Hiring Tools

You won’t attract most candidates – no matter how hard you sell or how much employer branding content you drown them in (even if it’s dipped in caramel chocolate).

They’re just not your piece of cake.

If candidates aren’t impatiently picking up what you’re throwing down, know this:

You don’t have a funnel problem.

Or a reputation problem.

You don’t have a recruiting strategy problem.

No, it’s not a candidate outreach problem either.

You don’t have a candidate experience problem.

Neither do you have a talent market or competition problem.

These are all symptoms of a bigger problem.

The problem is a threatening, scary, bleak (but easily fixable) VALUES-SHAPED crater in your recruiting. A crater you can turn into the hottest destination for top talent – yes, even if you work at the most boring, basic company on the planet.

But you have to be ready to show the real company…by embracing your company’s unique values and communicating them. By adopting values-based recruitment.

What is values-based recruitment?

Values-based recruitment is a recruitment strategy that focuses on matching the values of the current and envisioned company culture with the values of the applicants. This strategy turns communication in recruiting upside down. Instead of evaluating the values in the later stages of the recruiting process, the organization communicates its values starting at the first touch point with candidates. That means job profiles turn into values-ambassadors of the company and create meaning for candidates.

Advantages of value-based recruitment strategy

A values-based recruitment strategy is a method of hiring that focuses on finding candidates who share the same values as the company. This can be done by incorporating values into the job description, interview process, and pre-employment assessments.

There are many advantages to using a values-based recruitment strategy, including:

Improved employee engagement: Employees who share the same values as their company are more likely to be engaged in their work. This is because they feel like they are part of something bigger than themselves and that their values are aligned with the company’s mission.

Reduced employee turnover: Employees who are happy and engaged in their work are less likely to leave. This can save companies a lot of money in recruiting and training costs.
Stronger company culture: A values-based recruitment strategy can help to create a strong company culture. This is because it brings together employees who share the same beliefs and values. A strong company culture can lead to a number of benefits, such as increased productivity, improved customer service, and a more positive work environment.

Better decision-making: Employees who share the same values are more likely to make decisions that are in the best interests of the company. This is because they are all working towards the same goals and objectives.

Enhanced employer brand: A values-based recruitment strategy can help to enhance a company’s employer brand. This is because it shows potential candidates that the company is committed to its values and that it is a good place to work.

Process of setting up a value-based recruitment strategy

Here are some tips for implementing a values-based recruitment strategy:

1. Start by defining your company’s values. What are the most important things to your company? What kind of work environment do you want to create? Once you have a clear understanding of your values, you can start to incorporate them into your recruitment process.
2. Include your values in your job descriptions. This will help potential candidates to understand what your company is looking for and whether or not they would be a good fit.
3. Use pre-employment assessments to screen for values. There are a number of pre-employment assessments that can be used to assess a candidate’s values. This can help you to identify candidates who are a good fit for your company culture.
4. If you’re working with external recruitment agencies, ensure they understand and align with your company’s values so they can pre-screen candidates effectively.
5. Ask values-based questions during interviews. Develop structured questionnaires or surveys that evaluate a candidate’s alignment with company values. Use these during the application or interview process. This will help you to get to know the candidate’s values and how they align with your company’s values.
6. Frame questions that prompt candidates to describe past situations where their values influenced their actions. For instance, “Describe a time when you had to make a difficult decision that tested your core values.”
7. Present candidates with hypothetical, but realistic, job-related scenarios that challenge their values. Observe their problem-solving approach and decision-making process.
8. When checking references, ask specific questions about the candidate’s values and how they’ve manifested in previous roles.
9. Introduce new hires to the company’s values from day one. Use onboarding sessions to further assess their alignment and adaptability.

Also read: What Leadership Means To Us At HackerEarth

Values-based campaigns excel

Data best reveals the power of this strategy. We analyzed LinkedIn outreach campaigns with the goal to attract senior talent for HR, marketing, legal, and IT roles. On one side, we looked at best practice campaigns. You know the ones that everyone is doing.

On the other side, we had campaigns that communicated values first. These values-based campaigns achieved 20 times higher application rates than best-practice campaigns. From 100 prospects, more than 30 responded, and of those more than 20 applied. But they did much more than that.

Even people that were happy with their current employer applied (“I was not looking for a job, my application just happened”).

