Social hiring, employer branding, using AI, online assessment tools, creative hiring, proactively building hiring pipeline based on forecast, X-ray search … the list of hot topics being discussed by HR and Talent Acquisition professionals is very long. But are we just discussing these in seminars and conferences? How many of us are trying new ways of hiring? Or are we more comfortable with status-quo?
This curiosity compelled us to conduct a sequel to Vinayak’s survey in 2018. We decided to revisit the topic to check if things have changed. We wanted to hear it from the horse’s mouth & get insights from some of the prominent IT HR professionals. We got a sample from the organizations that represent software companies hiring approximately 20-30 professionals a month. We asked few basic questions to these professionals about their hiring sources, time spent on searching resumes, use of recruitment agencies to fulfill a job requirement etc. Essentially focused on old habits. We purposely avoided asking about social hiring AI, employer branding etc. We were hoping to see if there was a significant change in our habits.
Sharing some of the interesting observations which might lead us to ponder on the very basic thought- “while sourcing, what we are doing differently than what we used to do few years back?” Are we using any sourcing tactic that is making our life easier? Or helping us to get better results?
Last year when we asked them about their job portal usage, out of 32 recruiters who participated only 3% denied any use of job portals. This time around 16% recruiters say so. That really is a positive shift we observed.
Here are the results when we asked about their usage of job portal (naukri.com),
To improve the quality of hire we have latest of the technologies at our disposal, some free online assessment tools are easily available. To our surprise, majority of the recruiters found more interested going for the low hanging fruit i.e. job portals.
Is taking help from external recruitment agencies really helping? When multiple agencies will work on a particular job opening how will they be able to get the uniform results. When we asked how many agencies are registered with them, here was the answer.
As per the results more than 90% recruiters who participated in the survey said they take help from agencies. To speed up the process sometimes it is necessary. Using them excessively might not always help. As a business model they support multiple vendors at a time. It’s challenging for them to attract top notch talent by promoting your brand. An inside person can do it more proficiently.
We were curious to know a recruiter’s approach towards hiring. We asked the following question (The first step to get an understanding of the process)
The data indicates that 41% recruiters spend their time doing mundane tasks. This needs attention and with so much of advancement in technology we certainly can save recruiters precious time. This progress also will help in avoiding human errors (if any), biases and get clear insights out of the available candidate data. Recruiters will be enabled with improved candidate screening. Their saved time can be better utilized in other tasks which need human intervention like engaging with the candidates over telephonic conversation, follow ups, building rapport with the decision makers etc; the overall fine-tuning of the processes will also help the organization to make prudent hiring decisions.
If there is a consensus that HIRING is one of the important functions for an organization. The senior management looks at it very seriously and is involved to some extent. They know attracting the right talent is as important as attracting clients. Technologies are evolving; workplaces are getting better & better so why are we still following the old age hiring arrangements. This needs consideration. There is nothing like pre-determined best practice. What is best should always be evolving.
At the end we would like to thank all our survey participants for their candid response. In fact we spoke to few of them and they were very generous in sharing their thoughts. It wouldn’t be fair to draw a conclusion. We would like to keep the thread open with two questions to ponder on.
Are we ready to evolve? Do we need to change our approach?
Thank You!
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Dinesh Gokhale is a seasoned professional with more than a decade of diversified experience into IT recruitment along with B2B sales, marketing, artificial intelligence and lean hiring technology. He is admired for his soft-skills.
Dinesh also is an enthusiastic sportsperson, reader, traveller and a die hard foodie. Currently, he is working in the capacity of Intrapreneur with Rezoomex.