The pandemic changed how talent acquisition works forever – employers and workers across the globe dramatically shifted their expectations around what work means, and what makes work meaningful. 

As a result, remote recruitment has become the industry standard in just over a year. The speed with which it happened means that many companies have yet to fully optimise their processes. Implementing the right tools to adapt to this new normal, to drive hiring success and revolutionise remote recruitment can yield noteworthy results. And with a global talent shortage emerging, competition is likely to be fierce — therefore investing in a holistic HR tech stack, that has people at the centre – is key for long-term success.  

Revolutionising remote recruitment 
In this new world, the ability to hire the best is what separates the winning organisations from the competition. Hiring success is the lynchpin of the new business ecosystem. Ideas and money are cheap; people are the scarce and sought-after resource. 

Unfortunately, even with shrinking talent pools making hiring success ever-more-urgent, most companies still treat recruiting as a back-office process, an admin workflow, where applicants are tracked, or more often ignored, in a cheap and automated manner. This is frustrating for candidates and managers alike, and extremely ineffective for business. 

Recruitment isn’t an administrative workflow, it’s a sales and marketing like function as companies compete for the best talent. The need for efficiency, and effective talent acquisition (TA) technologies, has never been greater. Organisations can attract and hire the right talent for every job internally and externally through adopting the right technology. Optimising this process drives productivity exponentially so you can focus on the other parts of HR like development, strategy, culture, diversity, and inclusion and more.  

In addition, the workforce is getting younger and, in a world where they can make purchases and complete tasks with a few taps on their smartphone, cumbersome job applications will lose you a great candidate in seconds. Both TA teams and candidates need enterprise grade technology, with a consumer grade experience. 

 Candidates are more empowered: they’re thinking about how and where they’d like to work, while HR departments are grappling to ensure the future of work is flexible and inclusive, while also trying to attract, hire, and retain prime talent. Technology can help.  

Investing in technology
When you think about it, hiring  is  success. Who you hire defines everything: the ability to sell, to service, to innovate, to win or lose. In fact, who you hire defines a leader. 

The world’s most innovative leaders know this very well – even Steve Jobs considered his primary function at his level to be recruiting – and those who have cracked this code dedicate considerable time and effort to hire the best.  

The most common outdated technology companies are using in their hiring process is an applicant tracking system (ATS). Applicant tracking systems were designed to automate the file cabinet and track applications. They were not designed for candidates or hiring managers. I started SmartRecruiters when I realised the first generation of applicant tracking systems didn’t make hiring any easier, not for the companies, nor the candidates. 

After implementing our recruiting software, one customer saw a 70% reduction in review time in just a few months’ time with an adoption rate of over 80% of all hiring managers alongside a greater number of applicants due to the simplified process.  

Widening the talent pool 
Another significant benefit to leveraging HR technology that optimises remote recruitment is that it dramatically widens the potential talent pool across countries and even continents without putting additional pressure on TA teams. HR tech solutions filter and surface the best candidates, to leave more time to engage with the right candidates, for the right role. An efficient and automated hiring process helps companies win top talent which is ever more important in the wake of a digital skills crisis. For example, the hiring velocity for one of our global clients increased over 93% by adding in AI to help identify top talent.  

Furthermore, companies can do this in an extremely easy to understand and cost-effective manner. Often after integrating HR technologies, companies find their job ad spend significantly decreases, yet they are attracting more applicants and hiring faster.  

Investing in an end-to-end recruitment technology platform that is flexible, modern, and trusted guarantees a solution that recruiters, hiring managers and IT teams will love. There’s an average of 50% more efficient budget allocations, a 45% increase in hiring manager response rates with 43% more time spent on relationship building resulting in over 44% stating the result is a stronger new hire and better new job fit.  

90% of workers losing 2-4 hours per week on HR admin tasks due to outdated technologies, so productivity is key to winning the race for top talent. Finding the talent needed to run a business is critical to success and relying on outdated processes can hold businesses back. The future of hiring success is in moving beyond outdated software and toward a new way of hiring that involves innovative HR tech. By utilising these technologies, companies ensure a fool-proof and future-proofed recruitment strategy no matter what the ‘next normal’ brings.