There were those who believed that the Internet was going to replace agency recruiters and search consultants. It, of course, did not. However, it did usher in the importance of online recruiting and hiring skills.
Now there is online recruiting, virtual hiring, virtual recruiters, and virtual hiring events.
What is online recruiting?
Simply put, online recruiting (or virtual recruiting) is a type of recruiting in which those people seeking to recruit and hire top talent use the power of the Internet to do so. There are a number of components involved in online recruiting strategies and virtual hiring, including job boards, job postings on company websites and other websites and social media.
What is virtual hiring?
Virtual hiring is a process for hiring that takes place remotely. In other words, recruiters and hiring officials do not meet with job candidates in-person. Instead, they rely on technology and conduct video interviews. Virtual hiring has become more prevalent since the COVID-19 pandemic started, emerging as one of the current trends in the recruitment process.
What does a virtual recruiter do?
Basically, a virtual recruiter carries out the tasks and duties associated with virtual recruiting. These can include sourcing, screening, and interviewing job seekers and candidates, but doing so remotely instead of in-person or face-to-face. Those who want to learn how to be a virtual recruiter or become part of an online recruiter directly need to master the intricacies involved in online recruiting and hiring.
What is a virtual hiring event?
A virtual hiring event is a group interview, one that takes place online or over the Internet instead of in-person. During this event, an employer or a recruiter accepts resumes and/or job applications and conducts virtual interviews to assess job seekers and candidates. Once again, the pandemic has made virtual hiring events one of the most popular online recruiting trends in the employment marketplace.
These online recruitment industry trends are like anything else. The more that you hone your craft, the more success you will enjoy. Top Echelon’s recruiting software is pleased to present online recruiting and hiring tips for recruiters.
Online recruiting and hiring tips for recruiters
Whereas recruiting and hiring are intrinsically wrapped, one is separate from the other. Recruiting comes before hiring. In other words, before you can hire somebody, you first have to recruit them. In the case of active job seekers, it’s often not difficult to recruit them. However, in the case of passive candidates, especially the top talent in the marketplace, recruiting them is typically more difficult.
Making it even more difficult is the fact that top candidates are rarely spend time looking for jobs online. This does not mean, though, that it is impossible to recruit and hire top candidates online. It just means that your virtual recruiting strategies must be better and you must executive those strategies to a higher degree.
How to recruit online
There are many steps to the recruiting process. These same steps apply to the online recruiting process. The only difference, of course, is that the power of the Internet is being put to use more extensively during the latter. For the sake of brevity, below are the 10 most critical steps:
- Identifying the hiring need
- Planning the process for talent acquisition
- Searching (or sourcing) for talent
- Identifying viable candidates
- Recruiting of A-level candidates
- Telephone screening
- Interviewing (in-person or interview)
- Offering of employment
- Hiring of the candidate
- Onboarding of the candidate
If you want to learn how to recruit people online more effectively or how to be a virtual recruiter, then you must focus on these steps. Ask yourself questions such as, “How can I put the power of the Internet to use to search for talent?” or “How can I put the power of the Internet to use to identify viable candidates?”
The steps in the offline recruiting process and the online recruiting process are the same. If you want to recruit online and hire online with a high degree of success, you should be able to incorporate online recruiting strategies into the process whenever and where appropriate.
7 online recruiting tips
So . . . how do you incorporate online recruiting strategies into the recruitment process steps? Great question! We’re glad you asked, because we have six online recruiting tips for not only agency recruiters and search consultants, but for anybody who wants to learn how to recruit online more effectively. These seven online recruiting tips are as follows!
Tip 1: Design a Careers Page that is mobile-friendly.
There is no doubt that mobile technology and usage has been growing at a steady rate for the last several years, and it’s been affecting every area of people’s lives. This includes their professional life, which includes their career, which includes any potential job searches they may be conducting. These statistics tell the tale:
- 81% of Americans own a smartphone and more than 285 million people in the United States are expected to have one by 2023. (Pew Research Center)
- Mobile data traffic around the world is projected to increase by 700% between 2016 and 2021.
- 94% of people ages 18-29 have smartphones, while 6% have regular cell phones. (Bank My Cell)
- 70% of web traffic happens on a mobile device. (CIODive)
This is overwhelming evidence that you need to make your careers site and your postings mobile friendly. If you don’t, then your online recruiting efforts will be hampered.
Tip 2: Create and implement a social media strategy.
