New recruitment tools for small and growing businesses
9th July, 2015
You need new staff, you have the budget and you have a plan. What’s next?
In the past, you’d go straight to advertising or briefing a recruiter. Both are going to take time and cost money. New ways of sourcing and selecting staff give you more control and streamline your hiring process, even if you use a recruiter.
Sourcing
Job search databases: List your job on a service like Jobbed (free) OneShift (fee), Glassdoor (fee) or Jobseeker (free) instead of advertising through traditional channels to connect with candidates who have already listed their job search criteria. You can also search their databases to contact suitable recruits, for a fee. Some also provide apps for posting jobs and viewing candidates.
Applicant tracking systems: Love the idea of free postings but too time poor to set them up? There is an easier way! Services such as JobAdder or Adlogic make it easy for you to post your job on multiple free (and paid) platforms, including social media, and centralise all your applicant data for a monthly fee. Both these services include a mobile app to make recruitment even easier.
Social media: With a recent survey by recruitment agency Randstad showing that one in three jobseekers are using social media to find work, it can’t be ignored as a source of candidates especially if you are recruiting for tech-savvy employees. Facebook and LinkedIn are the main platforms for recruitment. At a minimum, you should ensure your personal and company profiles are attractive to potential new recruits. Just as networking in the real world can be a great source of good staff, networking in the virtual world is a very good way to locate candidates who might not yet be actively looking for a new job.
Selecting
Video interview software: Perfect for remote or first round interviews, services such as Vieple and TalentVX allow your candidates to record a video introduction or answers to questions you have listed for them. One advantage is the easy review and sharing of interviews to help you in your decision-making, allowing multiple stakeholders to have input without needing to be present at an interview.
Psychometric assessments: The options available to small and growing businesses are too numerous to list here, and your choice of tool will depend on where you want it to fit in your process and how much you want to spend. When selecting an assessment, look for a customisable, workplace research-based tool designed for recruitment that will answer the most important question: ‘Is this person the best fit for the job and our culture?’ Always keep in mind that a test result is just one part of your overall decision.
Background checks: Although checks on qualifications, previous employment and police records can certainly be outsourced (see Verify and PeopleCheck for example) I am not aware of tools that will fully automate this process for you. But I do recommend you check out Rapportive, a Google Chrome app, as a way of finding candidates’ social profiles and any connections you might already have to them, based on their email address.
No matter which tools you choose to use, you still have to put in time and effort to hire the right person. As in every other business activity, successful recruitment depends largely on having a clear picture of what you want before you start. None of the tools above can save you from this core business task. But they may just mean you make the right decisions along your recruitment path.