6 | MANE INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY | SEPTEMBER 2017
A WORD FROM OUR CEO, LUIGI PACELLI:
How has technology changed Recruitment?
Recruitment has been around for a long time - apparently since 55BC. Needless to say, it has moved on somewhat since then.
Until the late 1990’s the only effective way to recruit for staff was by physical means e.g. newspapers, flyers, signs and posters. It was a slow cumbersome process, placing advertisements with various newspapers and industry journals, waiting for physical publication and then waiting for applicants to come to you. The only database to search was an internal one.
The birth of the internet brought seismic shifts in the way people searched for jobs. In 1994 one of the first job boards was created offering a platform for candidates to showcase themselves and for recruiters to find them. Document editors made it easier to write a career history in the form of a CV and so began the technology revolution that would kick-start the online recruitment industry we all recognise today. Indeed, some 97% of job seekers now head online.
But the internet has not only given the ability to search and post jobs but by default has made a major contribution to improving the recruitment process and the industry generally. With the use of sites such as LinkedIn and a host of other social media outlets, clients and candidates are able to present themselves quickly and with transparency. Positioning and branding is vital in attracting talent, the work that goes in to this is an art in itself.
Finally, with mobile devices allowing everybody to search for their next career opportunity from anywhere 24/7, there can only be one outcome:
Any sensible recruitment strategy should always be accompanied by an equally comprehensive retention strategy.
Technology has become a great enabler in the field of Recruitment. Consultants and HR Professionals now have the ability to message and contact candidates out of normal office hours when they are more likely to have the time to talk and/or deal with responses. Video calls are becoming more commonplace for initial interviews saving time and making location an irrelevance.
Add in to this mix the increasing sophistication of cloud based recruitment platforms that are able to integrate with client systems and provide meaningful data then it is clear the future of Recruitment will be interesting, challenging and exciting. Long may it continue!