Since the first emails began to do the rounds in the mid 1990’s job adverts gradually began their transition from the newspaper and into the world wide web. Over the…
Since the first emails began to do the rounds in the mid 1990’s job adverts gradually began their transition from the newspaper and into the world wide web. Over the last decade the recruitment industry has lept from 100% printed media advertisements, to a mere 20% today. Not only are today’s job ads radically more complex but the digital revolution has turned traditional recruitment strategies on their head. The recruiters of the past came armed with a filofax full of names; the promising individuals that they had personally sought out at networking events, graduate fairs and the like. In today’s recruiting industry, all it takes is the click of a button.
Since the first printed media began circulating our cities so have classified ads; a black and white ‘help wanted’ header followed with the job description was about all an employer needed to do to rustle up some interest. Today’s recruitment strategies however, are a little more complex. Thats not to say that printed ads no longer exist; turn to the back page of any mainstream newspaper and you will see a number of job advertisements but more often than not, they are geared to the demographics who still read newspapers i.e. not our ‘digital native’ Gen Y’ers.
These desirable, tech savvy lot need different recruitment strategies to get hooked, and that’s where the net comes into it.
With the recent changes in economy the recruiting industry has seen a shift in demographics which has led to a lack of skilled workers on the market. There are no longer enough employees to fill the gaps left by their retiring, baby boomer predecessors. This has developed into what is widely known as the war for talent, a modern day battle for skilled, educated or otherwise desirable candidates. As a result, new and ever more modern recruitment strategies are being put into place – the majority of which are internet-based.
The most widely used tool in today’s recruiting industry are online employment boards. Websites such as Steptone and Monster have millions of job seekers and employers searching and posting ads every day. However as the original online recruiting technique, this market has become somewhat over-saturated. It’s not uncommon for an employer to receive an influx of resumes in response to an ad, only to discover (after wading through them all) that none of them actually fit the bill. As a result newer, more effective online recruitment strategies have been put into place.
The recruitment industry is now counteracting the skill shortage by planning ahead. The development of online talent pools and communities, both of which aim to source promising candidates ahead of time, are becoming more common. The two techniques are similar, except whereas talent pools are essentially a database of candidates kept by the employer, a talent community is an online environment for both parties to interact. In a sense, it brings back some of the qualities of old-school networking. Which leads us to social recruitment, the most rapidly evolving method of them all. Thanks to the popularity of social platforms in today’s society, employers are rapidly able to spread jobs to the right people via word of mouth (and more often than not, via their own employees).
Asides from attracting and hiring target audiences ahead of the competition, modern recruitment strategies are saving employers both time and money. Recruiters no longer spend hours wading through irrelevant CV’s, because they’ve already picked their candidates. When a position becomes available employers no longer need to spend weeks or months searching via expensive ads – they can simply choose from their talent pools, or reach out members of their talent communities.
So far, we’ve discussed how the modern day recruitment industry has evolved to meet the needs of the employers, but what about the candidates? Fortunately, the benefits are not just one-sided. The first and foremost benefit to candidates is the ease at which they can now apply for work; more often than not, all it takes it a click of a button. Professional networking sites such as LinkedIn and XING allow users to upload their CV’s meaning that when they spot a job, they can apply in seconds. With classified ads a thing of the past, the time consuming processes of writing and posting letters has become a distant memory. These days most job sites, corporate career pages and social networking platforms are accessible via smartphone, tablet, laptop etc, ideal for the digital natives of today to apply on the go.
“softgarden wouldn’t be softgarden if we weren’t looking ahead to the future” – As stated on our website, we are pioneers of modern recruitment strategies. In fact, the company was formed as a solution to endless application forms and time consuming job seeking processes. softgarden offer employers e-recruiting software designed for the modern recruitment industry, helping companies large or small to scale the challenges of today’s competitive environment. See the softgarden website for details on how we can help navigate the modern recruitment industry.
