Evolution of Recruitment: How Recruiters Adjust in the Digital Age

It’s no secret that the U.S. job market is a neverending rollercoaster that requires job seekers and employers alike to constantly pivot. 

Over the past two years in my role as a Technical Recruiter, I have seen recruitment evolve a lot and because of that, I want to share some insight to allow candidates to have the best experience possible with their recruiters. 

What is a recruiter?

A recruiter’s primary role is to ensure that the best candidates are presented to clients in order to fill the hiring needs of an organization. 

On the front end, I work extremely closely with hiring managers and HR to understand exactly what the organization is looking for in their next hire, and from there I utilize a number of different tools to find the candidates that fit this role and make sure it’s a match for them based on the motivators that drove them to the job market.

How has recruitment technology changed the hiring process?

Recruitment technology has changed and evolved over the years by providing access to larger talent pools, the rise of remote work, enhanced candidate experience, demand for tech and digital marketing professionals, and onboarding tools.

Access to larger talent pools

There are many tools we use as recruiters to find the perfect candidate and match them to the perfect role. 

Some of the more widely known ones are LinkedIn, CareerBuilder, Dice, etc, but it’s also important to utilize your network! 

Good people know good people. Ask for referrals, post on your social media networks, look within your own ATS (applicant tracking system), or dive into your CRM to find great candidates that are already consulting and might be looking for a new role when their contract ends. 

The rise of remote work

Over the past several years, we have seen a large rise in remote work throughout all industries. 

Beginning with Covid, organizations had to depend on remote workers to handle their daily tasks and employees had to learn how to re-organize their day-to-day to fit a remote environment. 

Even now, remote work is still extremely prevalent in the workforce. A majority of the roles we look to fill for our clients are either fully remote or mostly remote, set up with a hybrid model. 

Some companies will even allow for candidates to be within several hundred miles if they can drive in monthly or quarterly for important meetings. It’s all about allowing flexibility in the workplace! 

Enhanced candidate experience

LinkedIn and other recruiting tools also offer candidates a very customized way of searching for their next roles. 

You can set your profile to allow recruiters to reach out to you if you are open to work and even set parameters on the type of work you might be looking for like contracts, part-time, ad-hoc, and more. 

Also by adding skills to your LinkedIn profile, you are allowing recruiters to hyper-focus on the attributes that highlight your experience which results in more focused opportunities that are presented to you.

Growing demand for tech and digital marketing

As we shift and move forward, there is a larger focus on technology and marketing in every industry. 

The demand for companies to hire the best talent for their tech and marketing departments is at an all-time high and they want to find the most qualified candidates for the job. 

Even if the market shifts or companies have to make the hard decisions to do layoffs, there will always be a place for tech and marketing professionals in every organization.

Onboarding technology

There’s also been a rise in increased virtual onboarding technology to help candidates do all their onboarding from home. 

All tax, direct deposit, and other onboarding have been made virtual making it not only an easier process, but a quicker process to cut down on the time it takes for between a candidate’s offer stage and getting them started on their first day. 

This means the lag time between a candidate accepting an offer and beginning work on their first day is shortened. 

How recruiters evolve to offer job seekers the best candidate experience

Recruiters have had to adapt over the years to keep up with the job market in the digital age by becoming better marketers, focusing on where the demand lies, and meeting the expectations of not only employers but candidates, as well.

Becoming better marketers

This stems from the beginning of the hiring process. When we are working with a client, new or old, we really want to understand who they are as a company, what they do for their clients or industry, and how they impact their communities. 

Becoming fully in tune with a company’s “why” allows us to market new roles and opportunities to our candidates to ensure they know exactly the type of company they are working for when they join the team. 

It’s important that we are used as resources for our candidates to prepare them the best we can for their new roles.

Focusing on where the demand lies

There are always trends in hiring and, as recruiters, we need to focus on where demand lies in organizations. 

For example, with increased and changing technologies in a company, we have seen that a lot of organizations have shifted from on-premise to cloud data. 

This shift over the past several years has allowed companies that are integrating cloud services into their organization to open up a wide array of data, engineering, and other similar roles within the organization. 

We work extremely closely with candidates, and companies alike, to ensure that they have the best skillset to deliver the work needed for the growth of their organization.

Meeting expectations of job seekers and employers

Job seekers and employers are both looking for the right fit when it comes to hiring. Each has certain check marks that they want to cross off before diving fully into a new role with a new candidate. 

It’s important to fully understand from a candidate’s perspective what is their ultimate motivator in their job search and what are they looking for that they currently don’t have. 

On the opposite side, employers are searching for their next employee that will check off their boxes skillset-wise, but also culturally, so that they can make sure it’s a long-term mutually beneficial fit from both ends. 

Recruiters getting the best for their clients in the digital age

In conclusion, technology has changed the hiring process in many ways. Recruiters have had to become better marketers, focusing on where the demand lies, and attempting to meet the expectations of job seekers and employers alike.

We are able to expand our reach with larger talent pools online, more opportunities for remote roles, a focus on an enhanced candidate experience, and onboarding technology that allows us to get the best for our clients in the digital age. 

All of these elements give us a better perspective on how we can utilize technology to get the most qualified candidates for our clients. With all of this combined, we are able to make sure that we find the right fit for everyone involved.