Tech Enabling Recruitment and Selection

The nature of the workforce is fast changing, with contingent workforce populations growing. The need lies at both the employee and the employer end.  On one hand employers want just-in-time and flexible hiring to be able to minimize staffing costs and push efficiencies by being flexible. On the other hand, the workforce is changing in nature, with the increasing prominence of millennials. Employees seek greater flexibility and freedom at work, leading to new work models such as part-time, telecommuting, freelancing, consulting, contracting etc. The challenge is to find a common path between these two needs, where both the employer and the employee will benefit. CareerBuilder has come up with its annual job forecast that reinforces these needs. According to the survey, 51% of employers plan to hire temporary/contract workers in 2017, as against 47% in 2016. The strength of the temporary workforce is pegged at a significant 3 million-strong. Technology can serve as that glue, bringing together both these parties in a way that helps meets both their objectives. Here is how technology can help recruiters hire contingent workers: 

1. Interviews using chatbots: Since a large number of contingent workers often have day jobs, recruiters often struggle with scheduling interviews for them. The answer lies in artificial intelligence enabled chatbots. Being automated, they are available round the clock, and can carry out transactional and simple assessment work like completing the application process and asking basic questions. One need not worry about delivering an impersonal, mechanized response—bots are programmed to be highly responsive and conversational, thereby allowing a great candidate experience. In fact, chatbots can be used to engage with the candidate through the recruitment process, for example providing frequent updates.  According to Career Builder, 67% of job seekers gain a positive impression of a company when it provides regular updates. A chatbot can thus be an indispensable tool to interact with contingent workers. 

2. Personnel compliance using ATS: Companies often find it difficult to categorize and manage employee records as per their varied employer-employee contracts. For example, recording an independent contractor as something else can have huge legal and thereby, cost repercussions. To avoid this, leverage the facility of an applicant tracking system (ATS). Not only will an ATS help the recruiter collect and maintain the right employee and candidate data, it will intimate about the right disclosures and legal requirements. This will help the employer maintain compliance with regulatory requirements.

3. Big Data for sourcing, screening and selecting the right candidate: Big data and people analytics can help recruiters delve deep into the details of candidates and aid in every hiring process, right from sourcing to screening to selection. One can also carry out trending of the overall contingent candidate pool, and derive a sourcing strategy and a sourcing mix that works well for the company. Learning to use data analytics and data visualization tools to screen candidate profiles can reveal some very interesting patterns based on key words, and thereby help select the candidate with the right skill-fit and culture-fit. Even in the selection process, one can refer to data points and probe the candidate basis available data, to get a more objective view of the candidate, by minimizing human biases in selection. 

Recruiting from a contingent workforce requires quite a different approach. Recruiters are already under immense pressure to fill positions within the tight timelines and deliver the best quality of hire. Replacing manual processes by automated and intelligent ones is the best way to achieve both quantitative and qualitative recruitment metrics.