Recruiters today perhaps hold one of the most critical and challenging roles in the organization. With thousands of new jobs emerging owing to rapid technological change and consequent scarcity of good technical talent, attracting and hiring quality talent is a challenge. 

A study by Deloitte reveals that while the average recruitment process takes about 52 days, the top candidates last in the market for only 10. 

Organizations realize the need to increase the speed, efficiency, and the presence of the recruitment process in these changing times. It hardly comes as a surprise to see the rise of digital recruitment.

The popularity of digital technology has made it much easier for recruitment teams to reach the most skilled and proficient candidates.

 The use of social media platforms and other digital channels and technologies are helping recruiters make the best hiring decisions. However, the importance of having a great digital recruitment strategy remains unchanged, even more so when hiring tech talent’s

So, let’s understand what are the best digital recruitment strategies to hire tech talent?

1. Guesstimates need to be shown the door

The cost of employee turnover is approximately 2.5 times an employee’s salary! Along with this are the soft costs which manifest in the form of decreased productivity, low engagement, negative cultural impact, and increased training costs in the case of a poor hire. The need for hiring the right tech talent has never been stronger.

However, it is also a truth that most candidates misrepresent themselves in their resumes. It becomes difficult for recruiters to avoid their gut feeling and identify the actual potential candidates.

Organizations are thus warming up fast to the concept of detailed IT skill assessment to fine-tune their digital recruitment strategies. Employing these tests, recruiters can assess the technical skills of the potential employee, leverage situational judgment frameworks to evaluate their capabilities, understand their communication skills (both technical and personal), and also evaluate the cognitive and analytical capabilities of the candidate.

With tech recruiting platform, recruiters have quantifiable metrics to assess the candidate and therefore, make data-driven hiring decisions.

2. Focus on Candidate Engagement 

The candidate demographic has changed. Candidate profiles constitute primarily of Gen Z and millennials. This demographic highly values employee engagement. Unfortunately, many still believe that employee engagement starts during employee onboarding. The new reality is that employee experience beings with candidate engagement.

The hallmark of a great employee engagement initiative is that it is integrated across the entire employee lifecycle with recruitment being the starting point. In the technology space where opportunities outnumber available candidates, recruitment teams have to demonstrate value from the first interactions. 

Candidate engagement measures how the candidates feel during the entire recruitment and hiring process. A Career Builder survey reveals that 42% of job seekers would never reapply to a company where their candidate experience has been poor. 22% of these would discourage others from joining such a company. 

Having a process-based, data-driven, transparent, fast, and proactive digital recruitment strategy drives candidate engagement and establishes the baseline for employee engagement expectations for the candidate. It also helps them evaluate the nature of the organization and helps them form the right opinion of the company. 

3. Deliver elevated candidate experience

Candidate experience is directly related to recruiting performance. As the internet connects everyone, the cost of a poor candidate experience can be high. According to research, the candidates who had a poor candidate experience during the recruitment process are more likely to post negative reviews. This can have a huge impact on the organizations’ brand perception.  

A great candidate experience, on the other hand, gives access to more and often better applicants and referrals. It also helps to reduce the cost per hire since this is directly proportional to the quality of the hire. 

In the age when 84% of people rely on peer-to-peer recommendations, candidate experience has to rank high to drive brand advocacy. 

Digital recruitment strategies have to take this parameter into careful consideration and ensure that they drive their brand experience such that it leads to elevated candidate experiences. The nature of pre-employment assessments, the depth of interview questions, the speed of communication, the respect given to the candidates, transparency in the recruitment process, etc. are some of the factors that greatly impact candidate experience. 

Digital recruitment is giving traditional recruitment methodologies the new-age facelift. However, for digital recruitment to deliver on its promise, recruitment teams need to have robust strategies in place to help them navigate the new-age challenges of a shifting economy, a tight market, emerging job roles and most importantly, a value-driven demographic. 

Pankaj is a digital marketing professional at iMocha a pre-employment testing solution He produces highly informative and actionable content for topics ranging from recruitment, social media hiring to candidate assessment. Pankaj believes in continuously learning & being updated with the latest trends in content marketing.