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How has technology changed recruitment?

• November 26, 2020

From professional networking sites and job boards to online applicant systems, technology has revolutionised recruitment, profoundly changing how employers and recruiters find potential candidates. Here, we go over some of the most important ways technology has changed the way recruitment works today.

While applicant tracking systems might be the most obvious way technology has impacted recruitment, it has changed far more behind the scenes. Here are four ways technology has changed recruitment forever, and how the industry has had to adapt. 

Globalisation – global reach to find the candidates

Technology hasn't just made it easier to apply to jobs, it has also made it easier for businesses to find qualified candidates anywhere in the world. Recruiters can now scan job boards and professional network sites, like LinkedIn, for qualified candidates with the right skills - without the limits of geography.

Currently, almost every potential candidate is looking to work remotely, it makes it easier for recruiters to reach out to candidates they may have overlooked due to location. And it opens a recruiter's reach to find professionals with a specific skill set that they can't find locally.

Reduced bias – or increased?

Unconscious bias can skew the recruitment process, even if undertaken by fair and unbiased hiring staff. New technology has been developed to remove unconscious bias in the recruitment process.

"No matter how much a recruiter or HR rep tries to be unbiased and balanced, there often is some level of selection bias present. The AI-based systems, assuming there are no biases in the algorithm of course, doesn't suffer from the same tendencies.”

More flexibility – at the expense of control

Companies that can get comfortable with the new digital workforce stand to gain more in employee engagement. Allowing employees, the freedom to work however they work best - whether from home, in an office or from a coffee shop - creates a shift where employees start working from a position of desired duty instead of required duty.

Technology presents endless tools and resources for HR, and the best way to figure out how they can improve your hiring process is through trial and error.

This flexibility creates an overall sense of ownership; employees feel like they own their own career paths.

Data overload in Recruitment

Businesses can't get enough of big data - and it's certainly valuable in recruitment - but there is such a thing as too much data. 

More data means more confusion, allowing tiny details to skew process and drive people to take action on things that don't matter, while ignoring the real underlying problems with the recruiting function.

As these systems grow and evolve into more sophisticated platforms, they're only getting more complex to maintain. Top performing companies can explore hiring a data scientist or analyst to help make sense of the information, and to maintain the software and hardware used to collect and store the data. 

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By Anirudh Nair