Long Vs. Lean, Vague vs. Woke: Traditional and Modern Recruitment Methods

There is a big difference between the techniques employed in traditional and modern recruitment methods from time taken to costs incurred to the outcomes of talent value. An HR leader knows this best.

In the Black & White era of HR processes and recruitment, things were simpler and more peaceful than they are today. And why not- the demands, challenges, and options that HR managers had then were very unlike today. The world has changed. It is going to change even more. The colors of Eastman Kodak are going to move towards holographic images in more ways than one. Skills are changing. Talent looks at jobs and careers in drastically new ways now. The candidates you are looking for are not similar to what you hired yesterday. Also, they are not hanging out in the same places anymore. That is why traditional recruitment techniques stand miles apart from modern methods.

Traditional Vs. Modern Recruitment Methods: What has changed?

Sources of recruitment

In traditional environments, the range of interaction-platforms and sourcing talent was quite limited. All you had was seminars, workshops, employment exchanges, gate-vacancy-notices, advertisements, referrals, recruitment agencies, internal promotions, internal job-boards, and intra-organizational hiring. Today, the world is open and limitless. You can find your desired talent anywhere – on a Facebook page, in a Twitter debate, on a LinkedIn community, in college events, with intelligent robots trawling the web, through AI-based resume-processing, via sharp data analytics and virtual tools. The fascinating part is that the new generation of workers expects to meet a prospective recruiter in these cool places. Plus, recruiters now realize the value and propensity of gig workers and passive workers. They might sound too unconventional but they can be extremely apt to add the value and productivity that the organization needs in modern scenarios. To add to that, diversity and inclusion have become essential hallmarks of today’s recruitment approaches. In a Korn Ferry survey, 63% of executives said their diversity and inclusion efforts help with employee retention, and 76% shared that these efforts help with innovation. 

Time and Cost of Recruitment techniques: 

Imagine the number of weeks HR managers of the past would take to go through a pile of resumes or wait for an employment agency to serve a pool of candidates for starting interviews. Consider the money that would be spent in posting for, looking for, meeting, interviewing, influencing, and on-boarding these candidates. When you compare traditional and modern recruitment methods, you cannot help but notice the change. An AI algorithm can sift through mountains of potential resumes or profiles in a matter of seconds, a bot can schedule the recruitment process at the tap of a finger and even take away the burden of basic interactions and orientation of candidates. Virtual tools can shrink the entire cycle of recruitment by using data-based and technology-driven recruitment techniques.

Outcomes

The biggest difference in modern and traditional recruitment methods is the luxury of knowing whether a recruitment exercise worked. The guesswork and vagueness of the past have been wiped away with the power of analytics and real-time information. Recruiters can know, mid-way and post-recruitment, if the hired candidate is delivering as per expectations – on relevance, organization-fit, productivity, performance, aptitude, and value. These tools help to gauge the employee-side of the experience, assisting organizations to improve employee satisfaction, goodwill, and retention rates. Data can be supplied and processed at every tiny stage of the cycle, allowing recruiters to adapt and align well to changes and challenges. This data also helps a candidate know what is happening and how much time the whole process will take. They can click a button and interact with chatbots to catch up on basic queries and supply routine assessments.

As per a 2019 MRINetwork Recruitment Trends Study, 76% of candidates expect to apply for jobs and receive feedback via mobile devices. That said, 52% of employers said that their companies do not use recruitment technology. The ones that do have 30% inclined towards automation tools like Application Tracking Systems (ATS). Another study, by People Matters and KellyOCG, says that the Asia Pacific has exhibited a significant jump in the use of RPOs (Recruitment Process Outsourcing) over the years. Research by Korn Ferry also shows that 40% of US firms have outsourced a lot of their hiring tasks to RPOs. In fact, 78% of HR professionals showed the increasing trend of providing a ‘day in the life’ type experiences and simulations to candidates. These experiences drive attractiveness and engagement during the recruitment process and help a candidate understand the exact context, expectations, and nature of a job.

Voice recognition, ATS software, machine learning tools, body language assessment programs, social media analysis, virtual recruitment tools – traditional and modern recruitment methods seem to be living in two different worlds. 

The needle is moving in the direction of recruitment techniques that leverage the power of automation, intelligence, robotics, and analytics. Maybe because today’s HR leaders are smart enough to accept that when it comes to grey matter, things are not always as black and white as we thought them to be.