By now, it is a well-known fact that Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Analytics are tools that aren’t here to replace your job as a recruiter but rather augment your capabilities at work (if you want a deeper understanding on how technology can benefit your work, read this!).
Despite the certain occasions when personal contact is inevitable, it appears as if today’s Human Resources professionals have lost touch with the human side of their industry. We’re not blaming you, leveraging automation and A.I technology is an efficient and intelligent choice benefiting candidates and employers alike. However, we cannot ignore the fact that at the end of the day we are dealing with candidates, who are – well, human.
So, how do you keep the ‘human’ in Human Resources while still leveraging the benefits of technology?
Establish Personal Connections With Candidates
The first step to keeping your recruiting practice compassionate and empathetic is to establish personal connections with your potential candidates and network. No robot could ever replace the magic of personal human connection.
Building relationships with your candidates and professional network is key to becoming a thoughtful and successful recruiter. This does not mean simply sharing job postings on social media. It means engaging with candidates, connecting them within your network, providing candidates with valuable information and tools, becoming an influential resource that candidates can rely on for inspiration or for a helping hand.
A great example of an HR professional who leverages social media to establish connections and to support people from all over the world is Brigette Hyacinth. Check her out!
Ditch The Resumés & Find True Potential Elsewhere
According to Shri Shanmugham, the founder of Credait “A great recruiter looks beyond a candidate’s qualification. […] In fact, a great recruiter won’t even care for a candidate’s resume. Recruiters are people-centric personalities who serve as catalysts in building efficient work teams.” If your eyes are glued to resumés only, chances are you’re missing out on some potential hidden talent. Stay tuned to candidate’s passions, personality traits, attitude, life story and what got them to apply to the job in the first place.
The true answer to these questions, the ‘look and feel’ you seek to unravel from potential talent, shouldn’t and can’t be found by robots no matter how advanced they are. Our platform, Enlizt, allows you to assess these qualities without the use of resumés. All applications are submitted in the same format to prevent biases and wrongful elimination, allowing recruiters to easily access and view experience, soft skills, personal qualities and backgrounds, recorded videos and even comments from your internal team members on a candidate.
This way, you have a better understanding of the person you are reviewing, rather than the sheet of paper that most of the times, wrongly defines them.
Have The Option To View Candidates Who Were Eliminated & Understand Why
As mentioned in our previous blog post, many ATS systems used by professionals in the HR industry are failing to correctly eliminate candidates based on accurate, substantial reasons. With these systems, most candidates are eliminated by improper formatting or by the lack of keywords needed to make it through a robot’s filtering system. These are minor reasons that shouldn’t be impacting the candidate’s future and potential of landing their dream job. As unfair as this sounds, to add on top of it, 98% of resumes get filtered out this way without hiring managers understanding the underlying reason.
Recruiters, we’re not asking you to review every candidate that has been eliminated – but rather embrace technology to help you quickly determine if your ‘perfect candidate’ wasn’t unlimited unfairly by robots and if she or he deserves a second chance.
Enlizt will give you the opportunity to view eliminated candidates and understand why they were eliminated. This will also help you determine if you need to adjust your custom filters, modify your personalized assessments or change the format of the application. We cannot say this enough: we want YOU to be in control of the application process from start to finish!
Be Transparent With Your Candidates
An important skill to practice as a professional in Human Resources is the ability to empathize. As a recruiter, we must always remind ourselves what candidates are feeling on the other side. Worse than knowing you were not accepted to a job, is not knowing at all. Unfortunately, with the high amount of applications received for jobs increasing every day plus the growing market of talent that is becoming more globalized and diversified – recruiters and hiring managers are finding it harder to stop what they’re doing and reach out to applicants who did not make the cut. The lack of transparency existent in the recruiting market today gives candidates anxiety and ultimately forces them to apply to hundreds of jobs all at once — without knowing what to improve or where they went wrong on the last application.
Giving candidates insights on why they weren’t qualified for the position will naturally force their hand to improve in the areas that need improvement and help them truly understand what they can do differently for next time. Without providing candidates the feedback necessary to evolve, we’re contributing to the vicious cycle of unemployment and frustration amongst younger generations.
To wrap it up…
We must not forget that there are feelings, aspirations a story and a human behind every resumé. As difficult as this may sound amidst our intense daily workload, we should try to stop a few seconds every day and empathize with candidates, put ourselves in their shoes.
As ironic as it may sound, technology is already helping and will continue to help keep recruiting human, but it’s up to us as individuals to remain connected to one another in a deeper and more compassionate level – that’s something technology can never replace.