Talent Recruiting is Changing — And Your HR Department Should as Well
Employees and employers sometimes underestimate the role of human resources (HR) personnel play in a company. I believe they are a vital part of the communication link in the institution — and that if they are not treated as such, it’s hard to see the company advancing and fulfilling itself as it should.
While the primary function of this department is to recruit the most fitting employees (and let go of the ones not up to standards), as well as to take care of day-to-day logistics and administration, there is another core purpose that HR should fulfill today: to maintain mutual satisfaction among employees and employers, AKA employee nurturing.
Employee nurturing: What’s it all about?
If workers do not feel comfortable and satisfied with their workplace, they will not produce optimal results. That’s why HR departments need to be attentive to employees’ well-being. I’m not just talking about making sure there are cookies on the table or planning a fun bonding day every few months.
My focus here is on the staff’s ability to communicate at all levels and express desires and expectations from each other. While this usually comes naturally between friends, in an office environment, there needs to be a factor that enables this openness — hence the HR team. This string connects all employees of different levels.
The recruitment revolution
Let’s focus on the big changes in recruitment processes today, which I believe can make it immeasurably more efficient. Have you heard of the applicant tracking system (ATS) yet? If not, you’re missing out on one of the hottest trends in HR today — a movement direction myself, have already decided to adopt into my working sphere.
With artificial intelligence of searching for, screening, and recruiting employees, companies report a whopping 75% decrease in wasted time in this process. This is what ATS is capable of doing. Let’s break it down:
● Locating: ATS can publish open positions on a wide array of free and paid recruitment sites, maximizing potential candidates’ exposure.
● Screening: On average, a position receives 250 applications, of which about 88% are irrelevant. ATS can screen the majority out, making the process of interviewing a lot more efficient.
● Database: ATS stores information on applicants and can match them to other open positions in the company, which can be more suitable.
● Costs: ATS saves the company any expense related to outsourcing (talent acquisition, for example).
● Time: Overall, the process of hiring new employees can be cut down from 40 days to less than 20 (on average) with the help of ATS.
Hard and soft working skills: It takes two
Given all these AI capabilities in the process of employee recruitment, one can understand why 90% of Fortune 500 companies choose to deploy an ATS. However, there’s more to that than everything stated above, and that is the ability of AI to find the right blend of hard and soft skills for any position. Let’s explain what this means.
The main difference between a hard skill and a soft skill is that the former relates to functionality, while the latter to human characteristics. For example, a hard skill such as coding expertise can be acquired, while a soft skill such as leadership or dynamicity is much harder to “learn.” That is why I, with over ten years of experience with HR departments in my companies, always put an emphasis on soft skills — and would recommend every employer to do the same.
