst an ambitious, motivated, and self-driven Gen Z, companies need to be focused when it comes to campus recruitment – it’s no longer just career fairs, tests, and interviews. While these are still important, they form part of a multi-pronged strategy to hire the best talent from campus.
Being exposed to technology since birth, this new generation is hugely aware of brands. They research and review before making any decisions. They are connected to people across continents. Being highly competitive, entrepreneurial even, they are also impatient, so it’s important to engage with them early on and hold their attention.
Companies require a strategy to appeal to campus talent and then be able to continuously engage with them to get them on board. There is no elixir for this, but here are a few tips to help you with campus recruitment strategy. Read on!
Start at the Right Place
Campus recruitment can often feel like looking for a needle in a haystack, but it need not necessarily be so. While it’s not feasible to visit every college/university, it’s important to identify the right ones. Companies need to have a clearly defined set of requirements and then decide on the campuses to target.
The identified list of schools could be based on the positions, budgets, and diversity policies. This really is a very specific business requirement, closely tied-in with business objectives, hiring goals, and job roles. Having made a shortlist, consider the programs offered by the school, demographics, diversity and inclusion practices, and geographic location. Pull in alumni and colleagues to get reviews of places they think will offer best-fit candidates.
Be Objective
To get a slice of the best talent, processes need to be unbiased. To reduce hiring bias, simplify and standardize hiring and interview processes, and use AI-based systems to pick candidates. Educating recruiters and hiring managers about unintentional biases, reworking language in job descriptions by using gender-neutral adjectives, and giving work sample tests to compare candidates’ skills are some ways of doing this.
Build Campus Connections
Brand awareness is necessary for Gen Z to consider applying for jobs or internships, especially for startups and new firms. Maintaining a continuous exchange of ideas, opportunities, and information throughout the year helps to keep the brand at the forefront when it’s time to begin the actual hiring process. The obvious choices are involvement in college activities, fest sponsorships, besides, of course, internship opportunities. Workshop and mentorships increase visibility and build trust at an early stage.
To build your brand, share information about the company via webinars or seminars – the nature of work, new patents, cutting-edge research, and career paths. Maintain a continued relationship with students and faculty through the academic year and even through the lifecycle of the student from freshman to senior. Offer project support and incubation programs as part of learning.
Off-campus, make sure that the website is prepped for new hires, landing pages for job postings are updated, and virtual engagement is always on. Responding to reviews on LinkedIn or GlassDoor enhances the image of an employer who cares about what employees think.
Leverage Digital Channels
An overarching digital campus recruitment strategy with email and text information and a presence on social media with enough interesting content throughout the year helps garner followers and attract campus talent.
While presence on business networks such as LinkedIn and GlassDoor is obvious, active presence is required on social networks such as Instagram, Facebook, and even Snapchat. Besides job postings on LinkedIn and Facebook pages, sharing snappy stories and interesting content keeps brand awareness high. Share information that will capture their attention – work culture, fun events, and opportunities for continued learning.
Stay Relevant
Today’s college grad is an evolved persona. Growing up in a digital age, with the internet and social media, their physical life is so closely intertwined with a digital one that the virtual world often transgresses into the real one. These digital natives have grown up watching YouTube stars and influencers. An organization is nothing but people, and given this, companies need to adapt to get these “new human beings” into their fold.
To attract this generation, companies must connect to them both in terms of values and work opportunities. Self-expression, distributed trust, and authenticity are not just good on paper, but need to be put into action, and made visible via social media, career pages, and the website.
Dedicate Technology, Time, and Resources
Effective campus hiring requires many elements to come together. With job postings across websites and social media and other channels, dedicated landing pages are important to capture candidate interest. Grab eyeballs on the website with 360-degree videos and immersive experiences, Augmented Reality (AR) videos and apps, and let the candidate in for a virtual experience.
When it comes to interviews and tests, companies can take advantage of technology and use virtual hiring platforms. Using process automation for hiring results in a seamless hiring experience, and this is especially useful for high-volume campus recruitment. HirePro’s Campus Hiring Workflows is a comprehensive platform that tracks and records the process of an entire recruitment cycle. AI-powered workflows deliver speed and accuracy, with automated fraud detection and remote proctoring while allowing for a superior candidate experience. HirePro also offers coding and functional assessments that test specific domain skills, job skills, personality, and aptitude, which can be administered remotely.
