Why Companies Should Fully Adopt E-Recruiting

What Is E-Recruiting?

E-recruiting, also known as electronic recruitment, remote recruitment, or online recruitment methods, refers to the use of technology and the internet to manage and conduct the entire process of recruitment (such as recruiting software, online career pages, and digital talent acquisition).

In other words, everything happens digitally.

The job postings, the search and sourcing of a potentially qualified candidate, the application process, job candidate selection, online interviews, and everything else is done remotely with the use of digital tools.

What Is The Difference Between E-Recruitment And Traditional Recruitment?

E-recruitment is very different from traditional recruitment since it doesn’t require publishing job postings or job boards in print media, receiving applications via mail, and HR and recruitment managers struggling with applicant management, and more.

E-recruiting offers many great advantages, and it allows employers to reach a bigger and more diverse pool of potential employees.

The platforms for electronic recruitment can be built in-house, you can use HR software or e-recruitment software, or hire recruitment agencies that provide e-recruiting services, such as applicant tracking systems.

Now, there are many elements to the process of e-recruiting, and we’ll discuss them later on, so continue reading to learn more.

The Importance Of E-Recruiting

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, e-recruitment has become more important than ever for businesses to stay afloat and keep the qualified candidate experience satisfying.

Organizations and businesses that want to hire people in a moment like this need to adopt an electronic recruiting strategy to keep everyone safe and protected.

Therefore, HR management systems in the form of recruiting platforms can be hugely beneficial as an e-recruiting method.

Luckily, e-recruitment processes and systems are readily available, which is why it has become the go-to method for hiring. However, this is a big shift from traditional recruitment and offline recruitment strategies.

Adapting to something new always requires adjustments, but once you do, you’ll be able to enjoy the full benefits of it.

Perhaps the most important thing about remote recruitment is that it allows people to stay safe, but it also makes the process a lot more effective.

E-recruiting allows recruitment professionals to be more efficient and faster in finding the best talent for the position. And there’s one decisive factor that makes the e-recruiting process indispensable – competitiveness.

Remote recruiting allows companies to be more competitive because it allows you to keep up with the competition, and it helps you protect your image.

Companies in all industries are becoming more digital than ever, and as their processes change, their candidates also need to change.

What Does E-Recruiting Involve?

There are several processes involved in digital application management:

Advertising Job Openings

Most companies have a dedicated career page on their website, along with online forms to be filled. You can have customized forms as well.

Make sure you specify the ‘required’ fields in the form. This makes shortlisting applications easier.

Multiple Posts

Your job vacancies should be posted on multiple portals at the same time during the entire recruitment period. This will increase your reach and bring in more candidates, thereby saving time and energy.

This is because the online recruitment rate is a lot faster.

Active Sourcing

You can find suitable candidates online on various platforms like LinkedIn or XING.

These platforms have many built-in functions that filter and search for the right candidates for your job vacancies and also help you contact them directly.

Use Structured HR Software

The job profile, management, and the team have certain requirements that need to be fulfilled by the applicant. The use of HR software allows you to specify the skill set required and the personal criteria needed.

Online forms can be customized on the basis of these requirements, which can then be automatically scrutinized and analyzed through artificial intelligence.

On average, companies that use structured HR software tend to hire more personnel. This is because it streamlines the process.

Digital Personnel Records

Digital records save the HR department the trouble of maintaining spreadsheets for every employee.

When you invite online applications, the data is automatically transferred to your employee database if the candidate is hired. This record can then be maintained throughout the employee’s tenure.

Communication

Hiring candidates requires teamwork and communication preferences between the different channels of the process, and it is absolutely essential.

The HR software covers communication preferences during the entire process, including the names of colleagues who have already interviewed the candidate, their feedback, and so on.

The Features Of An E-Recruiting System

Nowadays, recruitment software has to meet many requirements.

Whenever a company decides to select a new system, there are different groups of interest involved, such as recruitment managers, business managers, and IT and management departments.

Therefore, software manufacturers often see themselves confronted with complex requests and specification sheets that hardly any system can fulfill within a reasonable budget range.

So, exactly which qualities does an e-recruitment system have to possess to enable the recruitment managers and business managers to work efficiently?

User-Friendly

A recruitment system is a complex application that has to be intuitive for the users. The handling has to be clear with a logical allocation of the functionalities to increase user acceptance and productivity.

This also involves having online recruitment strategies in place.

The use of modern web technologies in the software architecture is a precondition, too.

Web-Based

In any case, an up-to-date system should be web-based. And the access of all employees to a centralized database enables the usage from different locations.

