The internet has managed to make our lives easier in a myriad of ways. We would’ve never survived the most recent pandemic without it, for starters. Switching to remote work made it possible for us to keep our jobs and maintain business processes normally - or as normal as a digital shift would allow. However, we didn’t really have to wait for a global outbreak of a pandemic to utilize the internet in creating more effective and convenient processes. For instance, substituting your old hiring process with online recruitment is one of the best ways you can utilize the internet for the benefit of your business. If you’ve never considered this before, here’s everything you need to understand the advantages of online recruitment.
What is Online Recruitment?
Let’s start by explaining what online recruitment is. In short, the goals of online recruitment are the same as the traditional hiring process. You put out the job offer, interested candidates apply, you check the applications and schedule for interviews, and then you select the chosen candidates. The difference is that you carry out all of the aforementioned steps through the internet by using different solutions, like websites, social media, or job listing sites. In doing so, you get better tools for sourcing candidates and finding the right talents you need to maintain your business operations. Best of all, it takes away all the hassle that comes with the piling paperwork of traditional recruitment.
Advantages of Online Recruitment
The benefits of online recruitment are endless. Here are a few advantages you’ll get to enjoy once you digitize your recruitment process.
It’s Simple to Use
First a foremost, the process is relatively simple. Basically, anyone can create a job post and publish it online. Thanks to the myriad of digital solutions available at your fingertips, you can make good use of the well-established job boards to create, post, and follow up on your job post. Likewise, the process is simple for the applicant to use. They can either upload the required files, fill an application, or do both.
It’s More Cost-Effective
You won’t have to designate a large chunk of your budget for recruitment anymore. Using available and accessible online tools, you can post your job offering and reach candidates looking for the specific job opening you have. While most reputable job listing sites will charge you a certain fee, there are many ways through which you can post a job completely free of charge.
It’s Efficient and Convenient
Owing to its importance, the recruitment process is usually long, exhausting, and resource-consuming. In addition to the initial preparations, you’ll spend a lot of time looking through applications, interviewing candidates, and assessing them based on your criteria. Unfortunately, the trouble doesn’t end with choosing new candidates. You’ll still need to get their personal and work-related documents and log them into your system, provide training, and follow up on their probation period.
While the virtue of the process remains the same with online recruitment, the process becomes much more efficient and convenient. For starters, it completely bypasses the need for paperwork during all recruitment steps. Better yet, you can click here to find out how you can digitize your onboarding process - again, without the need for paperwork. Your new employees won’t even have to set a foot in your office to start working, and that goes for both remote employees and regular ones. This makes the process much more convenient for all parties. The fact that you won’t have to remember where you’ve placed - or misplaced - the documents will also make the workflow more efficient.
It Gives You Better Insights
Have you ever hired someone who had you completely impressed with their skills and potential, only to realize it was all a facade after they’d started working? A common issue with traditional recruitment is that we proceed based on the information we’ve gotten from the CVs and applications. We have no way of investigating the applicant any further, and there’s only so much we can get out of the interviews. Online recruitment gives you better access to the applicant’s online profile, and that will help you learn a lot about the person before the interview.
Moreover, online tools can help you get a more accurate analysis of your job listings, as opposed to traditional tools. You get to scale up or narrow down your search, select the target audience who can see your job opening, or pick up specific pages to advertise for your opening. You also get the ability to measure the performance of your ads and make the necessary tweaks to enhance their performance.
It’s Accessible
In this age, the internet is easily accessible for everyone. Geographic boundaries, backgrounds, ethnicities, and demographics are all overcome in the face of the globalized impact of the internet. Meanwhile, you’ll be able to constantly follow up on new applications or the performance of your job listing wherever you are; as long as you have an active internet connection. You can even into direct contact with the applicants without having to be in your office.
You Can Scale Up Your Reach
You can still specify in your job offer if you prefer applicants in certain states and regions, but, if you’re just looking for remote employees, then online recruitment is the way to go. You’ll be able to put up your job offer for applicants from all around the world to apply. Not only will that improve your odds of finding better and more diverse talents, but it also exposes your business to global opportunities as well. Since active internet users cover all age ranges, you’ll definitely be able to find the right hire according to the job’s requirements.
You Have a Better Chance At Intriguing Your Audience
Long gone are the days when you post your job opening in a newspaper and wait all day for your phone to ring. By switching to online recruitment, you get a better chance at creating a job ad that will definitely intrigue the audience to apply. Using creative tools and online marketing strategies, you’ll make it impossible to miss your job posting. Better yet, you get the luxury of personalizing the job posting to better appeal to your target audience, which will make the interested candidates feel like you care about your employees and take their preferences into consideration.
