Its a new year, which brings new challenges, new resource plans, increased expectations and
thankfully, in light of all these pressures, new budgets. There’s no hiding place for HR in 2013, as
research from SHL.com tells us 90% of CEOS see HR’s main value as ensuring the right people
are in the right role. Talent attraction is currently HR’s reason for being, and in 2013, CEOs will
be judging HR and Recruiters obviously on their ability to hire the right staff.
With talent shortages expected to be as intense as ever, recruiters will need to be more innovative
than they have ever been to win the war for talent and ensure there is a constant stream of star
candidates entering their business throughout 2013.
And one area where recruiters need to get smart is in technology as, if used well, it can make your
hiring process faster and more effective, which will help to you improve all your key recruiting
metrics. In fact, I have identified six killer technologies that hiring teams should be using in 2013
which will speed up hiring and I have outlined these below.
1.Video Interviewing Technology
If you are not conducting or at least giving the option of first round video interviewing for
candidates then your hiring process is seriously behind the times and of course the pace of modern
recruitment, as 63% of companies now use video interviews. By using video hiring, you can
minimize scheduling delays arising a result of busy time pressurized candidates and interviewers
struggling to synchronize diaries for a time consuming face-to-face meet.
So, make sure you offer more flexible video interviewing options for first interview to speed up
your time to hire. There are many technologies on the market that can help you with this such as:
HireVue, Sparkhire, Montage etc…
2.Employer Branding Video Presentations
There is nothing new about corporate videos, but it is vastly under-utilized by employers as part
of their employer brand marketing mix. And probably for a while this didn’t matter as employer
branding video presentations were the minority, but now they have become the norm (thanks
to broadband, smart-phones and 3G/4G. And the modern job candidate expects to see videos in
order to learn all about employer brand and culture. As well as this, video will speed up hiring by
increasing your ratio of applicants to postings. Yes, research from CareerBuilder tells us that job
postings with video icons are viewed 12% more than postings without video and receive a 34%
greater application rate.
3.Employee Referral and Crowdsourcing technologies
Employee referrals were shown to be the most influential form of hire in 2012, and research from
Jobvite showed that referred employers were hired 26% faster than those hired from jobs boards.
An effective employee referral strategy must therefore leverage the power of social networks and
the best way to crowdsource talent through your employee’s referral network is to use employer
referrals/crowdsourcing tools like: meshhire, jobvite and bullhorn reach.
4.Mobile Interviewing Technology
Using mobile interview technology will help to give you a more flexible hiring process. Because
this means that candidates and interviewees can attend interviews on the go, which means they may
be able to interview sooner than if they were doing it face to face. As well as this, best of breed
mobile interviewing technologies allow a recorded interview, meaning the candidate can record
video responses to your questions at their own convenience and email them back to you.
5. Mobile Friendly ATS
The truth is many top candidates will be dynamic professionals on the move and if you want to
reach them you must make it easy for them to apply for jobs in their quiet time, such as in a hotel
room, in a coffee bar, or on an airplane (Boeing is introducing wi-fi access to its planes in 2013).
You can do this by using a tool called Jibe which is a mobile web solutions that allows smart-
phone users to upload their resume from the cloud or automatically build a resume and apply for a
job using data from their Linked-In profile. Giving candidates extra flexibility in the way they can
apply for a job will no doubt increase the number of applicants and reduce time to hire.
6. Applicant Tracking Systems
The best of breed applicant tracking systems yield many benefits, but if you are company that is
used to receiving high numbers of applicants per position then an ATS can help to speed up your
hiring as it can automatically read resumes and automatically generate short-lists saving your HR
team time and effort, and speeding up your short-listing times and speeding up overall hiring.
Recruit Smarter
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