Embrace Inclusion and Diversity
Gen Z takes diversity for granted. They are born in a world where race, colour, and sex are not significant considerations when it comes to hiring. Companies are expected to be inclusive. Having special needs is not taboo, and they expect the world to have equal opportunities. To hire the best talent, companies need to ensure that they are naturally diverse and inclusive. Anything less would probably be met with confusion.
To appeal to this generation, companies need to have diversity and inclusion policies in the very fabric of their being. Talent assessments and interviews need to be data-driven, and result in scientific outcomes, to ensure that personal biases have no place in the process.
Data is the Demigod
Campus recruitment is a long and painstaking process. With initiatives peaking during recruitment, it can get chaotic. Being data-driven is one way to ensure as smooth a process as possible.
To enable this, it’s essential to identify the right data to be gathered.
Create a baseline of candidate information to make comparisons easier.
Identify skills and personality traits that are required for a job profile and have scores attached for objective evaluations.
Measure recruitment event ROI – By university, school, and recruiter. This will help determine which events you should return to.
To run a successful recruitment program, you need to track the Key Performance Indicators (KPI). This will result of course in a better ROI, but besides that, also result in better hiring decisions and efficiency. Companies can also identify areas to be worked on during recruitment, and refine them during each run.
The metrics you track depend on the recruitment goals you are trying to achieve. For example, if you want to source more candidates, you need to be looking at the talent pool size or source of hire, the number of events attended by the company and so on. Typically, companies track the number of qualified candidates per hire, number qualified per event, time to hire, cost per hire and retention rate.
KPIs keep tabs on the fallacies of the recruitment process. For example, are you attending events that seem to give no returns? Recruitment metrics are specific to an organization and depend on the recruitment goals. Using the right campus recruitment technology makes it easier to track various touchpoints. KPI reports should be made available to all stakeholders.
God is in the Details
From identifying candidates at the beginning of the life cycle to putting out job postings, organizing events, virtual engagement, on-campus engagement, running assessments, multiple rounds of interviews, selections, acceptance, offer letters, and the final onboarding – the list itself is pretty mind-boggling.
In this melee, it’s easy to lose sight of the final goal – to get the most suitable candidate. A detailed evaluation takes time and energy, but it’s important to follow through on each aspect. The right platform and tools can help make things manageable, helping you hire the best possible talent. Use technology to your advantage, and human intervention where necessary. For example, include alumni for on-campus interviews to create a bond with the students. At the same time, automated assessments and standardized tests can save tremendous effort, and keep evaluations objective.
Provide a Seamless Hiring Experience
Campus hiring can be a rollercoaster ride, but designing the optimum strategy will enhance the ability of companies to attract the right people. While it’s great to have a process, the recruitment experience for the candidate is going to play a major part in any decision-making.
Engagement needs to start with freshman and sophomores, and lines of communication need to be established early on. Events, hackathons, and internships build brand awareness. Build relationships from the start, so that you become first-choice.
HirePro offers a comprehensive university hiring solution that covers both on-ground and remote recruitment across the top colleges in India. This includes advisory services for building relationships with universities and colleges, skill sets and compensation packages, content services for assessments, operations, logistics and communication, and interview services.
While remote recruitment has been explored earlier, it has now been accelerated due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Clearly, virtual hiring is here to stay. Characterised by high volumes and a gamut of tasks, campus recruitment can greatly benefit from complete process automation. HirePro’s Campus Hiring Workflows is an end-to-end platform for college hiring. With AI-powered workflows and fraud-proof assessments and interviews, it is a completely automated solution for remote college hiring.
Recruitment is as much about people as the process. With the right process in place, you can get the right people for the job.
“Your time is limited. So don’t waste your time living someone else’s life. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition…Stay hungry, stay foolish.”