You Get Instant Response
You wait for someone to call your office all day, only for them to make the call as soon as you leave the office. If that sounds like a painfully familiar repetition with traditional recruitment, you’ll be glad to know that you won’t have to endure this suffering anymore with online recruitment. Thanks to the internet, once again, you’ll get instant notifications the second someone submits their application. You’ll also have access to replies and inquiries posted on the job offer, so you can provide the answers that interested candidates need to make their decision of applying.
It’s not Bound to Time
Traditional methods of recruitment all have an end life. Once they go out of circulation, the edition which held your job offer ends as well. That’s not the case with online recruitment; your job posting will survive against time and be available at all times. The opposite is also applicable; if you’ve found your hire and want to close the job, you can simply update the status of the job to be completed. That’s something you'll have no control of with newspaper and printed media.
It’s Flexible
With online recruitment, you get to customize the job ad however you like. You can pay a lot of advertising or pay nothing at all; control the duration and target segment of the ad or scale it up to reach more candidates; create a special form to be filled or accept CVs. You’ll have complete control and flexibility over the process.
It’s Time-Saving
Once you combine all of the previous advantages, you’ll end up with a much shorter hiring process. You’ll be able to carry out multiple tasks in parallel and expedite the recruitment process to accomplish your business goals. Moreover, you’ll be glad to know that many tasks can be completely or partially automated, leaving you to better focus on your main job of evaluating candidates and training new hires.
Disadvantages of Online Recruitment
For all its perks, it’s only reasonable to guess that online recruitment will also have its downsides. Here are a few disadvantages to keep in mind.
Ads Can Get Costly
If you’re careful, you may find your ads’ costs spiraling out of control. You’ll need to carefully set the budget for paid ads, or choose the right platforms if you opt for job listing sites. These sites usually charge you a fee based on the profit you make, charge you per post, or require a subscription fee to use their service. Leaving dead ads will also keep the counter running on your ad costs, so be sure to stop any unprofitable posts.
It’s Not Exactly Formal
If you’re looking for professional hires, then perhaps social media is not the best choice for you. You can always make your ad look more professional by choosing the right words and designs, though.
You May Struggle to Measure its Efficacy
Unless you have basic knowledge of analytics tools, you’ll probably feel lost as to how your campaigns are performing. Although having better insights into the process is one of the perks of online recruitment, it’s pointless if you can’t have access to these analytics.
You’ll Face a Lot of Competition
Thanks to its convenience, you shouldn’t be surprised if you run into your competitors in the online scene. Almost all recruiters have switched to online recruitment, so you’ll have to do a better job to grab the attention of your target audience.
Technical Issues Can be a Waste of Time
For all its advantages, dealing with technology always comes at a risk. In this case, you may become utterly lost in case the program your using or website crashes, especially if you have no technical background. If you lose all of the online data without having any backups, you’ll get into a real pinch.
Anyone Can Apply
Although you can reach a greater number of candidates, that also means you have less control over who applies. The number of good talents will increase, but so will the bad ones. Moreover, getting fraudulent applications is a common issue with online recruitment. At best, this will allow spammers to find their way into your inbox. At worst, hackers and scammers can use the public information you’ve provided to access your company’s IT systems. That’s why you should never give too much information to the public.
How to Recruit New Employees Online?
Now that you’ve built a good idea about the advantages and disadvantages of online recruitment, you must be wondering how you can utilize it to hire new employees. Here are the 4 most common ways employers recruit new talents online.
Website
The most professional and elegant way to recruit new talents is by setting up a recruitment page on your website. That will give interested candidates the opportunity to survey your business and understand your operations and work culture better before applying.
Social Media Platforms
Although websites are professional, you’ll be hard-pressed to target new hires relying on it alone. The best strategy is to create post the job opening on your website and marketing for it through your social media platforms.
Paid Ads
You can also promote your job opening on the search engines by investing in PPC campaigns. PPC, or pay-per-click, places your job ads at the top of the search engine result pages whenever a user looks for similar job offers. You’ll only get charged for the ad once someone clicks it, so it’s cost-effective.
Online Job Websites
If you want to avoid the marketing dilemma altogether, you can consider looking for job listing sites to publish your job opening. Since these sites have a great number of users, you’ll be tapping into their network for talent-hunting.
Long gone are the days of posting job openings in newspapers and printed media outlets. Nowadays, HR managers make better use of online recruitment tools to source candidates, shortlist matching talents, and expediting the hiring process. There are many advantages to online recruitment, but there are also downsides to the process - and that’s something you have to take into account while devising your recruitment strategy.
