How to build a successful digital recruiting strategy
How to attract the right people for vacant positions in the company? How to make the recruiting process effective without costing too much money or taking up more time than expected?
If you work as a recruiter, these are probably questions – latent or manifest – that you ask yourself every time you begin – and conclude – a recruitment process. Not least because those who do this work know that building a “successful” recruiting strategy is much more than “filling vacancies.” It has to do with recruiting marketing, employer branding, cascading down, and even the company’s corporate branding.
In all of this, digital recruiting also takes on an increasingly important role because, according to data released by We Are Social in February 2023, more than 50 million people, 86.1 per cent of Italians, use the Internet in Italy, spending as much as 5 hours and 55 minutes a day on the web. Of these, 44 million people are active on social.
So, while digital has entered every sector in full force, switching to this mode regarding recruitment has not yet been established.
Yet, digital recruitment can solve several problems, help improve a company’s reputation, “build” an effective way of providing feedback to candidates, and so much more. That’s what we see in this article, starting with a better understanding of digital recruiting, how it differs from “traditional” recruiting, what the benefits are, and then concluding with some tips for taking your digital strategy forward.
What is digital recruiting
Digital recruiting, as the adjective digital implies, is a type of recruiting that uses digital to simplify and improve the recruitment process.
It is, therefore, more than just posting an ad online; it consists of building a strategy that uses social channels (social recruiting), posting career pages on the company website, mobile recruiting, using Artificial Intelligence to do candidate matching and more, using chatbots to answer candidates’ questions, creating online questionnaires, considering SEO to post job ads that get found on search engines, and much more.
In a nutshell, digital recruiting helps recruiters find candidates, analyse their profiles, screen them, manage pre- and post-interview relationships, and finalize hires.
Digital recruiting vs. traditional recruiting
Then, considering digital as a foundational element of a recruiting strategy has become something no recruiter can overlook. Not least because the differences with so-called “traditional recruiting” are far from irrelevant.
First of all, thanks to digital recruiting, one has a much wider pool of people, including those in other parts of Italy and abroad. You are, therefore, dealing with significantly more exposure.
In addition, you can profile your search and contact passive candidates using social networks such as LinkedIn but not only. Using ATS software such as Inrecruiting, in addition to centralizing all the selection process activities, you can have an overview of the candidates in the hiring pipeline and those discarded directly in the Vacancy List. This way, you can easily “retrieve” those people you found interesting but did not match your search requirements.
At the same time, by taking advantage of technology, you can bring more collaborative search and selection to life: thanks to an ATS, everyone on the HR team can share their notes, provide notes on how activity in the selection process went, and contribute to the search for the perfect candidate. All of this while taking less time: the difference between digital recruiting and traditional recruiting also lies in saving hours spent searching for candidates (think of CV screening) and, of course, reducing costs in the long run.
The advantages of digital recruiting
Therefore, what are the advantages of digital recruiting? Here are the most relevant ones, in our opinion (some of which have already emerged in the previous paragraph):
- A wider pool of candidates: domestic and international;
- high efficiency: every step of the selection process becomes more manageable thanks to recruiting software and Artificial Intelligence (for example, AI technology for HR such as Inda);
- High ROI: thanks to technology, you find candidates in the shortest possible time and using fewer resources;
- Improved employer Branding: a company that uses digital recruiting and can better manage the relationship with candidates becomes more attractive;
- improved candidate management: for those who apply for your company, having feedback when you receive the CV, being able to manage the interview online, having information on the progress of the selection process and much more are key aspects. Therefore, digital recruiting also improves the candidate experience;
- less burnout for HR: taking less time to do tedious tasks, being able to work collaboratively, and being able to manage each step better contribute to a better team mood and less stress for each selection.
How to build a “successful” digital recruiting strategy: 5 tips
Creating, developing and launching your own digital recruiting strategy, as we have seen, offers many advantages. But how to do it in practice? And how best to manage each stage?
Here are a few tips.
1. Focus on content
Doing social recruiting, using mobile, making use of the blog to tell what the company does and the people who work there involves leaving nothing to chance. Therefore, to accompany the recruiting strategy, there must be a content strategy with an editorial plan to ensure constant content production.
To do this, it is critical that HR collaborate with social and web editors on the site. Don’t overlook this because every time you post an ad on LinkedIn, if your company communicates even when it doesn’t have active searches, it will be easier to get applications. You will in fact have people following the company page, commenting or otherwise knowing what the company does, what values it is inspired by, what initiatives it pursues, and so on.
Content planning, therefore, allows you to identify both types of interviews with CEOs and managers, case histories, data, people from the company, etc.-as well as the most appropriate channels: blog, website, social media, guest blogging (i.e., on partner sites), newsletter, WhatsApp broadcast, Telegram channel, etc.
In addition, if such content is written from an SEO perspective it will be easily found on search engines when the prospect searches for information about the company or a topic you mentioned.
2. Build a strong social media presence
We have seen this with the data released by We Are Social: people are increasingly on social and yes, even looking for jobs. So a digital strategy cannot leave out these powerful means of communication. But even then one must choose the right ones and try to preside over them continuously. It is useless to open a YouTube channel if videos are published only when there is a company convention, that is, once a year. Rather, you need to understand what resources you can use and where your audience is. This applies to communication in general as well as to communication about the HR function.
Having an outdated LinkedIn page, as we said, is an autogoal, even for finding new candidates.
3. Use ATS software
Building a successful digital recruiting strategy also involves using ATS software. Why? Because it allows you to do so many things, such as tracking various recruiting-related metrics, keeping track of which channels worked in the case of multiposting, assessing candidate satisfaction, calculating how each selection went, and having a “numerical” view that helps you do better.
Un software ATS inoltre aiuta molto anche dal punto di vista dei “contenuti”: puoi creare annunci ottimizzati in ottica SEO pertanto facilmente reperibili online, puoi impostare un’email di risposta a chi si è candidato, puoi fissare l’appuntamento per il colloquio in modalità semplice e immediata, puoi integrare fisico e digitale utilizzando un QR Code, puoi creare questionari personalizzati, fare una ricerca semantica e tanto altro.
Per saperne di più ti consigliamo di dare un’occhiata alle funzionalità di Inrecruiting.
An ATS software also helps a lot from a “content” point of view: you can create SEO-optimized ads that are easily found online, you can set up a response email to those who applied, you can set up an appointment for the interview in a simple and immediate way, you can integrate physical and digital using a QR Code, you can create customized questionnaires, do semantic research, and much more.
To learn more, we recommend you take a look at Inrecruiting’s features.
4. Make your company attractive as a place to work
One aspect that should not be overlooked is Employer Branding and making your company a place where everyone would like to work. Content certainly helps in this, but not only that: you have to work a lot on not only what you communicate but also how you communicate it. One thing to check with content marketers and social media people in the company is whether there is consistency between how the company communicates with its customers and with potential candidates.
Having a unique, clear, distinguishable voice helps ensure that the company is recognizable and sticks in people’s minds. As well as conveying content more profitably.
5. Train and inform the HR team
Everything we have just said should not be the preserve of the HR manager alone, but it should affect the entire HR team, which should be trained both in the use of software and generally informed about everything related to digital recruiting strategy. Each person must be clear on what the long-term, medium-term and short-term goals are, and understand what the channels are as well as how they are used.
A far from trivial aspect of building a successful digital recruiting strategy.
