Is Technology Taking over Recruitment?

As technology develops, the number of opportunities to promote and find talent for vacancies is increasing rapidly. Social media is constantly expanding; all platforms are continually developing to compete with each other, resulting in social media becoming an essential part of any recruitment marketing strategy.

Facebook has started to make developments to compete with LinkedIn. Companies already have the ability to have a presence on Facebook, business pages are available and many do promote jobs on there. But, in February this year, Facebook released developments allowing companies to post job vacancies more structurally and for users to be able to submit applications within Facebook and have the initial conversation over Facebook messenger – free of charge.  This is currently only available in the US and Canada – but it will certainly spread if it has the success that’s anticipated.

There have previously been numerous articles and comments on LinkedIn debating how LinkedIn is a professional platform, and certain posts should be saved for Facebook. I think it will be interesting to see how Facebook users find the balance of professional and personal profiles, as managing your online presence is critical when looking for a new role and also when working in a professional environment as it can really affect your personal and company brand.

LinkedIn is currently the world’s largest professional network and operates worldwide. LinkedIn has business pages which have the potential to contain job vacancy pages, and these can be promoted across the platform. LinkedIn charge businesses to use this feature, but have a great success in doing so. LinkedIn can use formulae to target who sees which vacancies in an attempt to tailor the responses to be as relevant as possible.

Alongside social media platforms, there are hundreds of job boards available enabling recruitment companies and direct organisations to showcase their vacancies and drive responses. Some platforms allow you to search through their database of candidates – opening the pool of active candidates to a much wider network.

The recruitment world is evolving rapidly; candidates know their value so there is a lot more headhunting and passive talent rather than active. The amount of sources to access candidates are growing and the number of recruitment companies and internal recruiters is growing right alongside this.

Technology is making it possible for all companies to have a route to talent; however, there is still a definite need for recruitment companies. The way technology is advancing is making it easier for candidates to apply, which could cause a volume of applications, but a lack of quality. The volume of platforms also raises the challenge of who is going to monitor all of these, keep them updated and respond to applications?

In addition, there is a massive percentage of candidates who are passive, who therefore will not be found on the ‘active’ job boards or apply via social media platforms. This passive network of candidates is often seen as the better quality candidates which recruitment companies frequently do have access too.

Recruitment companies are a time saver. They are knowledgeable in their niche sector giving them the ability to separate the quality candidates for the client. This should mean the hired candidates will be right for the position at hand, the right culture fit and will ultimately increase the retention of staff!

We at Foundation Recruitment pride ourselves on our accuracy; our clients know they will not get a volume of candidates, but a select few that will be difficult to choose between. We constantly ensure we are utilising all platforms available to keep our candidate network as strong as possible!

Kat Whitehead, Senior Marketing Executive, Foundation Recruitment