5 benefits of online recruiting, training & retaining employees in an organization
Recruiting talent is a core function of the Human Resource department. It involves everything from identifying, shortlisting, interviewing, hiring, and onboarding employees. The procedure remains intact to the other core processes as well, such as training and retaining those employees. It is obvious that hiring the right candidate is not a matter of luck. The ability to recruit top talent is key to every organization's long duration success in the market.
While finding, onboarding and retaining an employee is never easy, handling the process online can help you reach more potential hires as well as save you time and money.
What goes into a perfect recruitment process?
A recruitment process is a sourcing model that organizations aim to find the right fit for the right job at an apt time. It is a step-by-step methodology to bring in talented people who can help the company to surge. An all-inclusive recruitment process may vary from company to company depending on the business spheres, organizational foundation, size of the company, existing recruitment workflow, nature of operations, and selection process. But an online recruitment process will cater to all the needs and help an organization to grow ahead, irrespective of all the mentioned verticals.
Online recruitment is a well-planned and perfectly crafted procedure which helps the hiring management filter the right candidates faster while staying focused on engaging the eligible talent. Through this process, it becomes convenient to build a big pool of talented players in a broad job market scenario and reduces the time involved in finding candidates and filling roles for the present and future requirements of the company.
Before you start recruiting for your next vacancy, consider these five advantages of conducting the process online-
Efficiency
Online recruiting offers an array of tools including pre-employment screening, personality evaluations and testing to screen candidates to allow organizations to select the right candidates who match the company’s values and culture. The online recruitment process effectively offers these services that can be customized to meet an organization's specific needs for each job. Along with online recruitment, online training is also a plus point. Thus, it also allows for global collaboration. With a rising global workforce, one of the biggest benefits of online training is that it can be built to promote online collaboration across the world. Some of the best online training platforms allow employees from different verticals and countries to contribute to broader company discussions, right in the training capsule itself.
Cost
Costs involved in the traditional recruiting process are usually high in terms of advertising, travel expenses, third-party recruiter fees, etc. As a result, the hiring process usually takes up too much time and its cost could be minimized by switching to an online recruitment process which allows organizations to post free job openings on multiple social platforms just by one click. Also, when it comes to training and retention, online learning is simply more cost-effective for a larger employee audience. It helps in reducing fees for trainers and employee time, as well as costs related to training rooms, travel, catering, and materials. Also in online training, employees will just need access to a computer or a mobile phone, and sometimes, to complete their training. With gamification, presentations, and other interactive content, online learning can significantly increase employee engagement which will be further helpful in the retention process.
Cast a Wider Net
Online recruiting reaches a much larger or more targeted audience than you have with a local newspaper ad or your own personal network. The online world is vast which means that you can get in touch with those beyond your immediate reach and the one who could be perfect for your vacant position. By using online tools, you can also target specifically what kind of backgrounds or skills are preferable. Also, many professional associations allow employers to post job openings on their websites and social media pages. This not only allows organizations to find candidates with very specific skills, it can also attract passive candidates who may not be looking for employment.
Time-saving
While taking the online recruitment process, you can forget about the paperwork and the action of entering data manually. Moreover, you can send out job postings anytime with Internet access, no matter where you are. Also, the process reaches out to the best candidates in its network and invites them to apply. It's time consuming and expensive to attempt that reach manually. It will not only save time for HR managers, but business owners can spend time on other important matters, simply reviewing the narrowed list of best-fit applicants and carrying the process forward from there. This will help to speed up the process of application and recruitment within the time frame.
Flexible and easy
There is no hassle in learning how to use an online recruitment system. So, it is convenient to use and offers a platform where all HR managers could follow the hiring process. Moreover, the cloud-based feature allows the employer to have a CV database with no limits and that to be data protection enabled.
A few points to keep in mind
When hiring or recruiting online, every organization must set clear expectations regarding the interview process, timeline to revert, job-function, work culture, etc. Remember to always host video interviews with the camera on, in order to avoid any sort of confusion later. While conducting an online interview, don’t outnumber the candidate (A healthy ratio would be 2:1 or max 3:1) where you should set approx 10 mins in every interview for the candidate. Provide the candidate with the opportunity to ask questions, but try to avoid interviews with endless questions. Also, don’t get alarmed if the candidate does not want to commit for the long term. Millennials are different. They concentrate more on work-life balance, quality of life, learning etc.
It’s good to share constructive criticism with every candidate that can help them learn from their mistakes and grow. In case you are hiring for profiles that may need portfolio submissions, assignments, etc, give them enough time to complete the same. Based on the position you are recruiting for, decide on whom to get involved in the interview process. Moreover, have a checklist in place for every open position.
Ensure to have an onboarding team in place virtually. Introduce the new joiners with your work culture, share product decks, share insights about their team, deliverables and more before their date of joining. Though virtual onboarding can feel like an isolated experience for the candidate, make sure to break the ice and introduce them to your teams. Also, keep a robust online training system for them as aligning new joiners to your business goals & objectives is critical.
Conclusion
Once the hiring concerned management learns the advantages of online recruitment, there's no excuse for spending extra time and money to hire an employee who may not be a good fit. Don't wait to start nurturing your online network — you never know when you may need to hire new talent.