The software can then also be maintained and updated more regularly.

Multi-Channel Posting

One of a recruiters’ main activities is the publishing of job offers on various online job portals to obtain the maximum reach.

The central handling of the job board directly from the system makes the function of multi-channel posting easy-to-handle and it helps to save precious time during the entire recruitment period – thanks to an efficient online recruitment rate.

CV Parsing

CV parsing is the automatic scanning of candidate data through artificial intelligence. Applications can be directly extracted, modified, and evaluated.

Like this, HR employees gain lots of time when inserting data. Furthermore, the number of errors resulting from the manual insertion decreases.

Matching

The matching between the candidates and the customers’ needs is one of the essential processes of recruitment and online recruitment strategies.

It is crucial that the relevant competencies are recognized and considered within the search.

A dynamic catalog of competencies that contains different specific keywords, synonyms, and other spellings and translations can bring a major advantage to the process.

Talent Pool

Any position can be staffed with only one candidate. Though this does not necessarily imply that the other applicants do not represent precious human capital.

In times where you have to talk about the ‘war of talents’ with a decreasing number of candidates for the number of jobs to be staffed, this potential should not be given away with a negative answer.

Instead, you can transfer them into a talent pool – with their consent, of course. In doing so, they can be reconsidered for later vacancies.

Here it makes sense to use the recruitment software rather like a CRM to establish regular contact with the pool members.

CRM

Recruitment usually starts with a staffing need, whether it is internal or external. If a company is able to cover their own recruitment processes with an e-recruitment tool, the same should go for their customer relationships.

In fact, the contact and exchange with the client are equally important since the recruitment is being done for them and part of the organization’s online recruitment strategies.

Monitoring

In order to manage a company precisely, you need to know about certain KPIs, especially within core business areas. The e-recruitment system can support this with clearly structured reports.

Like this, you can easily understand how many applications were received, how many client interviews resulted from this, and how many projects were completed in the end.

Communication History

To avoid candidates and clients getting contacted twice or never, it is important to track the interactions and communication preferences with the related people and to make them accessible for all employees involved.

Like this, the processes become comprehensible and transparent for all colleagues.

In matured systems with online recruitment strategies, it is even possible to set automatic actions, such sending predefined emails during the entire recruitment period.

The Advantages And Drawbacks Of E-Recruiting

E-recruiting offers many great advantages, which is why it has become so popular.

It makes the recruitment process easier, less time-consuming, and it benefits the company in more than one way, due to the online recruitment rate.

It Helps You Protect Your Image

The truth is that organizations and businesses that are still working with traditional recruitment methods and offline recruitment strategies are considered old-fashioned.

Almost everything in today’s world is automated, and when you don’t adapt and steer away from that, young talent will not be impressed by you.

Candidates want to work with innovative employers who aren’t afraid to look to the future and move with the times of the online recruitment rate.

To attract the kind of talent you need for your company to move forward, you need to become the kind of company they want to work with.

There’s nothing wrong with traditional methods and offline recruitment strategies, but evolving is a lot better than staying in your comfort zone.

It allows you to branch out, try new things, and save time and money in the process.

It’s Less Expensive And Time-Consuming

Only 3% of organizations prefer traditional job applications sent by mail. The reason the great majority of companies prefer the digital option is that it’s inexpensive both for employers and for applicants.

E-recruiting is also less time-consuming in many different ways. For example, dealing with applications the traditional way means they have to be analyzed and compared manually by everyone involved.

This method draws out the recruiting process unnecessarily, and it causes a lot of stress and frustration.

With e-recruiting, all they have to do is go to the company’s website, upload their documents, and fill a form to provide personal information, as well as information about their qualifications.

Then, the applications are available instantly and can be reviewed effectively by HR managers and recruitment managers.

Job openings can also be published a lot more quickly because electronic recruiters don’t have to worry about publication deadlines – and automated jobs also reduce the time spent on recruiting.

Overall, e-recruiting is a much more efficient method.

You’ll Expand Your Reach

Publishing job openings the old-fashioned way allows you to reach a limited number of applicants.

With e-recruiting, your job openings are posted online, which allows you to not only to reach more people but to reach the right people for the job.

You can target online job ads directly to your target audience so you can reach the talent you’re looking for. Online ads are also available for longer, and they’re easy to find with the help of search engines.

Not to mention online ads allow more freedom. You’ll be able to design your ads to make them more appealing, and they can be updated quickly.

You also have more options – you can use text, images, or video, and you can make the content more engaging to your target audience.

