Recently, several healthcare staffing firms have announced that nurses can now become employed and find shifts without ever speaking to a live person. While we embrace technology, we believe that human connection is essential to the healthcare staffing industry. Scott Gutz, CEO of Monster agrees with us:
The recruiting industry is at an interesting inflection point. Like every industry, it’s become hyper-focused on data. How do we make more perfect matches between candidates and employers?
That’s a meaty and exciting problem to solve. But as we work toward it, we have to avoid becoming so obsessed with data that we forget the human element. A heavy reliance on tech overlooks the fact that recruiting is ultimately about establishing connections between human beings. Candidates and hiring managers alike are looking for partners who will help them grow long term—and work alongside them collaboratively every day.
The next generation of HR technology must leverage data and automation without neglecting the human elements necessary to make strong connections.
But tools only go so far. They can’t determine who will be the best fit for the organization. And the human connection makes the difference in closing a candidate—how you tell your company’s story, how well you understand what levers are most important to the candidate, and the rapport you build.
Half the recruiting process is attracting candidates with the right level of experience; the other half is determining whether the team in place can successfully interact with them.
Tech is certainly an asset in the first half, which I’ll call “discovery.” In travel, tech helped the discovery process by gathering data to pinpoint what would capture interest: Those who love luxury resort vacations might not respond to a camping excursion but may be thrilled by a yacht tour.
The filtering for the second half of recruiting—which is largely about cultural fit—needs to be enabled by the humans who will work alongside the candidates. The most successful recruiters will emphasize the human while leveraging technology’s value, and the most useful technology will enable human connections.
What’s disappointing is that HR technology investments have been spent overwhelmingly on tools to support the quantitative aspects of discovery without enabling the qualitative aspects of cultural fit.
So let’s think about how we could add human touches to both phases of recruiting. Some could be technology-enabled—for example, making an online job ad come alive with video of a human talking to a human. This would allow recruiters to show a fuller picture and enable candidates to self-select, resulting in higher-quality applications.
Technology could further filter with tools that give candidates more robust profiles of organizations based on factors they care about: performance within the industry, employees who have been successful, or typical schools they recruit from. Consider the effort people put into a one-week vacation: researching locations, comparing hotels, unearthing discounts, reading reviews. People devote hours to gathering as much information as possible to maximize their week away. They often can’t do the same with their careers; the information isn’t available. By making it accessible, recruiters can humanize their brands and help people put as much thought about where they’ll spend years of their life as they do their vacations.
Some cultural fit work will remain rooted in personal experiences. A company could invite two or three team members to provide their backgrounds and describe the work environment: “We’re really fast-paced” or “We prioritize autonomy.” Talking about their experiences, whether they’ve been there six months or 10 years, can help candidates answer their biggest question: Can I be happy here?
The human element of recruiting is how companies make the biggest impact and candidates leave their best impression. While the recruiting process may be built, in part, by robots, it has to be geared toward humans.
Read the entire article here: https://hiring.monster.com/hr/hr-best-practices/recruiting-hiring-advice/acquiring-job-candidates/Scott-Gutz-Chief-Executive-Officer-Human-Element-in-Recruiting.aspx?wt.mc_n=CRM_B2B_US_EN_Q418_ACQ_ACQ_STF_T1&sp_rid=ODQ3ODMwMTYxS0&sp_mid=2320203