It is without question that the hybrid world of work has had a tremendous impact on the recruitment process right from screening to hiring to onboarding to engagement. What has been a strong force in this context is the rising use of tech based solutions to facilitate hiring needs of organisations globally as the talent pool widens and crosses geographical boundaries in the hunt for the best talent out there. In this session of People Matters EXAPAC Conference 2021 moderated by Santhana Krishnasamay, Head of Talent Acquisition and Employer Branding, MBSB Bank Berhad; Sagar Khatri, CEO & Co-Founder, Multiplier; Zuzana Chomistekova, Group Global Head of Recruitment, Air Asia; and Edward Wong, VP, Talent Acquisition and Talent Management Solutions, Asia Pacific, Marriott come together to discuss how organisations can leverage technology to make the hiring process more personal, how the right technology platforms are selected and what are the best practices that can be inculcated in the overall hiring process. 

Sagar rightly shares, “This time presents the perfect opportunity to build decentralised teams. One can hire the best talent for a vacancy from anywhere in the world.”

Innovations in tech based solutions available: 

With borderless hiring, one thing which is evident is that it has become difficult to not just hire but hire fast. This is not to deny the expansion of the talent pool but with this comes a host of processes that need to be streamlined and can be made efficient. Sagar highlights how these tech based solutions are taking over the market for the benefit of talent leaders:

• AI tools which solve for on top of the funnel in the hiring process. What one finds is that these tools accumulate data from a number of employment dashboards and end up showcasing only 100-200 CVs to the recruiter. This helps build a pipeline of a regular stream of talent but in an automated fashion.
• Assessment tools which aids in the process of screening and selecting candidates for interview. This helps reduce the pipeline to 5-10 top candidates for recruiters, talent leaders and hiring managers. 
• Once a candidate is found, there is an entire backend of processes related to compliance, payroll, employee benefits and the like. Solutions which aid in the automation of this process is essential in a global recruitment space.

Selecting the right technology platform: 

Zuzana reflects on Air Asia’s experience of automation of the hiring process and rightly points out that technology helps organisations to be agile and are a great enabler. But there are certain key things that must be considered in selecting and implementing a solution:

• One must at the very beginning clarify the problems and challenges that need to be resolved and prioritise them accordingly which will help narrow down the list of solutions. The vendors and tech solutions appear quite similar so the differentiator is the micro-experience it creates for the candidates, the recruiters as well as the hiring managers.
• When interacting with vendors, pilot projects are a good way to have an idea of how the platform can be put into use and the impact it will have on the company. One can also assign shorter contracts.
• Given that talent pools have become global, one has to consider whether the tech solution will support applications of global candidates, whether it will remove biases and will be flexible enough to accommodate the different talent markets of different countries and overcome firewall issues along with offering help desk support in different languages.

Adapting to the changing talent landscape:

“There is one guiding principle. Technology is not the solution, it is only an enabler to make the process more human,” shares Edward.

Edward believes that there is a need to invest more in candidate behaviour and expectations, in a fashion similar to how we carry out customer surveys for better delivery of services. Such initiatives reveal that candidates want greater transparency in the recruitment process, they want to know whether the position offers job security and what is the culture of the company. And they want this information on demand. One of the key issues then is how organisations can facilitate this exchange of information by balancing candidate needs, stakeholders concerns and necessary protocols. While one can’t do away with face to face interviews, automating and streamlining the upstream processes of recruitment can help make the overall process more efficient. 

In the hybrid workspace, technology is a key enabler in making the process more efficient and more human. Talent leaders need to take cognizance of candidate needs to get the best out of global talent pools and this can be done by investing in the right technology platforms and being committed to the values of flexibility and agility. The road ahead might have its speed bumps but if one knows what both the organisation and candidate needs and aspires for, navigating the challenges of talent acquisition will become easier.