Recruiting for tech talent was never easy. Throw in a global pandemic and a sudden shift to remote work, and it’s no wonder recruiters are looking for extra support. As artificial intelligence and new digital capabilities drive increasing client expectations, many experts predict a skills shortage that will make it more difficult for recruiters to find the right candidates. Each of these challenges — combined with other obstacles like aligning expectations with hiring managers and navigating candidate offers and onboarding — contribute to significant bottlenecks in the hiring process, especially when a company wants to ramp up operations.
Below, we listed the top 3 challenges that HR or Talent Specialists face when recruiting niche tech talent and how Deeplo AI platform can help you overcome them.
1) No one is interested in the position
One of the biggest challenges companies face, especially when looking for highly specialized talent, is the lack of interest by candidates, which oftentimes results in extra costs and time for companies to spend on outsourcing recruitment agents to find the right talent. This is and will continue to be one big pain point for companies, as the demands for technical jobs are getting more and more complex.
To be more precise, let’s approach this from a traditional sales point of view, companies are the “merchant” trying to sell a “product” , which in this case is an unfilled job position, to candidates who are the potential “customer”. How can you sell a highly-technical product to a customer who has no or very limited knowledge about you (company) and your product (job position), except a typical job posting (product ads) that has a long list of requirements? In this case, unless you are a prominent company with a strong market position, you would have already scared of the candidate, whom if approached differently might have been an ideal candidate for the job.
Therefore, to attract niche talent, employers must rethink their recruitment approach and look for alternative ways to do employer branding. Remember, without attraction, there cannot be a consideration. This is where the important role of employer branding comes in.
Virtual Experience Programs are a great way to brand your company and attract niche talent. Candidates can now immerse themselves in your workplace and get a sense of what you do, how you do it, and what makes you unique. Rather than explain what it means to be an Data Architect at a software company, illustrate it through a series of videos and hypothetical tasks that simulate what the real life work would entail. Rather than publish articles explaining how your organization is more innovative than others, have your employees talk to participants, on demand, about the type of technology they use in their day to day.
2) You’re getting a ton of undifferentiated applications, but no one is aligned
No one wants to spend countless hours parsing through CVs. Quality matters more than quantity when it comes to job applicants, and oftentimes companies are bombarded with applications from undifferentiated talent. An effective job description and inside look at the company can help you avoid this recruitment challenge by weeding out talent that’s not a good fit.
*Example programs
Another way to deal with this is through setting a set of criteria such as minimum requirements or preferences for taking applications into consideration. This could easily be done through Virtual Experience Programs, through which companies can choose to prioritize the work-ready candidates, who are aligned with the company tools and way of working and have successfully finished Virtual Experience Program at Deeplo AI. In practice, VXP programs are way more efficient and realistic than motivation letters, as candidates prove their real motivation through their time, effort and commitment.
3) New hires are misaligned with the job
As if all prior recruitment challenges weren’t enough, another but a very significant bottleneck is buyer’s remorse; which is a classic symptom of an interview process that fails to give a realistic preview of what the job entails and what it’s like inside your organization. A reported 3 in 5 job seekers and employees felt the reality of the job did not match their expectations and what they were sold at the recruitment stage.
To avoid buyer’s remorse and create an effective talent-seeking process, companies need to make crystal clear what is expected of the candidates, provide them an inside look by demystifying their workplace, and present the nuance of work before hiring them. This way, they also prevent the possibility of a misalignment and successfully engage a stream of talent aligned with your company values. VXP programs help you be on the same page with your potential candidates by creating an open-access, online work simulation that represents a realistic preview of your company.
So now that you know the 3 challenges of tech recruitment and why virtual experience programs should be your new recruiting tool, what are you waiting for? It is a very unique and revolutionary way to approach talent acquisition. Want to learn more? Book a free demo!