There were people that applied that you never see in the open job market. The top 0.1% of talent with CVs that leave you shocked in awe, make you wonder if conspiracy theorists are right. Maybe aliens are amongst us after all, because no human being is able to achieve these results.

Candidates were so excited about the possibility of landing these jobs. They even took the time to write 1 to 2 pages about what they need to be productive and happy as the first step of their application.

The magnetic effect of those values-based campaigns was so strong that top candidates even kept applying 6 months later. They knew that the chance to get a job advertised 2 seasons ago was 1/∞ (“I know when you divide 1 by infinity the universe might collapse, but I had to risk it because your company is what I have been looking for all my work life”).

Aside from communicating values first, how were the values-based recruitment campaigns different?

1. The job profiles were designed like landing pages, not like boring requirement lists
2. The value proposition of the job profiles was derived from the company’s culture
3. The LinkedIn messages were very concise (3-5 lines maximum) and had a non-intrusive tone of voice

Before we can understand how values-based recruitment works, we need to understand how the world has changed.

Also read: Go Beyond Compensation – 10 Employee Benefits for Developers

Why aren’t you happy?

“Quiet quitters” make up at least 50% of the U.S. workforce. And the number is increasing, especially among younger generations.

But what’s behind this? Think about all the desolate and gray workplaces that exist. Those employers believe that a solid paycheck satisfies all work needs (Why aren’t you happy? You’re getting paid on time).

At these places, the individuality of an employee isn’t what counts. They force employees to fit into a structure designed by last century’s mechanic management theories. There, employees sit out time to wait for their paychecks. If they have not found their best friend in the organization with whom they can make fun of bad leaders, they suffer in silence or leave the company.

Why are you so lazy?

Let me tell you: there are two fundamental ways of looking at humans. You can assume that everyone is lazy by nature. That’s wrong as it’s damaging. It leads to a management style of control and a culture of distrust. The cost of control is exceptionally high. Think about all the surveillance systems you need to install and manage!

Management of control replaces intrinsic motivation with extrinsic “carrots and sticks”-motivation. People only jump as high as they need to avoid the stick or to catch the carrot.

Today, many companies are complaining that millennials are lazy. They assume that millennials tend to speak out more about their needs than previous generations, so they want the benefits without working.

That’s absurd. Actually, they are doing exactly the opposite. By telling you what they need to be sustainably productive and innovative in a world of digital overwhelm. They help you to create a work environment in which productivity can flourish.

Older generations communicate their needs less because their upbringing left them believing they have no right to ask for individual needs. As businesses set the rules of the game. But that doesn’t mean that they don’t have needs. When you adopt values-based recruitment, you’ll see that people of all ages are excited to apply.

Also read: 10 Key Employee Retention Strategies In Tech

Define your blue talent ocean with values-based recruitment

Simon Sinek explains that people don’t buy what you do. They buy why you do it. That’s the foundation of why Apple attracts loyal customers and is one of the most valuable companies on the planet. The same applies to recruiting and talent marketing. People don’t apply for tasks. They apply for why they should perform them.

In other words, people crave to contribute to something larger than themselves. They want to be with people who share their beliefs and feel a sense of belonging. Your people want a workplace where they are NOT treated as exchangeable machine parts. Recognize and embrace their weird individuality. The people want to be seen, heard, understood, and respected. They want to enrich their lives with meaning.

This is great news for you. Because if you can turn your recruiting activities into “values windows” of your company, you’ll stop fishing in the pond of meaninglessness like everyone else. You’ll be fishing in the blue ocean of meaning.

It’s a market that you create with your identity. And if on top, you can make people feel appreciated and valued, you’re going to drown in applications. Then you’re offering a way of life, a committed community, a home, a destination. This comprehensive guide on values-based hiring can help you walk the first steps.

As a recruiter, you know how painful it is to hire the wrong candidate (or who is not suitable for the job role). Hiring the right candidate is a challenging job. Nevertheless, we are in 2023, and plenty of tools and techniques available online will enable you to transform your hiring process into data-driven decisions. Data analytics in recruitment plays a significant role since it provides insights and information to help make hiring decisions. Analyzing resumes and job applications, tracking the efficacy of recruitment initiatives, and discovering patterns and trends in candidate behavior are all examples of this. Furthermore, recruiting analytics is used to optimize the recruiting process, such as finding the most effective sourcing channels and determining which individuals are most likely to succeed in a specific post. Organizations may increase the efficiency and effectiveness of their recruiting activities by employing data analytics, resulting in hiring better-suited individuals. Any advantage is welcome, especially in today’s competitive job market where the skilled talent shortage is at an all-time high. In this article, let’s look at how data analytics can help the recruitment process be more effective.

