The Virtues of Virtual: Rising Above Today’s Recruitment Challenges with Virtual Recruiting

March 10, 2020

 

iCIMS Staff

5 min read

You don’t have to shake someone’s hand to hire them.

Our world is changing—and recruitment is, too. The recent rise of COVID-19 has exposed vulnerabilities in the way we do business, including how we communicate with candidates. Thanks to recent advances in virtual recruiting software, however, businesses can still realize their hiring goals. And the timing couldn’t be better: over the past five years, remote work has grown by 44%.¹

Here are four easy ways you can leverage recruiting software to meet candidates where they are while maximizing your ROI:

1.     Host a virtual career fair.

Save the sanitizer and skip the long lines. With a fraction of the investment required of in-person events, virtual career fairs allow your team to communicate your employee value proposition, and the types of positions you’re hiring for, to a large group of candidates simultaneously. Just like a traditional career fair, candidates can ask questions (via online chat) and receive real-time responses from your recruiters. Continue the conversation by scheduling a nurture campaign to automatically trigger following the conclusion of the event.

2.     Add a chatbot to your career site.

An AI recruiting chatbot can work for you around the clock, answering questions, screening resumes, directing candidates to relevant job postings, and even scheduling interviews. Defenders, a leader in the home security industry, uses iCIMS’ real-time interactive live-chat software, ARI, to enhance their candidate experience. When candidates visit their career site, they can have their questions answered right on the spot, regardless of time of day or location. With the majority of candidates visiting the career site after business hours, ARI has prevented Defenders from losing out on potential applicants.

3.     Offer video interviewing.

Videos are a great way to make interviews personal even when face-to-face meetings aren’t an option. In today’s labor market, most candidates are already employed—which means they may not have time to travel to your office. With video interviewing, it’s much easier for them to step away. What’s more, your candidates will appreciate when you take their schedule, and their individual work situation, under consideration, further engendering loyalty to your brand. With an industry-average time to fill of 44 days², virtual interviews can help you accommodate more candidates and move the process along.

4.     Tap into texting.

Mobile recruiting software allows recruiters to stay connected with candidates while they’re at work or on the go. It’s also discreet: for the executive-level candidate who’s in an important meeting—or the student in a 20-person seminar—it’s a lot easier to shoot back a quick text than step out for a call. Allan Myers, the largest heavy civil construction company and materials provider in the Mid-Atlantic, piloted iCIMS TextRecruit to help recruiters schedule interviews, remind candidates to complete applications, and send and confirm receipt of orientation information, all via text messaging. By implementing iCIMS TextRecruit and incorporating mobile recruiting software into their recruiting strategy, Allan Myers has benefited from a 15-fold increase in completed applications.

Is your recruitment strategy immune to disruption? Check out our latest eBook, Keep Your Business Running with Virtual Hiring, to learn more about how you can use technology to propel your business forward.

1.      FlexJobs, Global Workplace Analytics Report, 2019

2.     iCIMS Proprietary System Data, 2019