by Fiona Housiaux | May 15, 2017 | News
Despite the obvious human aspects of putting an employer in touch with a candidate and nurturing the relationship until, hopefully, the candidate gets hired, recruitment technology is helping to accelerate the process and improve the quality of candidates put forward.
As we move forwards through the 2017-18 financial year, there are still some forms of recruitment technology emerging and maturing – here are five of the hottest picks for the coming months.
1. The Gig Economy
One of the biggest buzzwords of the past year or so, the Gig Economy is finding maturity as online marketplaces spring up for an ever increasing number of niches.
These sites allow employers to find contractors on a per project basis, although they often require all communication to go via the website, rather than direct to the individual.
2. Chat Bots
Automated ‘live chat’ bots might not be 100% convincing, but they are an easy way to get information from website visitors without having someone physically manning the chat room.
In this way, candidates can provide their information in a more natural, conversational way, with the chat bot then compiling it all together into an application pack.
3. Social Recruitment
LinkedIn arguably kickstarted the social recruitment revolution, but more companies are embracing recruitment via the other social networks too – even those that are not meant specifically for business use.
The current main social networks have been around for a few years, but continue to evolve with new opportunities for paid ad placements and sponsored recruitment posts unlocking new options for employers.
4. Video and VR
Video conferencing continues to make its mark in the mainstream, as superfast broadband and high- definition webcams become commonplace in offices and other workplaces.
Although it might sound unlikely, virtual reality could represent the next natural evolution of this technology, especially as two-way live VR collaborations immerse candidate and employer in the same shared virtual interview room, regardless of distance.
5. Machine Learning
Machine learning, also sometimes called Artificial Intelligence, allows computers to learn fro patterns in data, rather than directly from programming, to analyse tasks too complex for a single human mind.
They can take huge amounts of data from applications, career histories, CVs and social network profiles, and spot the common threads to decide who is the best candidate for the job.
by Fiona Housiaux | May 2, 2017 | News
Machine learning might be an unfamiliar concept to many people, but the principles behind it are quite straightforward.
Instead of giving a computer direct programming to achieve an outcome, you feed it a database of past results and use a learning algorithm to predict what will work in the future.
For example, if writing a song, you might ask the computer to analyse recent pop music hits and tell you what key and tempo sell best, how many verses and choruses to have, and so on.
Machine learning is particularly well suited to complex human interactions, ranging from marketing to recruitment, as it allows computers to apply their full processing power to the problem, not limited by the thought processes of the human who programs them.
Machine learning in recruitment
The potential applications of machine learning in recruitment are vast, especially considering the huge amounts of data that are now available about potential candidates on social networks from LinkedIn to more casual platforms like Twitter and Facebook.
By running the candidate’s profiles and posts through complex algorithms, computers can identify patterns that a human would never spot, and flag up the individuals who would be likely to thrive in the role, based on which of their predecessors performed the best.
Speed is of course a major factor in this, as computers can do all of that much faster than a person can do it by hand, and in this way you get a head start over the competition when an especially capable candidate expresses an interest.
This doesn’t mean recruitment is automated, by any means – there are still a great many human interactions that go into negotiating the best salary for both candidate and employer.
However, machine learning is helping to streamline the early stages of the process, ensuring that only high calibre candidates are put forward for each role, and increasing the proportion of interviews that end with the candidate getting hired.
by Fiona Housiaux | Mar 20, 2017 | News
In today’s employment market, “employer branding” can mean the difference between attracting the best candidates into a role, and seeing those talented individuals take a job elsewhere based on a rival company’s reputation.
Employer branding is a little different from direct branding for marketing purposes, as it is all about what you can offer to those who choose to work for you, rather than those who are your customers, but many of the same principles apply, and that ranges from demonstrating the history and heritage of your brand, to the stability and growth prospects of your company, for employees who hope to work for you for a long time to come.
For recruitment agencies, building a positive employer brand is equally important, whether you build on an existing positive reputation for a well-known employer, or start from scratch in trying to make a new opportunity sound more appealing to the best candidates on your books.
A useful thought experiment in this area is to imagine the job advertisement cannot name the employer – which is often the case anyway – and how you would go about describing the company in anonymous but positive terms.
This can help to identify the positive aspects of the employer company, which can in turn form the basis for employer branding efforts when communicating with potential candidates about vacancies within that firm.
Benefits derived from this can be far-reaching in a surprisingly broad range of industries, as a candidate attracted by the employer brand can be more likely to start enthusiastically in their new role and to be more engaged over the long term.
Just one example of this in early 2017 is an article in the British Food Journal which looks at employer branding and employee engagement in the pub sector, as a way to improve interactions between employees and customers and leave visitors to the venue with a more positive lasting impression.
The principles here apply equally well across any customer-facing role, as well as in B2B businesses and in interactions between colleagues, making a strong employer brand and good employee engagement valuable characteristics of any recruitment drive.
by Fiona Housiaux | Mar 2, 2017 | News
People talk a lot about the importance of content for SEO, but in such a broad topic it can be difficult to pin down exactly what ‘content’ means to different people, and why it is so crucial for your search rankings and site traffic.
In fact content encompasses everything you publish online – including your own website, your ‘about us’ page, product descriptions and service pages, news updates and press releases, and also non- text content like images, videos, audio files and anything else you create and share.
You can share content elsewhere too, on social networks – for example by tweeting an infographic or adding photographs to a Flickr account – or by publishing an article on an industry news site or as a guest blog post on a third-party blog.
So what does all of this do for your SEO?
On-page text is still a crucial factor in helping the search engines, and especially the main contenders Google and Bing, to identify the topics your website is relevant to, so there is still huge value in publishing authoritative plain-text content with your main topics in the page title or subheadings.
Your website is perceived as having more authority if more people link to it too, so engaging content that people are likely to share elsewhere online is a good thing; just don’t be tempted to pay someone to link to you, as this can get your search ranking penalised by Google.
Mobile-friendly content is a specific benefit to your ranking in searches made by people using mobile devices, so ensure your content is published using a page template that scales well to small screens.
And finally, when publishing content such as infographics to third-party websites, be sure to include your website URL or company name in a place where it cannot easily be cropped out, so you will continue to receive extra visitors to your website if your marketing ‘goes viral’ and gets shared beyond the places where you initially publish it.
by Fiona Housiaux | Feb 21, 2017 | News
ThinkinCircles has won the best Marketing and Pr supplier at the inaugural Recruitment International Supplier awards in London.
The event was attended by around 120 people, both suppliers to the recruitment industry and their clients and celebrates the best of the industries suppliers in a range air categories from Best Contractor to Best Candidate Attraction.
The voting is completely independent and based solely on the feed back of clients.
ThinkinCircles’ MD, James Whitelock attended the event and picked up the award “This is a milestone achievement for ThinkinCircles as its our first award. I’ve always know that my team do a great job for our clients but its great to know that our clients think so too.
“Marketing in Recruitment is a competitive area, so to win this award proves we are doing something right. I couldn’t be more proud of my team and ThinkinCircles”
Recent Comments