Understanding Talent Acquisition Technology: Need of The Hour In India

With the advent of technology and India becoming a job creation hub for multiple industries facilitated by the momentum of  campaigns like ‘Make in India’ , Human Resource leaders are now more than ever confronting the challenges of a mobile and a dynamic workforce equipped with multifaceted skills in this fast changing environment. Moreover with the increase in demand for talent due to changing business and technology landscape, it has become more imperative than ever for firms to identify and have access to the right talent at the right time.

NASSCOM has done a study which revealed that 26 percent of respondents are still using email archives to tackle new applicant databases while 66% respondents said that they do not have 100 percent mobile friendly corporate hiring site.

The study further revealed that though companies are willing to explore social media as a sourcing channel they are still largely dependent upon employee referrals as a reliable source for quality hires.  13% respondents stated that only 5% sourcing happens with social channels since their internal systems either do not support social integration or they are not sure of the same.

Raising awareness and knowledge on current recruitment tools was also identified as a challenge with corporations with 43% respondents stating their resources are not at par with the required knowledge around recruitment technology while 79% respondents stated spending less than 10 Hours in training their recruitment team on recruitment software.

Another startling fact is that the impact of the existing recruitment software on the entire hiring process with 47% respondents responding that there was either no impact or no improvement or on the contrary it created inefficiency in some way internally

When it comes to challenges, most companies identified that their current recruitment technology and analytics tool would not be enough to help them through the dynamic times of recruiting millennials. Other challenges like the inability to find the right talent at current location (36%), was also revealed followed by lack of eligible talent amongst the respondents.

At a workplace, technology is the key to drive growth and employees’ performance. It is imperative for a company’s Human Resources to use technology strategically to derive maximum productivity. Technology is needed in every aspect of HR to enhance the workforce experience by analyzing performance every month instead of once a year to measure productivity through data analytics. There lies an ample number of opportunities in deriving the maximum output from employees and for companies to redesign the entire process via technology.

Unfortunately, the adoption of the right technology is not high in India. Data is available through technology but how we analyze the data is the main issue. It should be customized to suit the needs of different companies and a need to consolidate them in order to simplify the process.

There are numerous tasks and processes that can be carried out in a simplified and an orderly manner under the vast umbrella of HR. Below are a few tips for adopting technology that can have a positive impact on organizations.

ROLE OF TECHNOLOGY IN RE-SHAPING WORKPLACE ETIQUETTES: Workplace etiquettes are changing, catalyzed by the evolving face of technology trends. The employees should not be boxed by the traditional workplace and time fundamental. Through internet technology and cloud computing, employees can achieve work-life balance as teams can connect from any location. This new age technology help employees to enable this flexibility and the work can happen from anywhere, anytime with the availability of smartphones, internet, and data cards.

PREASSESSMENT TOOLS FOR POTENTIAL EMPLOYEES: With the right tools and technology, organizations can easily extract information about a potential candidate’s psychology and personality. If done with the right tools, organizations can cut down the cost of hiring and would be able to extract the best talent quickly.

Online tools help organizations to perform employee screening, interpret, and improve potential employees without hurting the cost of hiring. These tools comprise of multi-competency analysis of the potential hiree, providing a complete picture of their skills and abilities to the hiring managers. These tools are still not fully explored by the organizations. However, if explored to the maximum potential, these tools will provide the ability in finding out the perfect matches for any organization.

CLOUD COMPUTING: There are umpteen opportunities when we talk about the possibilities of cloud computing.  Cloud Based Human Resource Management is expanding beyond the old management systems. These systems are cost effective, and will provide the support of functioning of various practices within an organization throughout the lifecycle. This also permits the HR personnel to cnduct extensive research to predict by understanding current scenarios and delivering new perspectives to the employees.

MOBILE APPLICATION: With billions of people having the access to smartphones, HR has started looking at how to build smartphone technology to enhance the HR practices. With feedback apps and networking tools taking over, the HR can fully explore the options of finding the perfect matches for the benefit of the organization.

TECHNOLOGY FOR TRAINING AND CERTIFICATION: The need to be physically present at the training venue, elaborate pre-planning and coordination with limited flexibility makes the training outdated. Moreover, the training does not capture the learnings from the session in a format that can be referred later. Online trainings can be seen as a savior in this scenario as it immensely helps HR to assess the need and effectiveness for their various training programmes and understand the knowledge of skill gap in their employees.

In a nutshell, there are umpteen opportunities in the HR sector owing to the rapid changes in technology. This is high time for the recruitment companies to adapt to technology in order to drive the growth and find perfect matches for the organization at the right time. Understanding the need of technology in the HR space will save time and cost of the organization.

Premlesh Machama
Managing Director, CareerBuilder