With these rousing words, Apple’s iconic CEO Steve Jobs bid adieu to the class of 2005 at Stanford, provoking them to listen to their inner voices and strikeout to do great things. Recruiters across the globe chase the same heady mixture of hunger, ‘foolishness’ and idealism that drives bright new college graduates – this elixir of youth provides the constant supply of boundless energy, out-of-the-box ideas, and innovative thinking that fuel growing companies.
College hires are critical for organizational success – the new talent and fresh energy are vital to keeping the pipeline of hiring filled to sustain growth. Whether hiring interns, trainees, or newly minted hires into the ranks of engineering, production, sales, or management, college hiring is a strategic function for recruiters in all enterprises.
A Seasoned New-age Practice
Going to college to suss out talent is quite an old practice. Graduates from prestigious universities such as the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) in India have always been sought after by hiring managers in FMCG, manufacturing, marketing and technology companies both in India and abroad.
A planned practice of hiring from the next tier of institutions and beyond has become active over the last two decades. Fueled by the unshackling of India’s economy in the 1990s, software services companies such as Infosys, TCS and Wipro, as well as Banking Financial Services and Insurance (BFSI) institutions spread their wings and started hiring in tens of thousands yearly. The branding worked both ways: the best colleges and universities wanted the best companies visiting, and vice versa.
The operational complexities of university hiring have had an interesting evolution: a chat with any seasoned recruiter will elicit anecdotes of traveling by plane, train and automobile to remote colleges armed with bulky CPUs and setting up shop in sweltering weather in career fairs. Recruiters would key in applicant details from filled-out paper forms and lug the workstations back to HQ to slowly build databases and invite candidates over for in-person interviews.
The times have surely changed: as of this writing, industry is riding the COVID inflection curve and recruitment is firmly going online. Candidates, recruiters, interviewers and hiring managers are all brought together on sophisticated recruitment platforms for testing, assessment, interviews and closure.
How Campus Recruitments (Used to) Work
The techniques and tactics of recruiting divisions are varied, with a single aim: to identify the most promising talent amongst graduating cohorts, and ‘lock them in’ with attractive offers and benefits earlier than anyone else.
Here’s a bird’s eye view of some of the techniques recruiters employ:
Career Fairs
Traditionally, many colleges – particularly engineering institutes, business schools, and reputed liberal arts and sciences colleges – organize career fairs on campus, inviting reputed local companies of the region to put up stalls in the fair. Graduating students walk through the stalls with resumes, meeting and greeting key functionaries manning the stall. These could be hiring managers themselves, or recruiters who are experienced in gauging candidates’ potential.
The fair would usually be followed by on-site tests and/or interviews with a select group of applicants. This round served as the first filters for hirers: candidates who performed well on campus were invited to the organization’s offices for further rounds, all expenses paid.
To promote brand recall and gain candidate attention, it has been common practice to give away promotional materials, ranging from t-shirts and caps to pen drives and tablets to students. It’s a common sight in campus career fairs to see particular stalls attract candidates like bees to a honey pot just for their attractive giveaways!
Over the last 3-4 years, career fairs have gone online, with a vengeance now in 2020-21. In fact, career experts predict that 80% of hiring will be done via online or virtual fairs going forward.
Very similar to webinars, virtual job fairs take place at a designated time on a particular day. Attendees log in to an online platform and interact with recruiters in virtual spaces such as chat rooms, breakout rooms or other teleconferencing methods. Recruiters can meet several candidates at the predesignated time and rapidly identify those who they want to speak to again. Interviews can be done online and in some cases, offers may be made on the spot.
On-site Visits
Following the initial rounds, many companies prefer to invite candidates of interest to on-site visits. The visits benefit both parties: more team members, beyond the initial interviewer, can meet the candidate and assess suitability for their team and open role.
The candidate, on the other hand, may gauge the company’s culture and policies first-hand: factors such as open seating or cubicles versus enclosed office spaces, or an open door policy versus a more formal appointment culture may be important for some applicants.
Applicants also get a golden opportunity to experience benefits such as on-site cafeterias, cultural events and other perks in the company.
Internships
A decades-old common practice in the West, internships are fast gaining acceptance among large and medium-sized companies in India. Students seek temporary work as interns as early as after their first year of college. This gives them invaluable experience in applying the tools and technologies they’re learning about in the classroom. Many internships pay handsomely as well. For companies, internships are not just a way to mentor students but to identify talent early and groom them to join the company after graduation.