What is recruitment analytics?

Recruitment analytics is statistical data of candidates that a company might hire. To put it simply, finding, analyzing, and condensing significant trends for identifying, choosing, and recruiting are the goals of recruitment analytics. In addition, recruitment analytics provides you with a clear picture of these doubts:

• How candidates are reacting to the job profile (or job description)
• Why candidates are dropping out in between the interview
• How long is the interview process happening?
• What is the cost of hiring?
• What do suitable candidates have in common?

Data analytics in recruitment will streamline your entire hiring process and provide a better applicant experience. You can identify barriers and potential improvement areas in the whole process.

Benefits of recruitment data analytics

You can benefit from recruitment analysis in a variety of ways, including

• Improved efficiency and cost-effectiveness: When inefficiencies in the recruitment process are identified, adjustments can be made to improve efficiency and reduce expenses.
• Improved alignment with business needs: Data-driven talent acquisition can provide insights into the skills and qualities that are most in demand in your organization, helping recruiters better match their efforts with the needs of the business.
• Improved sourcing and recruitment strategies: You can increase the chances of attracting top talent by discovering the most effective techniques for sourcing and recruiting applicants.
• Better decision-making: Recruitment analysis provides valuable data and insights that can be utilized to inform decision-making at all organizational levels, from recruitment strategy to employee development.

Also, read: The Role of Talent Intelligence in Optimizing Recruitment

How to get started with data analytics in recruitment?

Data analytics in recruitment has great potential to up your hiring game. Let’s see how you can use data-driven power to efficiently meet your hiring goals.

Recruitment analytics tool:

The first thing you will need to get started with recruitment data analysis is a tool suitable to your specific hiring needs. As you know, there are multiple options for good recruitment automation software in the market, and finding the perfect fit can be time-consuming. To help simplify the process for you, we did our research and came up with the following list of features that you should keep in mind:

• Common data sources for recruitment analytics include applicant tracking systems (ATS), candidate relationship management (CRM) tools, information from human resources information systems (HRIS), and satisfaction polls
• Data reports from branding and advertising channels used for posting jobs
• Automation of repetitive tasks
• A straightforward interface with easy software integration
• A user-friendly platform for reporting and recruitment statistics

Also, read: Complete guide to technical recruitment software

Create a recruitment matrix:

The next step is to map out a recruitment matrix. You need to set your goal; what data do you need to get the most out of your hiring process? Knowing what data to gather and how to use it is necessary to revamp your hiring strategies. For instance, keeping track of the duration between interviews and hiring will help you cut down on your time-to-hire metric. Then, you can specify KPIs with high, medium, and low priorities by comparing the significance of specific measures with one another. A recruiting matrix is a valuable tool for visualizing your team’s preferences.

Apply predictive analytics:

Establish KPIs and have your recruitment matrix ready. Then you can use a relevant predictive analytics model and assess the results. It comprises handling data, choosing an analytic method, making performance predictions, and acting on insights. What is predictive analytics?: HR teams employ predictive analytics to examine previous and current data and predict future results. It digitally examines data to extract, separate, and classify information before spotting trends, anomalies, and correlations.

Organize measurement and reporting:

Understanding what KPIs to track is a big step toward better data analysis. Identify those recruitment KPIs that you want to measure and create a dashboard for tracking your progress. Many recruitment analytics tools provide customizable dashboards to understand reports with ease. You can also share these reports with hiring managers and keep them in the loop.

Also, read: 5 Steps To Creating A Recruiting Dashboard (+ Free Template)

Continually monitor and measure success:

Lastly, you have to periodically monitor the whole process to get the results you need. Every step is equally important, be it mentioning inputs and predictive data, hiring managers’ feedback, or taking action based on the predictive data outcomes. In addition, you can also measure progress by the below methods:

• Benchmarking: you can compare your recruitment statistics to industry norms and historical data. It can help discover areas for improvement and track progress over time and build a data-driven talent acquisition system
• Surveys: Conduct regular surveys for hiring managers and new hires to gather input on the hiring process and find areas for improvement.
• A/B testing: You can use A/B testing to compare different recruitment techniques and methods.

