Forty-nine percent of candidates have declined a work offer because of a poor recruitment experience. That’s half of suitable candidates saying “no” simply because of what happened during the hiring process.
Technology plays a big role in an employee’s recruitment experience. It can help you nurture more “yes” answers from suitable candidates.
So, as a hiring manager, you need to understand how to leverage technology to filter the best candidates while also creating a smooth recruitment journey. And there’s lots going on in recruitment tech right now.
Skills-based hiring will remain a top trend, but HR recruitment will also expand to include social media, video, VR, and automation/AI. Expect your future workplace to be filled with innovation and top talent.
Resumes are out; skills-based assessments are in
Companies will continue to shift to skills-based assessments to recruit top talent. Instead of relying on resumes and education, hiring managers will test candidates on relevant skills for an open role.
Skills-based assessments show when a candidate’s skills match what the team is looking for. This shift in mindset can also eliminate hiring bias, broaden the candidate pool, and help you avoid mis-hires.
Skills-based tests are built by experts to provide data that matches candidate skillsets with the skills needed for a role. Companies choose which skills to test their candidates on. Then, each potential hire completes the tests and is analyzed against others. Hiring managers get comprehensive data on each recruit’s performance to guide their decisions.
For companies looking to live their DEI values, skills-based assessments also help remove unconscious recruitment bias by shifting the emphasis away from resumes that focus on past roles, universities, or backgrounds. Instead, hiring teams see a candidate’s ability to fulfill tasks and the skills they bring to the role.
In our recent survey, 92.5% of companies using skills-based hiring report a reduction in mis-hires. As candidates are recruited by skill competency, those who can’t reach the benchmark aren’t hired. Their lack of skills won’t affect a team’s performance or the overall quality reputation of a company.
And with a talent shortage and the cost of onboarding and recruiting new employees, investing in skills-based assessment can bring strong returns – 91.2% of organizations using skills-based assessments see an increase in employee retention.
Social media will be used to communicate company values
Another trend in recruitment is the use of social media to attract employees and reinforce the brand’s identity and culture.
Social media platforms are a powerful recruitment tool to reach a younger pool of candidates. And it makes sense – 62% of Gen Z are likely to have found their job using social media.
Companies can also communicate their brand values using social media platforms. For example, Spotify’s Instagram is dedicated to the working life at the company. The account shares stories from the people that grow the product. It even has highlights for its benefits and talks on diversity, equity, and belonging, showing how the company practices and lives its diversity values.
With 86% of job seekers using social media for their job search, this kind of brand presence helps establish a connection with potential hires who want to work for a company that shares their values. In fact, more than two-thirds of Gen Z job seekers are more likely to accept a job if the company puts an emphasis on the importance of diversity.
Social media can build a bridge between a company and potential candidates by showing its culture, values, and work-life through social media.
Perhaps that’s why companies are experimenting with new recruitment tactics that meet Gen Z in a place where they already spend time, like TikTok.
Chipotle, a major Mexican food chain, leveraged its 2.1 million followers on TikTok with an aim to recruit 15,000 employees using the social media platform. The company partnered with TikTok and used the hashtag #TikTokResumes to recruit employees through video applications on the platform.
Video will play a larger role in interviews and recruiting
Video technology will dominate the hiring experience in the coming years. Video will be used for interviews and self-assessments, and this will help companies that use these tools to stand out.
Videos are helpful to measure a candidate’s soft skills that don’t show on paper applications, like communication style and presentation skills. Video is also a personal way to get to know a candidate without scheduling dozens of screener calls. This is helpful for recruiters to see both how a candidate will represent their company and work with the team.
And videos will also help HR managers work together as a team. Sharing candidate videos makes hiring decisions a group discussion and can eliminate hiring bias. When you review candidates as a team, you ensure different points of view and factors that a single interviewer might not think of are considered.
For candidates, videos are favorable because they help them better understand their potential employer. Videos that show the culture behind a company or include employee reviews can make job postings more attractive. In fact, application rates increase by up to 34% for job postings that include a video.
For example, content marketing agency Siege does a wonderful job of incorporating videos throughout its recruitment processes, attracting job seekers with charming and candid YouTube videos that explain what candidates can expect after accepting a job.
Videos can be sent as pre-meeting communication, such as a quick intro from the interviewer,r they can be delivered post-interview for personalized feedback and information on next steps. By delivering personalized feedback, you show you care and value the time and effort each candidate gave during their application – rather than a generic and discouraging email.
Virtual reality as an immersive recruitment tool
Virtual reality (VR) will be used to create immersive recruitment experiences for potential candidates.
VR engages candidates in a way other mediums can’t. It creates an immersive experience and puts candidates in work scenarios that will test their skills in a realistic way. This helps recruiters to see how candidates use their skills and knowledge, which helps them identify the best-suited candidate.
