We are in the middle of a tech revolution but among the countless innovations shaping our industry today, conversations keep focusing on the need to keep the human element at the heart of recruitment. A successful in-house team is not one that adopts every new tool on the market, but one that strikes the right balance between machine and human touch, without losing sight of what really matters: the candidate.
Even the most digitally-advanced employers recognise that technology is just a facilitator for collaboration and communication. Daria Johnson and Hayke Tjemmes head up the recruitment for two organisations with technology at the heart of their strategy. They will both join our breakfast event “The Future of Recruitment is Smart: How Technology is Changing the Hiring Game Forever” on 17th May to talk about the many ways smart tools have actually brought them closer to their talent. Daria and Hayke stopped by for a chat with us ahead of the event.
Automate, but don’t alienate
For a team of 3 recruiters tasked with up to 300 hires per year, finding solutions to have as much impact on the recruitment process with the minimum effort is a must to be able to deliver on the numbers. “Automation is helping us do this kind of work,” says Hayke, Talent Acquisition Business Partner at Dutch online retailer wehkamp. “Our job is not about technology. We are using technology to enable all the processes that are not really candidate focused. Everything that doesn’t make a difference to our candidates, we automate, giving us extra time to engage in the stages that require it.”
It has been a year since Hayke’s team has decided to replace repetitive, administrative tasks with automation. The key to adopting new technology, Hayke believes, is to implement it in areas that don’t require much candidate engagement. “A year ago, 60% of our time was spent without being in touch with our candidates.” Today, wehkamp are relying on tools like Entelo, YouCanBookMe and Tableau (but to name a few), to do their “dirty work”, giving them more time to keep candidates engaged throughout the application process.
Daria is Director of Talent at digital transformation consultancy Wipro Digital, hiring around 150 engineers every year for Wipro’s Buildit Software Engineering practice. “Because of the shortage of talent in this industry, we cannot rely much on technology for attraction. We require a lot of human approach for headhunting and candidate experience, but all our recruitment process are held in our ATS, allowing us to monitor our candidates’ journey, our hiring trends and keeping us efficient and compliant.”
Pilot it
As with any new business initiative, getting buy-in for new technology will always be common challenge. Ask yourself, is it the right solution for your current struggles? It all comes down to proof of concept, Daria explains. “Always start small. Run mini pilots to understand how you can evolve and improve your solution.
“Get your key stakeholders involved to see the demos, make them ask questions. If a decision is made without their intervention, it will make it harder to get their buy-in ultimately,” she adds.