Key points from HR analytics

Data analytics gives meaning to information on resumes

Resume analysis qualifies candidates based on their education, experience, and other relevant information. Recruitment analysis helps to filter out resumes that fit your job descriptions. It helps you find candidates with the required skillset and saves time and money. In addition, data analytics allows you to shortlist the right candidates for the job role.

Data improves feedback from hiring managers to recruiters

Recruitment analysis can improve feedback from hiring managers to recruiters by identifying patterns and areas for improvement in the recruitment process. It could involve examining the time it takes to fill a position, the caliber of candidates given, and the communication and coordination between hiring managers and recruiters. Based on this data, you can improve recruitment by simplifying communication, offering training for hiring managers or recruiters, or deploying new technologies. It can lead to more efficient and effective recruitment, resulting in better prospects and more successful hires.

Data analytics helps retain employees

Yes, you read that right! Recruitment analysis can help retain employees. It provides you with actionable insights into employee satisfaction and engagement. For example, recruitment analysis can analyze employee turnover rates, why employees leave, and the characteristics of individuals who tend to stay with the organization. With this information, you can take actions to promote employee retention, such as:

• Offering competitive compensation and perks
• Providing possibilities for professional development and advancement
• Creating a positive and supportive work environment
• Regular and effective performance feedback
• Enhancing team communication and collaboration

Once you identify areas for improvement, recruitment analysis can assist you in creating a more engaging and supportive culture that aids in long-term employee retention.

Also, read: Data-Driven Recruiting: All You Need To Know

What are the three important examples of recruitment analytics?

• Applicant Tracking: It assists in tracking the progress of job applicants throughout the recruitment process, including the number of resumes received, candidates interviewed, and candidates employed.
• Source tracking: It enables you to see where your job applicants are coming from, such as job boards, employee recommendations, or recruitment events.
• Time-to-Hire: This metric evaluates how long it takes to fill a job vacancy, from posting the position to hiring an applicant.

These three data sources in recruiting analytics are significant because they provide insights into the recruitment process, indicate areas for development, and assist in making data-driven decisions. But it is equally important to track quality, speed, and costs.

How to utilize recruitment analytics in your hiring process

Recruitment analytics, while helpful, can only help if you have a well though-out process surrounding the numbers. To do so, begin by defining what you aim to achieve. Whether it’s reducing the time-to-hire, attracting higher-quality candidates, or improving the offer acceptance rate, clarity in goals guides data interpretation.

Once you have defined your aim, you can work backwards and create a list of the data you need to fulfil these goals. Ensure that the recruitment software and tools you use automatically collect relevant data at every stage–from job postings to final onboarding.

Next comes analysis and interpretation. Employ statistical tools to analyze the collected data. This could mean discerning patterns, comparing performance against industry benchmarks, or predicting future recruitment trends.Based on the analysis, your team is now better prepared to make informed changes like revising job descriptions, altering interview processes, or redefining candidate engagement strategies.

Keep calm and repeat. Data analytics in recruitment is a long-term process and you will need to continuously monitor changes to evaluate their impact.

Key metrics in recruitment analytics

Time-to-Hire: Measures the duration between a job posting and a successful hire. Shorter times can indicate efficient processes, but overly quick hiring can mean rushed decisions.

Quality of Hire: Assesses the performance, cultural fit, and retention of new hires to gauge the effectiveness of the recruitment process.

Source of Hire: Determines which platforms (job boards, social media, referrals) yield the highest quality candidates, optimizing resource allocation.

Candidate Experience: Surveys and feedback tools to measure candidate satisfaction throughout the recruitment process.

Offer Acceptance Rate: The ratio of offers made, to offers accepted. A low rate might suggest a mismatch in compensation, role expectations, or company reputation.

Understanding the various levels of recruitment analytics

Operational analytics: Focuses on day-to-day activities, such as tracking the number of applications received or interviews scheduled. This offers immediate insights into the efficiency of recruitment processes.

Strategic analytics: Provides a broader perspective by analyzing overarching recruitment trends, forecasting hiring needs, or evaluating long-term impact of hiring decisions on business goals.

Predictive analytics: As the name suggests, it’s about forecasting future trends based on current and past data. For tech hiring, this could mean anticipating skill set demands based on industry evolution.

Prescriptive analytics: Goes beyond prediction to suggest actions. For example, if predictive analytics forecasts a rise in demand for a particular tech skill, prescriptive analytics might suggest specific universities or regions to target for recruitment.

