Recruiting in the digital era

We are now firmly embossed in the digital era and as a consequence many industries have been transformed in one way or another. In the ‘old days’ being headhunted by a potential employer was considered as the ultimate encomium and was often referred to as being ‘poached.’ Nowadays with the arrival and immense growth of the headhunting digital platforms like LinkedIn, employers can poach and head hunt potential employees to their heart’s content.

Has the explosion of the online recruitment platforms meant that ‘traditional’ forms of recruitment have taken a backseat?

Not necessarily.

The savviest recruitment agencies are using the internet to their advantage. Candidates in the digital era might be more visible than ever before but this visibility can be exploited by everybody – agencies and clients alike.

The same way an employer might trawl through the social media channels looking for suitable candidates to fill a vacancy in his or her company; the shrewdest agencies are doing the same. This effectively makes a recruitment agent’s job simpler as it means that they literally have access to a wealth of suitable candidates at their fingertips. Instead of waiting for a jobseeker to come trundling through the recruitment agency’s doors that just might have the skills and experience to fit a sales position that came up last week, professional virtual networks means that recruitment agents have the potential to find qualified candidates more easily and fill a position much quicker.

Graduate recruitment

Earlier this year, High Fliers Research conducted a survey of the intentions of the 100 largest organisations in the UK recruiting graduates. These graduate recruiters included Marks & Spencer, Oxfam, MI5 and Apple. The survey concluded that there has been a 4.6% increase in the hiring of graduates in the UK and that the number of graduates being recruited when they come out of university is at its highest level since 2008.

‘Bricks and mortar’ recruitment agencies are still proving to play a pivotal role in helping graduates find work. Many employment agencies cover a vast range of graduate level roles in a number of different industries. These industries can be as diverse as public relations and marketing, to engineering and construction.

Unlike the pre-digital era in which a graduate or any job seeker for that matter would have to physically take their CV into a recruitment agency or send it by post, the internet has made it the process of sending and receiving CVs infinitely easier and less time consuming.

Graduates simply have to send their CVs to an employment agent or recruiter electronically. The agent can then open the document, read it and deem what kind of roles the graduate will be suited to and then register the graduate onto the agency’s books.

Likewise registering to a recruitment agency can also be done by the comfort of a job seeker’s armchair. Whatever a candidates’ employment status, whether they have recently graduated from university and are looking for their first job or are wanting a complete change of career, jobseekers can simply visit an employment agency’s website, fill out their details and register and then upload their CV so that it is ready to be saved on the candidate database.

We cannot deny that the digital age has revolutionised the recruitment industry. Once upon a time fresh graduates would feverishly paw the recruitment sections in the likes of the Telegraph and the Guardian. The Dot.com explosion has meant that candidates of any background, industry, educational-status and age, can search and apply for a myriad of jobs remotely.

In having almost instant access to the CVs and details of potential candidates, the recruitment agent’s job has also been modernised in the digital era. Savvy recruiters are exploiting the multitude of virtual platforms the online world offers and as the increase in the graduate employment is testament; both candidates and recruiters are lapping up the new recruitment tactics.