The vast majority of recruiters and HR personnel use social media as part of their online recruiting strategies. There are a few keys to this tip, and they including networking online through social media channels, posting in forums that are related to your industry, and sharing relevant content with your connections and/or followers.
While there are several social media platforms, the best one for online recruiting and hiring is LinkedIn. Needless to say, you should strive to be a LinkedIn master to maximize the potential that the platform offers.
Tip 3: Pre-Screen candidates with employment screening tests.
You should definitely pre-screen candidates, and there are three main areas in which you should screen them. Those areas include cognitive ability tests, personality tests, and theoretical problems involving simulated on-the-job scenarios. Balance the results of all three tests against the other factors to be considered in the decision-making process.
Tip 4: Utilize video for communication.
First of all, people are more likely to share videos on social media than they are other forms of content. Second, video provides you with the opportunity to accomplish multiple things at the same time. These things include branding yourself and your organization in a positive fashion and also “selling” the attractiveness of your open position.
Tip 5: Keep it professional, yet personal.
One of the biggest challenges of online recruiting through social media is the balancing act between effectively engaging candidates and job seekers and maintaining a professional approach and tone. Today’s job candidates are extremely Internet savvy, especially Millennials and Generation Z. They grew up with technology. As a result, they can tell the difference between fake and authentic. You must be authentic with everything you.
Tip 6: Organize, streamline, and simplify Your recruiting process.
One of the positive aspects of operating online is the opportunity to streamline the recruiting process. Top Echelon’s software helps recruiters accomplish this in a number of ways:
Browser Extension—Allows users to source candidate profiles from the Internet, place that information in a Job Order Pipeline, and check for possible duplicates.
Quick Find/Search—Look up records on the fly based on name, title, location, phone number, or email. You can also search on keywords or location, and there are advanced search options with a Boolean Builder search tool.
Planner—Track and organize your recruiting day more effectively by managing activities and scheduling follow-ups.
Calendar Integration—Schedule activities in Top Echelon and then push them to an external calendar, including Gmail, Outlook, or Yahoo to view them on the go.
Pipelines—See who’s in play for each job order and where they stand in the process. You also have the ability to customize stages within the pipeline for additional flexibility, which is especially helpful for owners and managers.
Tip 7: Use online recruitment tools to perfect your process.
If you’re going to recruit online, then you need online recruitment tools that will help you to perfect your process. The better your process, the better results you will experience. Once again Top Echelon has the tools you need for more effective online recruiting and online hiring:
Email—Top Echelon expanded email logging system allows you to track incoming and outgoing mail. You can also email resumes right into the software, and the system will automatically parse the resume and create a corresponding record.
Reports—Top Echelon offers a number of different reports, including an Activity Report for logging activities, and a Placement Report that provides the details for your agency over time. These reports are useful for comparing metrics and making important decisions.
Customization—Finally, Top Echelon Software works the way that you do, giving you the ability to reorder cards on the screen. In addition, you can create new cards and add custom titles and unlimited custom fields.
Online recruiting and hiring with Top Echelon
Top Echelon makes online recruiting and online hiring simple. The software takes you through all of the steps of the recruiting and hiring process, providing tools and features for each of the steps. Our goal with Top Echelon Software is to streamline and perfect the recruiting process, and that includes the online recruiting process. Top Echelon is an online recruiting software that gives you the opportunity to do everything on your recruiting desk better, faster, and more effectively.
The best way to find out what Top Echelon can do for you is to try it FREE for 15 days. When you sign up for a trial, NO credit card is required and you’ll get the full version of the software. You can also sign up for a LIVE demonstration of the Top Echleon recruiting CRM software. If you’d like more information before deciding how to proceed with Top Echelon, we encourage you to visit our website by clicking here.
Online recruiting with our Resource Center
In addition to the recruiting software for online recruiting and virtual hiring, Top Echelon also offers a Recruiter Training Library and Recruiter Training Blog to complete its recruiting resource center. The Recruiter Training Library offers videos that deal with general recruiting topics. Specifically, they address the fundamentals of the recruiting and staffing profession, including online recruiting strategies and how to recruit online.
Click here to visit the Top Echelon Training Library for online recruiting strategies.
Meanwhile, the audience for Recruiter Training Blog is primarily agency recruiters and search consultants operating in the employment marketplace within the realm of executive search. The Top Echelon Blog consists of six categories:
- Recruiter Training
- Owner Issues
- Marketing
- The Placement Process
- Recruitment Software
- Case Studies
Click here to visit the Top Echelon Blog. Once you visit the blog, you can also join the email list to receive notifications and updates regarding new posts.