Best practices to follow when using recruitment analytics in hiring

Here are some best practices to follow when using recruitment analytics in hiring:

1. Choose the right metrics to track. Not all metrics are created equal. When choosing which metrics to track, it is important to focus on those that are most relevant to your specific needs. Some common metrics to track include:
   • Time to hire
   • Cost per hire
   • Quality of hire
   • Source of hire
   • Diversity of hires
   • Employee turnover

1. Collect relevant data. Once you have chosen the right metrics to track, you need to collect the data. This data can come from a variety of sources, such as your applicant tracking system (ATS), your hiring software, and your HR records.
2. Visualize your data. Once you have collected the data, you need to visualize it so that you can easily understand it. There are a number of ways to visualize data, such as using charts, graphs, and dashboards.
3. Put the data into perspective. It is important to put the data into perspective. This means comparing it to industry benchmarks and to your own historical data. This will help you to understand how your hiring process is performing and identify areas for improvement.
4. Use the data to make informed decisions. The ultimate goal of using recruitment analytics is to make informed decisions about your hiring process. This means using the data to identify areas for improvement and to make changes that will lead to better hiring outcomes.

Here are some additional tips for using recruitment analytics in hiring:

• Get buy-in from stakeholders such as hiring managers and HR leaders, before you start using recruitment analytics. This will help to ensure that everyone is on the same page and that the data is used effectively.
• Be patient. It takes time to collect enough data to make meaningful insights. Don’t expect to see results overnight.
• Be open to change. As you learn more from the data, you may need to make changes to your hiring process. Be open to these changes and be willing to adapt your approach.

By following these best practices, you can use recruitment analytics to improve your hiring process and make better hiring decisions.

Recruitment and data analytics go hand in hand!

Data analytics has transformed numerous businesses and will only grow in popularity. There are several uses of data analytics in today’s society. They range from recruitment to manufacturing, and these applications can be the difference between success and failure. Companies that efficiently employ data analytics have numerous advantages over those that do not. Some benefits include increased efficiency, the ability to respond swiftly to changing market conditions, and much cheaper costs. Businesses are getting incredible returns on their investments due to the recent increase in data analytics. As a recruiter, it is high time you shift to a data-driven approach while hiring and streamline your entire recruiting process!

Picture this: You are sitting in the conference room with the leadership team. The team asks you about the roadmap for the company’s hybrid campus recruitment strategy. It’s been weeks since you have been talking to your recruiter friends from other organizations to pull off the strategy but haven’t been able to do it. And now, you have no answer and no strategy!

You stay quiet. And confused.

This picture can be quite startling, especially when everybody’s eyes are on you.

To make sure you don’t land in this situation, we have made a list of 5 effective hybrid campus recruiting strategies you can use.

Let’s get started.

What is hybrid campus recruitment?

Hybrid campus recruitment is a strategy companies use to source, engage and hire candidates for internships and entry-level jobs. Earlier, this form of recruitment was done on campus, hence called campus recruitment. But, with the fusion of in-person and virtual recruitment strategies, it is termed hybrid campus recruitment.

With campus recruiting, you need 4 key players:

1. Employers
2. Campus recruiters
3. University career development centers
4. College students

But, with hybrid campus hiring, you need extra key players— virtual phone system or campus recruitment software that connects candidates and recruiters, improves candidate engagement, and conducts virtual interviews.

Types of hybrid campus hiring:

The three types of hybrid campus recruiting methods or approaches include:

Blended approach

It uses both online and offline methods of hiring. Like, conducting interviews via video calls at the beginning of the selection process and face-to-face meetings with the top candidates during the last interview phase.

Composite approach

With a composite approach, companies host virtual job fairs and in-person recruiting events. By doing so, they run a parallel collaboration to expand the scope of their recruitment drive.

Synchronous approach

Chances are not every student can participate in the on-campus recruitment event. That’s where the students who are not present on campus can benefit and participate in the virtual fair.

With a synchronous approach, students can choose between on-campus and virtual events. This helps companies reach out to more students and widen their recruitment drive.

How Do You Build an Effective Hybrid Campus recruitment Strategy?

It’s hard for companies to transition from an offline recruiting strategy and build an empire of hybrid recruitment. So, we have curated 5 effective hybrid campus recruitment strategies to help you create the roadmap.

Strategy #1—Communicate the new campus recruitment strategy with campus coordinators

Communicate and coordinate with the campus coordinator on the dates and the transition in the hiring process.