VR will show candidates what a day in their work life would look like. This allows job seekers to envision themselves in a role, experience their tasks, and how they’d use their skills. It also helps recruiters to step away from inflated resumes and instead match candidates with skills. Recruiters can benchmark each candidate’s performance against one another, finding the right fit for the company both in skill set and culture fit.
For example, Walmart uses VR technology to recruit new managers. The company creates safe client scenarios – like, for example, an interaction with a difficult customer, and tests how each employee will handle the situation, their company knowledge, and their service knowledge. Recruiters and hiring managers get more data points and insights into how an employee would handle common job-related situations.
This technology helps recruiters to find the perfect match for a role, create a differentiated recruitment experience, and avoid mis-hires.
Of course, there is a drawback to the process that can lead to questions of candidate equality: the question of how many candidates actually own a VR headset. Trends suggest that use of personal headsets will increase by 73% by 2026, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that headsets will be dispersed equally within different demographics, putting into question fair hiring opportunities. As the technology becomes more accessible, though, expect to see more VR in recruitment.
Automation will affect different aspects of recruitment
Recruitment is no longer a process that requires repetitive tasks and paper documents. Nowadays, each recruitment touchpoint can be tracked, stored, and analyzed using automated workflows and tools.
In turn, each data point used in HR recruitment technology (think: job posting open rates, application rates, demographic information, average acceptance rate) can be used to improve the recruitment process.
With more insights, HR professionals can avoid human error and bias and save time to focus more on improving their hiring experience and less on manual, repetitive tasks.
Applicant tracking systems will become more useful
Applicant tracking systems (ATS) aren’t new to the HR world. But now they’re getting smarter and more reliant on automation, changing the nature of the system. With an expected yearly growth of 6.2%, ATS will be the key tool to centralize applicants’ information.
ATS already helps manage the recruitment process from job listing to acceptance. And now, there are two new players in the mix: AI and automation.
Instead of relying on keywords to assess a candidate’s skills, AI-assisted ATS will interpret meaning from related terms and context. And AI will close the circle for ATS by matching previously rejected candidates with new roles that closely match their skill sets.
Embracing the new automation processes and AI insights available to ATS will improve recruitment and centralize more candidate information points.
Chatbots will take over candidate touchpoints
Conversational AI chatbots will be used to improve candidate communication. They’ll help answer common questions and help candidates avoid abandoning a job application due to a lack of clarity. This will ease candidates’ frustrations by providing quick and direct answers to simple questions.
For example, questions about who to contact, next steps, or the status of their application can be answered with the help of a chatbot. This is especially helpful for applicants that have a tight deadline or can’t find helpful resources on the company’s website.
The fast food chain Wendy’s uses a chatbot called Lou for quick text message conversations. The chatbot also screens the candidates and schedules interviews with the company’s top picks. Lou helped Wendy’s achieve a 90% candidate show-up rate.
For HR professionals, chatbots have been found to free up over 12,000 work hours. That’s a lot of time returned to focus on improving the recruitment journey.
Proactively use Candidate Relationship Management to improve your candidate’s experience
Candidate Relationship Management (CRM) will be used to improve the candidate’s experience at every touchpoint. Recruiters will use CRM to nurture candidates seen as internal “customers” traveling through a recruitment funnel.
A reported 85% of job seekers consider responsiveness during the application process as an “important” or “very important” factor when deciding whether to join a team. It’s important to make each step of the journey as informative and enjoyable as possible.
CRM technology uses data to segment its audience and track applicants’ progress. That allows HR recruiters to communicate the right content to each candidate segment – and respond in a timely manner.
And CRM gives campaign performance insights. This data gives insight into which roles are popular and which have less demand, as well as which outreach campaigns perform better than others, which emails receive the highest numbers of click-throughs, and when recruiters should follow up with a candidate.
The implementation of HR CRM makes sure candidates receive all the information they need during their application process. It also flags applications for recruiters when action is needed for follow-ups and feedback.
Ultimately, access to data will change how recruiters make hiring decisions
With the rise of technology in the recruitment process, there’ll be an increase in candidate data available. For hiring managers, that means they can analyze and gather insights that’ll help them choose the right candidate for the role and improve recruitment for future hires.
Improved technology also means that data will no longer be limited to traditional demographic and performance metrics. Instead, recruitment data will be seen as a strategic asset to guide decisions that lead to workforce improvement, skill innovation, and workplace culture.
Data also lends itself to hiring decisions that avoid bias, which creates a diverse and inclusive workplace environment. Tech will allow you to offer jobs to candidates who have demonstrated skills and performance assets that improve a company’s bottom line.
If you want to create a workforce geared for the future, with quality candidates using scientifically backed hiring assessments, learn how TestGorilla can help you achieve your hiring goals.
