Online recruitment of new staff

To help you get the most from online recruitment, take a look at your current recruitment process and map out the different stages. These stages may include writing the job description, deciding on the salary range, advertising the job, pooling candidates, shortlisting candidates, arranging interviews, contacting applicants, and sending the job offer.

You can then determine what you want from your recruitment process. Is your goal to reach a higher volume of potential candidates? Do you want to reduce the time it takes from the initial job advert to getting a new employee started? Or do you want to reduce recruitment costs?

Online recruitment tools

Once you have identified what you want to get from virtual recruitment processes, you can explore the right technology and software tools to help you achieve this. Types of online recruitment tools include:

Virtual recruitment fairs

Host online events to showcase your organisation as a great place to work. Virtual recruitment fairs are easy for people to attend, which may give you access to a larger talent pool.

Social media

You can use various social media channels to put out engaging content to build your employer brand. You can also encourage employees to share their experiences and share current vacancies with their online connections.

Video interview tools

Online recruitment tools allow you to host online interviews to streamline the process for both interviewers and candidates.

Collaboration tools

This can help speed up the process for the recruitment panel enabling them to work together in real-time and remain in sync when reviewing and shortlisting candidates.

Applicant tracking systems

Applicant tracking systems allow you to set up a fair and equitable hiring process by deciding on a scorecard of primary attributes for a candidate’s success at the beginning to evaluate candidates more efficiently and consistently.

Recruiting chatbots

Chatbots can collect candidate information, ask screening questions, rank candidates on metrics, answer FAQs, and schedule an interview.

Candidate satisfaction surveys

You can survey candidates who have gone through your recruitment process, receive feedback, and find ways to improve or streamline the process.

Skills testing tools

These tools allow you to assess the hard skills of candidates before interviews by setting technical skill tests to ensure you hire candidates with the required skills.

Psychometric tools

These help you to identify traits in candidates that are essential for high-performance roles.

Background check tools

Pre-employment background screening can check a candidate’s experience and qualifications without taking up valuable HR time.

Recruitment team

You will also need to select your online recruitment team - the staff that will help deliver your virtual recruitment strategy. Ensure your recruitment team receives the necessary training to be able to use any new online recruitment tools. You may also want to get other areas of your organisation involved. For example, having senior management record short video messages for online job fairs.

Promote your organisation as a great place to work

Recruiting using online practices gives you the platform to think creatively about promoting your organisation as an attractive place to work. For example, you could create short videos that show your workplace, the varied tasks and jobs that staff perform, and social or team-building activities. You could also encourage some staff to talk briefly about why they enjoy working for you. This approach can be effective in bringing to life for candidates what it would be like to work for your organisation compared to a text description of the company. It can also help set you apart from your competition when trying to attract top talent.

Know what you are looking for in a candidate

Recruiting online opens up a wider pool of talent. To help ensure you find suitable applicants, clearly define what you are looking for in a candidate, including qualifications, abilities, traits, and experiences. Your job description should explain the essential and desirable criteria to ensure that the expectations of applicants are clear from the start. This clarity will limit applications from unqualified applicants. Precisely defining what you are looking for in a candidate will also make evaluating their suitability easier.

Communication with candidates

Virtual recruitment makes it much easier for employers to communicate with candidates at various stages of the recruitment process. Good communication does not necessarily mean an extra burden on recruiters’ time. You can use automated candidate messaging tools to schedule emails or text or use chatbots to answer frequently asked questions in real time.

Automation of recruitment stages

Streamlining and automating parts of your hiring process through virtual recruitment can facilitate less expensive, faster, and more efficient hiring procedures. This approach can lead to broadening your applicant pool and getting access to top-level talent, For example, you could automate the screening of candidates through online skills testing that automatically scores and ranks candidates based on their performance.

Skills testing can also be an effective way to reduce bias in the recruitment process. It can allow candidate ranking by the skills required and ignore information contributing to unconscious bias such as name, gender, age, address, and school attended. However, be sure to prioritise the candidate experience when automating recruitment processes. Don’t implement efficiency improvements that benefit the hiring team at the expense of the candidate.

Understanding your current recruitment processes including, its weaknesses and identifying potential improvements, will help you plan your strategy for online recruitment. You may not get it right the first time around, so be sure to invite feedback from candidates, both successful and unsuccessful, and make improvements to ensure you get the most from your recruitment process.