Plan the execution of events and activities, whether they will take place in person or online. The majority of pre-placement conversations, employer branding, and coordination with colleges and institutions are now conducted in person, while screenings, assessments, and the early rounds of interviews are conducted online.

Best practices to adopt when shifting to hybrid campus recruiting:

• Use a good online assessment tool to avoid plagiarism during the shortlisting phase.
• Interview the leadership team and get them to talk about how their organization empowers young talent.

Strategy #2—Create a streamlined recruiting process for students

In an offline campus recruiting setup, you’d reach out to campus coordinators, help them understand the company and job role, share resources (JD/ ECP), and decide on the entire process—placement, assessment, interview, and final selection—all done on the same day.

But, with hybrid campus hiring, you are focusing on both online and on-campus hiring. So, your recruiting strategy looks something like this:

Once the candidate is selected virtually, the onboarding process can have physical training sessions where employees educate the students about the company’s values and how each department operates.

Best practices to make the hybrid campus recruiting seamless

• Make your written communication via emails stronger
• Use virtual meeting tools like Zoom and G-Meet to communicate with college coordinators and students
• Create online forms and questionnaires for job applications using tools like Google Forms, Jotform or Typeform
• Send the JD to college recruiters in PDF format

Strategy #3—Opt for hybrid campus recruitment software

Automation is the joining dots of a hybrid campus recruitment strategy. Why? Because they make your process smooth and keep the candidates engaged with you in a virtual setup.

For example,

If you are hiring software developers virtually, you’ll need technical assessment software to understand the student’s language and programming expertise.

HackerEarth Assessment helps you generate the assessment instantly and select the top candidate based on the leaderboard score. Once you select the candidate, invite them for a video interview using FaceCode.

To keep your hybrid recruiting engine running, make sure your company uses these tools:

• Assessments: Use assessment software to create a questionnaire and send it out to the candidates as part of the screening process.
• Email software: With automated emails, you can keep the conversation who have applied for the emails consistent. Create email sequences for each phase from screening to interview.
• Video conferencing platform: Use video conferencing platforms like Zoom or G-meet to communicate with candidates virtually.

Also Read: Importance of Online Proctoring in University Hiring

Strategy #4—Cross-promote your hybrid campus recruiting event

Do you think informing students about the hybrid campus recruiting event happening at their university is the finishing line when promoting the hiring spree?

It’s not. Once the students get to know about the placements happening at the university, they are likely to go through the process and find out more about the company.

That’s where you need to be strategic.

GenZ is constantly scrolling through social media—mostly, Instagram and YouTube. And these days, students are active on platforms like Linked too.

So, along with the billboards and posters on campus, share about the hiring event online:

• Share a post on LinkedIn, Whatsapp, and Discord communities where college students are active
• Ask your employees who are active on social media to share about the hiring event on their socials channels
• Create a video with your leadership team talking about the perks of working with you and share it across social media

Strategy #5—Showcase your employer’s brand

The big question: why should students work with you? And to nail down the response, you need to build credibility. Gen Z today is smarter than you think. They don’t work *only* for the paycheck anymore.

Students now work with companies that:

• Align with their values
• Encourage mental health and work-life balance
• Focus on their employees’ development

And to make sure you check all these boxes, you need to build your employer brand and show the students “why” they should work with you. Here’s how you can do it:

• Get the leadership team to engage with students through seminars and workshops. These can either be physical events or can be conducted virtually.

For example, you can organize a LinkedIn event where the leadership team sits down and discusses the importance of diversity and how their company empowers it.

• Interview the employees from your organization. Ask them about their experience working with the company and share it on social channels. This helps the students understand the employees’ POV and take the decision.
• Showcase the social proof of your credibility via employees talking about you on review websites like Glassdoor.

Take a look at HackerEarth’s profile on Glassdoor, 82% of people say they will recommend the company to their friends, and 87% of people say they approve of the company’s CEO—a commendable social proof for candidates to work with the company and amplifies employer branding.

Also Read: Create an Employer Brand That Sticks

Ready to pull off your hybrid campus recruiting strategy?

True. Transitioning from offline hiring to hybrid campus hiring can be tedious. The recruitment drive that used to take a day gets divided into phases that keep on going for several days. But once you understand how the offline and hybrid interview stages differ, create the strategy and gather resources to use. With the 5 hybrid campus hiring strategies we have shared above, you can get started and see the results for yourself.

