Win the War for Talent: 3 Technologies That Will Change the Way We Hire

The traditional landscape of recruitment is transforming. In the past, technological advances have made elements of the recruitment process quicker and less manually taxing. Rote tasks like scheduling interviews, collecting resumes, and drawing up skills matrices to match applicants to jobs can all now be performed at the touch of a button.

Today, however, recruitment technology innovators are focusing on revolutionizing the whole concept of hiring to make it not only more streamlined and efficient, but also smarter, more insightful, and more effective for all parties involved. Let’s take a closer look at some of the latest recruitment tech developments changing the way we hire.

1. Smarter Online Screening

Automated screening  has been around for a decade or so, but the scope of such screening is set to widen significantly in the future.

Currently, most automated screening solutions can filter candidates in or out of a talent pipeline based on the presence or absence of certain predetermined keywords in a candidate’s resume. New automation technology on the horizon, however, will use more nuanced criteria to make even more accurate predictions.

For example, by analyzing candidate conversion rates and the skills and qualities that have led to great employees in the past, automated screening solutions will be able to more clearly define what a successful hire looks like. As a result, successful hires will be easier to replicate. By matching the profiles of incoming candidates to the profiles of the most effective employees, automated screening solutions will be able to identify the candidates who are most likely to excel in the role.

Additionally, smarter screening software is already helping recruiters tackle one of the biggest hiring challenges: unconscious bias.

Despite the best efforts of recruiters, bias still creeps into the hiring process on a regular basis. This bias can lead to hiring decisions based on stereotypes, and companies often find themselves with homogenous workforces that do not reflect the makeup of the communities in which they operate.

Thankfully, modern recruitment software can be used to mitigate bias by removing from a candidate’s application any identifying information — such as gender, race, alma mater, etc. — that can form the basis of discrimination. This ensures that candidates are assessed solely on their merit as professionals.

2. Intelligent Interviewing

While most organizations already use some form of digital candidate screening, the majority of interviews are still carried out face to face or via telephone. Some companies are starting to incorporate web-based meeting tools into their interview processes, but new developments in the interview technology market are taking web-based interviews even further.

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For example, we’re seeing the arrival of video interview solutions that can analyze the non-verbal aspects of candidate interview performance. These solutions can use a candidate’s speech patterns, word choices, facial expressions, and body language to yield valuable insights about their personality, style, and potential fit for the company.

Meanwhile, emotional recognition software uses a similar approach to help recruiters gauge the sincerity and honesty of candidates’ responses. This tool can help minimize occurrences of candidates saying what they think the interviewer wants to hear or giving scripted responses that are not based in fact.

3. More Accurate Candidate Targeting Through Browsing Behavior

A candidate’s behavior on your website — the pages they visit, how long they spend on those pages — can tell you a lot about them. Using software to track this browsing behavior, recruiters can glean valuable insights into structuring their websites to facilitate more candidate conversions.

In the war for talent, something as seemingly small as a website redesign could give an organization a significant advantage in engaging active and passive candidates alike. For example, at Kissflow, we use heat maps to spot candidates who spend a considerable amount of time on our website. A candidate who invests a lot of time in reading about the organization is one who shows a high level of interest and could, therefore, be targeted as a potential hire.

Last December, we observed a couple of candidate behaviors that pushed us to make a complete overhaul of our careers page. Initially, the page included a small snippet about life at our workplace, with the rest of the page being used to list open positions. We believed this would speed up the application submission process.

We noticed that some candidates were expressing interest in irrelevant roles. In many cases, there were more relevant opportunities available in their own domains, but candidates didn’t seem to notice because they weren’t scrolling down each page as far as we thought they would. Even more peculiar, candidates were spending a lot of time hovering over the short snippet about Kissflow.

After a couple of brainstorming sessions, A/B tests, candidate surveys, and heat map analysis, we created a careers page that enhanced the candidate experience. We made small changes like adding a “See Open Positions” button on the top fold, as well as more drastic changes like adding two more folds that spoke about Kissflow and its core values.

The “See Open Positions” button took impatient candidates to the final fold, where we used a form to collect candidate data. While moving back to a form-based method may seem outdated, it lowered the administrative burden of our HR staff, simplified the application process for candidates, and helped us build a solid talent pool.

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Hiring the right talent is undeniably one of the most value-adding and vital activities the HR function can perform. Therefore, it makes sense for companies to invest in the most advanced software to engage with the most highly skilled candidates. The lesson is clear: Take advantage of the best that recruitment technology has to offer your organization, or be left behind by your competitors that do.

Susan Leonard is the senior HR manager at Kissflow.