Interns are a valuable resource for many growing companies, giving them an economical resource pool, particularly for seasonal jobs such as company events and conferences, market research activities, or short-term projects.
Bonuses
Tapping into the prime aspiration of many new graduates, recruiters sweeten job offers with a variety of bonuses. Signing bonuses may be time-bound, pressuring candidates to sign on and accept offers within a designated period. If candidates decline, it gives recruiters the opportunity to move on and make offers to other candidates. Many large companies also offer moving bonuses to help candidates move to a new city where the job is. Organizations are known to offer storage bonuses, helping students store their belongings in the new city while they hunt for living spaces; as well as assistance with finding housing.
With more and more jobs going online and remote, particularly in technology-enabled sectors, such bonuses may morph in the coming days – moving to a new city is no longer required for some positions. We predict infrastructure bonuses that will help new joinees set up high-speed internet connections will become the norm.
New candidates are also traditionally equipped with the necessary hardware, software, and organizational knowledge in the initial days, via a series of onboarding sessions, many of which are going online now.
However, signing bonuses will certainly remain as a bargaining chip for recruiters when it comes to hiring top graduates.
Offers, Counter Offers and More
Savvy new graduates are known to interview with multiple companies. The best among them ‘win’ multiple offers and get down to bargaining with recruiters for better pay packages, perquisites or other benefits. Seasoned recruiters keep buffers in their recruitment budgets precisely for such negotiations. Not all new graduates merit such a consideration – but the best ones do get it, and deservedly so.
Market conditions and the demand-supply gap for particular roles dictate many a negotiation. For example, new graduates who demonstrate skills and capabilities, even a portfolio of past work experience in ‘hot’ sectors such as Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning, Big Data or Cybersecurity are particularly sought after currently.
University Hiring, Circa 2021
While companies went into caution mode in 2020 and hiring dipped, by 2021, they have more or less the COVID shock and have gone back to hiring at close to regular numbers in many geographies, particularly in the West.
To be sure, pandemic-induced stresses on the system remain: employees are feeling dissociated due to prolonged ‘work from home’ tenures, training and other benefits have suffered tremendously and market forces are still unstable in many COVID hotspots. Many companies are still finding their feet in the unfamiliar new domain of online recruitment.
As with many other things in the industry, the once-in-a-century COVID phenomenon has impacted university hiring. Here are some key practices companies are currently adopting:
As mentioned earlier, virtual job fairs have become de rigueur for hiring companies. The freedom from meeting personally and having to travel has meant that recruiters can meet candidates safely and speedily. This is particularly helpful in cases where hiring has to be done on a massive scale – such as thousands of hires per month.
Campus recruitment has undergone a digital transformation like never before. Leading tech-enabled platforms such as HirePro automate remote hiring workflows efficiently so that fresh talent can be sourced seamlessly.
Job candidates – especially new college graduates – are increasingly tech-savvy and social media aware, putting employee experience at the forefront of recruiters’ priorities. When the smallest slip-up in a virtual fair or on-site visit can become an embarrassing hashtag on social media, it falls upon recruiters to design and execute flawless experiences from the first contact to final close on offer.Here again, a comprehensive solution like HirePro can help recruiters manage the intensity of college recruitment with ease. With advisory services, content services (including industry-leading tests and assessments), operations management and interview services, HirePro is the best-in-breed platform for worry-free university hiring, especially in scale.
Building brand awareness online via a mix of social media thought leadership and showcasing company culture is increasingly falling to a lot of recruiters. As students live more online than offline, listening on social media and maintaining engaging job portals online to attract new graduates is imperative for enterprise recruiters.
Future Outlook
To be sure, campus recruitment comes with its own set of challenges, especially when recruiters go in with massive hiring plans. Candidate fraud during vetting tests and interviews, false documentation, and flubbing of credentials are common gotchas to watch out for. The operational complexities are real, especially when hiring across the country in a large and diverse country such as India. Companies looking to source the top candidates from the best campuses across the country are well-served to ally with tech-enabled platforms staffed with able recruitment specialists.
