3 Old Recruiting Technologies Made New

(sample screen showing report from TalentCircles skill assessment test)

By Jessica Miller-Merrell

With the introduction of technology into the HR space there have been several recruiting technologies that once quasi-extinct are making a comeback into the space. You hear the saying that technology changes so much that we constantly have be on our heels and be ready to change with it or we’ll be left behind. That’s the truth with these older recruiting methods.

Here are technologies or applications that are now on a comeback streak and they do so because they are incorporated into a bigger context — where companies simultaneously focus on the impact of their brand and try to leverage this brand to attract more relevant candidates.

Online Communities – One of the great things about Talent Circles is their ability to capture relevant, real time data in one easy to use community. For years the message boards and forums have been dwindling, but in Human Resources the comeback has never been greater. Having one centralized place to store candidate information and allow the candidate to join in the conversation is happening more often in the HR space. With the Talent Circles platform you’re able to do all of that and more. Job seekers are now able to join a branded platform and talk directly with recruiters. If you’re a candidate and your dream company is using Talent Circles, I’d recommend joining the Talent Community of a brand using TalentCircles --- even if you aren’t looking for a job.

Assessments – For the candidate it meant sitting down on a computer that was probably built in the 1990s and taking a multiple choice questionnaire not knowing if your answers were what the recruiter wanted. For the recruiter it was being able to test candidates on a non-bias series of questions that helped determine what each candidate’s strengths were. Assessments are making a comeback and allowing recruiters information that isn’t available from an interview or pre-screening type questions — or can be performed before an interview. With TalentCircles, you can attach a skill assessment test to a job posting, and then sort candidates by scores and/or types of questions. The benefit is clear: as a candidate, you may not have the perfect response to all the questions, but compared to other candidates, you may end up being on top or part of the best candidates and be considered for the next open job vacancy. Meanwhile, recruiters are able to take a more global approach and have an immediate understanding of the respective strengths and weaknesses of multiple candidates at once.

Resume Parsing – One of the oldest tricks in the book is resume parsing. This is making a comeback due to all of the benefits like more useable data, reduced costs, and improving the overall candidate experience. For the candidate being able to craft a finely tuned resume and simply upload it to a database saves them hours on filling out mundane applications. Resume parsing doesn’t only help the candidate, but streamlines the job of a recruiter when it comes to searching through unlimited resumes. A recent CareerBuilder statistic said that one-in-four HR managers receive over fifty resumes per open position and some receive hundreds.

As a recruiter it’s important to pay attention to technologies that can be leveraged in a new context to streamline the entire process. The candidate is the most important person in the entire process and making it easy for them to find you, apply for jobs, and be objectively reviewed will increase the overall candidate experience process. After all, you want to hire the best and unless you make the candidates job easy, you won’t even stand a chance against your competitors.

Jessica Miller-Merrell, SPHR is a workplace and technology strategist specializing in social media. She’s an author who writes at Blogging4Jobs. You can follow her on Twitter @blogging4jobs.