The Resurrection of Recruiting

 

A recent U.S. survey by the Pew Research Center indicates that among those who have looked for a job during the last two years, 90% went online to search and 84% applied that way.

There’s more.  Of that 90% who went online, 34% considered it their most important resource.  And among millennials (age 18-29), 54% used their phone for job hunting.

But you are not surprised.  It’s figures like these that lead people to say “Recruiting is broken”.

Well, maybe the old one.   As with many pre-web practices, technology is simply re-assembling the pieces to meet changed priorities.

Call it a resurrection of recruiting

The job market is a multi-faceted environment and job seekers go through many avenues to find the career they want.  For active candidates, the Internet has become a key resource.  Mobile phone usage is simply a logical add-on in a process that dumps tons of data into the top of the funnel at great convenience, negligible cost and often questionable value.

Technology’s Finest Hour

This is technology’s shining moment.  The benefits fade pretty fast as you move on.

For the candidate, the job board posting or the 30-second ad give only the bare bones of the job.  For the employer, automated resume processing and selection by algorithm save time and money but deliver a limited view of who is applying.

The benefit tends to be in the lower reaches of employee hierarchy, where technology facilitates unprecedented numbers of applicants, then solves the problems it has created with auto-assessing procedures.

As you go up the elevator and out to the corner offices, however, the new “efficiency” fades fast.

Recruiters – especially those such as members of the Cornerstone International Group who focus on Retained Executive Search – have a very specific finding the Best Person, including people not necessarily looking for the job.

Record Year for Recruiters

This is something technology is not particularly good at apparently.  The Association of Executive Search Consultants, which sets global standards for recruiting firms, expects a record year in 2015 for industry revenues and continued growth in search mandates.

What technology has done is refine and redirect the recruiting model into a more selective area where it continues to add value.   A smart recruiting company doesn’t compete with the web for junior positions.  But a hiring company will contract a recruiter to find a Chief Financial Officer or a plant manager in a niche industry – the harder to fill jobs that trigger a significantly more complex search protocol.

For the serious career seeker, the ad posting an interesting-looking job is nothing more than a marker.  He or she wants to know a whole lot more about the job, the company, its values, its working environment before they consider an application.

Companies slow out of the gate still expect the candidates to make themselves eligible for consideration. Companies who are leaders realize their first job is to make the opportunity attractive before demanding all the personal data.

This is the level at which the recruiter brings value as a trusted advisor on both sides of the table.

For the hiring company, the agency draws on experience and sector knowledge to locate and recommend the most qualified and the best fit.   For the candidate, the recruiter must communicate the job attributes and the company persona professionally but persuasively.

Rise of the Employer Brand

The supremacy of the candidate in current job markets has given rise to creation of the Employer Brand, which does the job of marketing, but for the primary benefit of the people it hopes will join the company workforce.

This means differentiating the hiring company from its peers in the same was as achieving distinction in the market place.

The leading strategy behind building business brands today is overwhelmingly dependent on Content Marketing.  Differentiation comes from attracting the attention and interest of the target customer through quality content presented on an on-going basis.

It is only logical, then, that the same strategies would be equally successful in attracting the best people to fill a key position – people who are not going to make a career move unless they feel sure it is the right fit for them.

Recruiting content does two things the old model passed over.  It differentiates the company in the job market and it reduces uncertainty in the mind of the applicanty

Recruiting is not broken, it’s been resurrected.  Like many other disciplines, it has just been reshaped and refined into a more valuable process by understanding how to use technology.

 

NEXT:  How Recruiting Content Works