The future of campus hiring spells t-e-c-h. Aided by sophisticated fraud detection systems, seamless workflow management tools, and panels of experienced specialists, recruitment platforms can help enterprises source the best talent from colleges and universities.
Students are online now, so should the hiring companies be.
A few decades ago, it was the norm for freshly minted graduates to throng employment agencies or scour newspapers for job advertisements. Getting a job while still in college was as unheard of as landing on the moon. Well, we did land on the moon and a half-century later, students getting placed while still finishing a course is the new norm. Campus recruitment has now become an integral part of hiring. So much so that a company’s employer brand is often associated with the efficiency of their campus recruitment processes. Educational institutions are also ranked on the basis of the kind of organisations they attract for their career fairs.
Over the years, organisations and their recruitment partners found their rhythm with their campus recruitment strategies. The fact that you needed to be onsite at the campus to hire limited this activity to those institutions that were geographically accessible. The campus recruitment model was also seasonal. This was to make the most of the hiring team’s resources in terms of money and time.
Hiring platforms have been experimenting with online hiring for some years now. However, while remote hiring processes were adopted for some pieces of the hiring process an end-to-end hiring solution for campus recruitment was not universally accepted. Then the social distancing norms imposed on us by the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the acceptance of virtual hiring in all its formats including campus recruitment. A July 2020 report by CareerNet indicates that 74% of HR/TA leaders embraced virtual hiring as a viable option.
A bird’s-eye view of online campus recruitment
Online campus recruitment involves most of the processes adopted in the traditional recruitment process. However, these processes need to be restructured to suit the virtual recruitment environment. Here’s a look at some of the steps from a broader perspective.
Finalise a hiring strategy: Your hiring strategy should be based on your organisational needs both in the short term as well as the long term. You need to have a clear and concise view of the kind of talent you need, especially when hiring remotely.
Identify your ideal hiring partner: Ensure that the hiring partner you align with has the technical capability and experience to deliver a seamless hiring experience for you as well as your potential hires. An experienced hiring partner with the ability to deliver end-to-end process automation, fraud-proof remote assessments and interviews, a superior candidate experience, and virtual onboarding is crucial to the success of your online campus recruitment.
Use Campus intelligence: Online recruiting gives you the advantage of being able to access many more campuses than you would normally do. However, it’s still important to focus on the campuses that are most likely to give you the best results. Most organisations develop their campus targeting strategy based on their previous year’s experience. This is likely to put you in a loop. You should take advantage of your hiring partner’s analytics of a larger pool of campuses and their wider experience to make the most of your recruitment effort.
Promote your campus recruitment: Hop onto the Social Media bandwagon and make your brand appealing to students and campuses. Virtual hackathons, case study competitions, and other competitive events can be organised on virtual platforms too. These activities will increase your brand value and will also help you identify candidates who are the right technical and cultural fit.
Identify the most useful tools for campus recruitment: Ensure that your campus hiring solution comes with the fraud-proof assessments tools and structured virtual interview capabilities. The process, as well as tools, should be easy to use and candidate friendly while ensuring the sanctity of the tests are maintained.
Is online campus recruitment a flash in the pan?
Some might opine that online campus recruitment is just a temporary solution to the social distancing constraints that COVID-19 has imposed on us. However, it is more likely that organisations will continue to adopt this method even after students get back to campuses. After all, the benefits far outweigh any challenges that this model poses.
Lower cost to hire
Allows access to a larger talent pool
Solidifies a dependable talent pipeline
Ensures recruitment continuity
Engenders efficiency and transparency
Increases employer brand recognition
All these benefits make it imperative that you invest in an online campus hiring process that aligns with your current and future needs. Ensure that the online campus recruitment ATS offers a customizable end-to-end solution that suits your specific needs. Adapt your campus recruitment strategy to the online platform by tweaking your processes for a seamless candidate experience. Since you will not be meeting the candidate face-to-face, ensure that you have many touchpoints over an extended period to get to know your candidate well. It’s just a matter of making changes to your perspective and your processes. The long-term gains for this initial investment are well worth it.