It’s easy – almost anyone can post a job advertisement online because most established job boards make the process clear, easy to understand, and user-friendly.

Conversely, the process is very simple for the applicant, too, making it quick and painless for interested parties to apply on the spot instead of mailing CVs and written applications through the post

You can make your job ad more dynamic – posting a job online or via social media platforms gives you a chance to be more creative with your ad.

For instance, you could create and attach a short video showing off the benefits of working for your company.

Indeed, your use of technology can say a lot about your company culture, helping to attract specific types of candidates in the process.

Businesses that use technology in such a way prove that they aren’t afraid to innovate, and that they are open to new and interesting ways of doing things.

Though e-recruiting has plenty of benefits to offer, it’s not without its disadvantages, especially if you’re shifting to an entirely new approach from scratch. The drawbacks include:

• Cost- E-recruiting will save you money in the long-term, but it does require an investment at the beginning because you’ll need new software, training, and more to change your entire recruiting process
• Effort- This method also allows you to save time and will cut your recruiting efforts in half. But initially, you will have to set up the software, learn to use it, and create a process that works. That will take time and effort at first, but it will be worth it
• Speed- Remote recruiting allows you to post more job ads, which means you’ll receive a lot more applications. That means you’ll also have to be quick when screening the applications and providing feedback on employment history. Luckily, that’s what HR software is for
• It’s informal- For some roles, companies perceive that online job postings – particularly on social media – can give off the wrong image of their company. This is particularly true for executive-level roles, particularly at firms (or in industries) that have a strong corporate or professional culture
• There’s a lot of competition- The main downside to following trends is that everybody else is doing the same thing. As a result, your post can quickly become buried under a mountain of other job offers, forcing you to either pay more for extra exposure or risk not being seen. When it comes to social media, you’re also at the mercy of Facebook or Twitter’s algorithms, meaning that who you target is essentially in the hands of somebody else.

To minimize these disadvantages, check out flair’s digital recruiting checklist and find out how much time and nerves will be saved with our platform.

The Process Of E-Recruiting

The e-recruitment process requires a series of steps. You have to:

• Identify the need for a new job and decide if you want to hire externally or internally
• Review the duties and requirements of the position to write a job description
• Create an ad for the job and get approval to advertise
• Choose appropriate channels for job ads and post the job ads online on your career page
• Look for employee referrals through the applicant tracking system
• Source candidates and create a shortlist of applicants
• Screen the applicants and conduct interviews with video interviewing software
• Run background checks and select the best candidate for the job
• Make an official offer to the applicant you’ve chosen.

Just remember that each of these steps might have sub-steps. For example, the screening process may involve work samples, pre-employment testing, and more than one interview.

flair offers in-depth user-friendly interactive checklists of onboarding and more, which you can find on our ‘Resources’ page. 

As mentioned earlier, the e-recruiting process can be built in-house, or you can hire recruitment agencies that will take care of that for you.

Here at flair, we can help you create the best possible experience for your candidates thanks to our effective recruitment services.

E-Recruiting Channels

There are three e-recruiting channels that will allow the process to be done as effectively as possible. For one, you can use your website for your recruiting efforts.

The company website is not just for presenting products and services. It also allows you to publish job openings and online forms.

You want to keep your job ads engaging, targeted, and make sure the application process is as simple and quick as possible.

The second option is using job portals. This is a great option because people who are looking for a job often turn to Google, and Google will take them to a job portal so they can find relevant options in their field.

Your company can take great advantage of this e-recruiting channel, so it’s worth considering.

Last but not least, you can use social media to post your job offerings and job descriptions. 

Platforms such as LinkedIn and Facebook can be used as job portals as well because employers can introduce themselves in an attractive way, and potential applicants can present their skills effectively.

Not to mention social media has an incredible reach.

In Summary

E-recruiting is the future, and it’s important for companies to adopt it because it allows them to remain relevant and be able to reach young talent.

It also makes the process of finding the right employees a lot more effective, easy, and fast, which is something any company can benefit from.

As recruiters begin to migrate into the digital realm, online recruitment methods have quickly become the preferred means of talent scouting.

As a result, many companies are now paying closer heed to their online recruitment strategies, with social media proving a particularly effective way of sourcing new employees.

Indeed, professional networking platforms, such as LinkedIn, have created a targeted, easily accessible pool of potential candidates, allowing recruiters to prescreen potential hires based on the information on their profiles (including their employment history).

However, as with any tool or method, there are disadvantages to using it.

So, if you’re thinking of taking your next employee search online, these are the things you need to weigh up.