Isabella is a recruiter at a multinational company with 1000+ employees. Her responsibility is to recruit the top talent—which she performs well by consistently looking for candidates that fit the company culture, collecting their information, reaching out to them, screening them, and finally interviewing them.

But…

She carries out the entire process manually—leading her to invest much time in the manual tasks—resulting in disengaged candidates (because who likes to wait this long?).

If you are a recruiter just like Isabella, you’ll soon find yourself burnt out and left without achieving your recruitment goals. This is where artificial intelligence has got you covered. In 2023, AI will play a major role in shaping candidate recruitment and making the lives of recruiters easy.

In this article, we’ll help you understand how artificial intelligence is used in technical recruitment.

What is artificial intelligence?

According to Techopedia, artificial intelligence is the field of study in which computerized systems can learn, solve problems and autonomously achieve goals under varying conditions. Simply put, artificial intelligence is about training the computer or the bot to do tasks that humans do—by feeding more data.

So what does artificial intelligence in technical recruitment refer to? It means a relevant technology has been used in the hiring process. There are three basic tech models artificial intelligence uses: descriptive, predictive, and prescriptive.

• Descriptive: It tells us about what’s happening
• Predictive: It gives us an image of the future
• Prescriptive: It tells us what we should do based on the insights and findings

With this technology in the recruitment software, HR teams can focus on more strategic tasks without burning themselves out with manual efforts like candidate sourcing and outreach campaigns. Because organizations want to accelerate their talent acquisition efforts at scale, they hire recruitment agencies to find the top tech talent. But, when AI recruitment software is employed at your organization, you won’t have to rely on these recruitment agencies entirely—saving up 15-25% of employees’ first-year salary.

How can AI be used in technical recruitment?

Here are 7 ways how artificial intelligence helps improve the technical recruitment processes and set the ongoing recruiting for success.

Candidate sourcing

Recruiters spend ample time identifying top talent across hundreds of sources and platforms to find the best possible matches based on the job description—from job portals to social media profiles, they source candidates from multiple channels which is a time-consuming process.

When a recruiter sources tech candidates via LinkedIn, here’s what their process looks like:

• Searches for the candidate on the LinkedIn search bar with relevant keywords
• Gets a list of candidates from the received results
• Scans the LinkedIn profiles of candidates who match the job requirements
• Reaches out to them via Inmail or LinkedIn DMs

Recruiters have to invest time searching and scanning each profile. The process is toilsome. On average, recruiters lose 14 hours per week completing such tasks manually. Clearly, using recruitment software tools that help with candidate sourcing is a much better option. These tools look for candidates matching the job requirements and conduct outreach campaigns.

💡Pro tip: Use tools like Fetcher and Recruitee

Candidate screening

In a traditional screening process, recruiters prepare and send assessments to candidates. Once the candidate submitted the assessment for review, the recruiter checked each assignment manually.

Imagine the time a recruiter has to invest if they were to screen 100 such assessments manually. If the recruiter screened 100 candidates, they had to review all the dedicated assignments.

With AI, role-based assessments chop recruiters’ time to half. Role-specific assessments are the way AI screens the candidates. Candidates take these tests to showcase their knowledge and skills.

HackerEarth’s Assessments help you evaluate the developers’ skills with advanced coding assessments—all you have to do is upload job descriptions, create coding test interviews and find the top developers with the auto-generated leaderboard. Also, you can create the coding test interview from the list of interview questions to simplify your process.

For example, Nirvana Solutions used HackerEarth’s Assessments for technical candidate screening and reduced their cost per hire by 25%.

Why this works: Before using the automated screening method, the company relied on manual screening of applications which was a time-consuming process and led the company to exhaust its resources. Now, Nirvana’s team takes 5 minutes to create automated assessments and around 30 minutes to create the assessment from scratch. After the candidates submit the test, recruiters analyze candidate reports for each candidate’s performance—helping them screen and identify the top talent within 10 minutes.

Posting jobs

If you google “job boards to attract diverse candidates”, you’ll find endless results. Earlier, the most common were Naukri.com and Indeed. But, with time, job boards have expanded allowing organizations to distribute their job listings and attract the right tech talent.

Unfortunately, mass distribution of your job listing isn’t possible when you are a one-person army. That’s where AI tools like GoHire help recruiters and organizations automate job posting across different job boards.

