Innovation has become indispensable for being able to identify, select and build the loyalty of the best talents from around the world in a complicated economic environment. The management of human resources is changing to include digital technologies and increase performance by developing human capital.

According to a LinkedIn study conducted in 2017 with 4,000 recruiters in 35 countries, 83% of respondents stated that identifying, selecting and building the loyalty of talents is their main priority. They want to be able to invest in their employer brand and increase agility and effectiveness in their HR practices.

However, while this competition for talent is intensifying, the recruitment teams’ staff numbers remain stable. They need to use effective, adapted tools to successfully complete their missions, especially since the majority of these teams estimate that their recruitment totals will increase and they will have more work in the coming years.

A study by Oihab Allal-Cherif, professor at NEOMA.

The technological lag to make up

A lot of recruiters still use obsolete 20^th-century systems while their targets spend their time on apps and networks that have only existed for a few years. Recruiters are limited by their skills and their organisational, cultural, technological and financial restraints that keep them from accessing more modern tools.

However, job seekers rely more and more on social networks and apps designed specifically for finding employment. Some applicants request remote interviews, digital contract signings and electronic payslips. Young talent are hyper-connected and accessible on all the virtual spaces that recruiters have difficulty entering into. This lag between the technologies used by recruiters and those that the applicants prefer can be explained as the supply and the demand having trouble in linking up.

Social networks, MOOCs and serious games

Several types of technologies are used in the field of e-recruitment. We should first mention the social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Renren, Viadeo, Xing, and LinkedIn. These social networks provide special access to a large number of talents throughout the world and can be used to communicate directly with them in a friendly and informative way. These networks provide additional, critical information on the potential applicants.

Next, there are MOOCs (massive online open courses) such as the most well-known ones like Udacity, EdX and Coursera. While online courses are not initially intended as a recruitment tool, their use for training is a way of identifying talent. Companies can thus sponsor courses, promote their employer brand and identify the most successful learners.

Serious games have also become increasingly valuable for companies, if we can base that on the initiatives developed by Thalès, Carrefour, BNP Paribas, Accor, Safran and Total. These serious games place talented candidates in an entertaining and immersive virtual world where the companies can evaluate their social skills and employ a more qualitative approach to recruitment.

Among the new e-recruitment tools you’ll also find chatbots that increase information collection, responses to questions, planning of the different timeframes and a 100% follow-up with the applicants, including those who will not be hired. Here are some examples: Ari by TextRecruit or Mya, the recruiter robot selected by L’Oréal, Pepsico and Adecco.

In closing, the matching systems rely on artificial intelligence and the analysis of massive amounts of data to match up, on the basis of objective criteria, applicant profiles with position vacancies.

For example, the big data-analysis matching systems are offered today by: Randstad, LinkedIn, Indeed and My Ally.

A new approach to the recruiting profession

The use of information systems by human resources was limited for a long time to administrative aspects involving contract management, schedules and payroll. Today, for an innovative company that is developing in a highly competitive market, it is important to change over to dynamic, agile and proactive management to improve the experience of the applicants. Consequently, recruiters need to acquire new skills and significantly alter their approach to their profession.

One of the new challenges that these new e-recruitment tools respond to is tracking down passive applicants who are open to proposals to change their jobs. The best talents do not need to look for a job because the employers race to be the first ones to hire them before they have even graduated, hold on to them once they have the chance to bring them on to their teams and even poach them from the companies that employ them by offering them better work conditions and a more meaningful work environment.

The power balance is no longer the same. It is no longer about asking potential applicants what they can bring to the company, but presenting to them what the company can offer them and the reasons why they should consider working for it. In other words, it’s about knowing how to communicate the company’s merits as much as it is about the applicants needing to show their assets to the recruiters.

>Translated from the article published in French in The Conversation France on February 6, 2019: « RH : les nouvelles armes pour recruter les meilleurs candidats »