Also read: A Checklist For Writing Job Postings That Actually Work

Hiring remote workers

Gone are the days when companies hired candidates from the same location. Walk-in interviews have been replaced by video interviews—which has helped companies to hire candidates while sitting in the comfort of their homes.

Sidenote: If your company follows a hybrid or remote work model, AI amplifies your recruitment efforts.

For example, after screening the candidate with automated assessments, you move to the next stage of conducting a face-to-face interview—which is conducted using a video platform like Zoom and Google Meet.

These tools miss out on features that recruitment software possesses, making AI in recruitment more prominent.

Let’s say, after screening the candidates via HackerEarth’s Assessments, you can use FaceCode to invite the candidates to schedule interviews, conduct live coding interviews with a panel of 5 interviewers, and evaluate them based on automated interview summaries with AI-based behavioral insights.

Diversity hiring

Unconscious bias is one of the staggering norms in the tech industry. Because tech is a male-dominated industry, companies see them as the right candidate compared to women. A 2022 report by Celential.ai emphasizes the gender diversity of software engineers where women represent only 21% of the workforce in software engineering.

And this bias starts right at the beginning of the technical recruitment process. Recruiters analyze the candidates based on multiple factors like location, gender, and educational qualifications on reference by the company’s employees.

But when AI comes into play in the recruitment industry, you shift towards unbiased hiring. This Twitter thread by Diversity Council Australia shares how women feel confident about applying to tech roles when companies use AI recruitment software.

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There are two ways in which AI recruitment software removes biases:

• When you use AI to send assessments to the candidates, you test them based on their skills. Once they submit the assessment, you get a report of each candidate and how they performed—this analysis helps you screen them and move to the next stage. During this process, your recruiter won’t focus on the candidate’s resume, location, or gender. They’ll *only* focus on the candidate’s skills and how they performed the assessment reducing biases.
• When interviewing candidates, robots can conduct face-to-face interviews. They analyze the candidate’s response based on the conversation, facial expressions, and a mix of natural language processing and body language analysis—which helps remove prejudice

Data collection

Imagine adding recruitment software that sorts data and saves the 5 hours that you’d have spent doing the work manually. You could focus on improvising your current recruitment strategy, in these 5 hours.In a traditional setup, a recruiter would start by writing the job listing and sifting through inbound job applications to find the right fit.In the modern setup, recruiters find candidates on LinkedIn to build the database. Before building this database, they have to brainstorm and answer questions like:

• How can I find the ideal candidate on LinkedIn?
• How to identify and shortlist the candidate for a specific yet complex set of skills?

Once you identify the answers to these questions, you start your search, collect data and build the candidate’s database to carry out the recruitment process further. But here’s the thing: sorting through multiple data points and collecting candidates’ data is a tedious process. Employing recruitment software that collects candidates' data and analyzes it, candidate sourcing becomes much easier.AI Recruitment software like Hiretual acts as a candidate data engine for your tech recruiting requirements—it centralizes all your talent management and helps you source across 750M+ profiles and actively rediscovers lost profiles.

Candidate onboarding

From sharing the resource documents based on their role to telling them about the salary processing, health insurance, and so on—you need to exchange a lot of information with the new hire once you onboard them.No doubt you can rely on a single person assigned for helping in the onboarding process, but the time taken to onboard the new hire will take more time than expected impacting the credibility of the organization.With AI employed to onboard new employees, you can simplify the overall technical recruitment process.For instance, Unilever implemented artificial intelligence to onboard new employees. The company used Unabot, a natural language processing (NLP) bot to understand what employees need to know and fetch the information for them when asked. The AI acts as a forefront for questions employees have—from HR questions to department-specific questions like IT systems and allowances. Beyond this, it also answers questions like:

• Where is the parking available?
• What’s the timing for shuttle buses?
• When are the annual salary reviews due to take place?

Basically, Unabot is the Alexa for Unilever—helping the company get rid of the back-and-forth of email and Slack messages to find and send resources when required.

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Also read: Remote Hiring and Onboarding Tips for Technical Roles

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Get ready to transform your technical recruitment process with artificial intelligence...

No doubt why recruiters like Isabella constantly ask themselves, “how to recruit tech talent?”. When you carry out each recruitment task manually, you are compressing the space for productivity and efficiency. A simple way to get out of this situation is by employing an AI-based recruitment software in your organization that:

• Increases pay transparency for employees
• Enhances candidate experience with pre and post-hiring communication
• Provides accurate assessments of diverse candidates and identifies the most qualified candidate