When my mom moved to the Helsinki region as a recent graduate and started looking for a job, she first went through the Sunday newspaper’s ”Job Section”, spotted the right opportunity and wrote her application (with a typewriter, of course). She would then take her application to the post office and send it to the potential employer.

After a month, the employer would send her a letter back saying they would call her to the phone booth close to her apartment on Monday at 3pm. She would stand there anxiously waiting for the call in pouring rain. In the call they would go through her background and she would be called in for an interview.

She would go through a few rounds of interviews and would receive her employment offer by mail. This incredibly fast process only lasted 2.5 months!

Welcome to the Future

Fast forward to 2016! Only last week I was giving some tips and tricks for a friend of mine who was looking for a new job. We took out our mobile phones and googled jobs in her industry, and figured out that some of the pages were totally unreadable, because there was no mobile-optimization and decided to ditch those.

We then checked if we could find them on Instagram and Facebook, and if there were any old employees sharing stories of the company online. I went to LinkedIn to see if I know anyone working in the company, maybe I could get a recommendation for my friend! And oh! The company even had a mobile-optimized online job application.

My friend took another 5 minutes to fill her application and to write a few words about herself. The company called her in two days and invited her for an interview; she was in her first interview only 4 days after sending her application. The company had clearly defined what they need and made her an offer after the second interview which was held 4 days after the first one.

Her outstanding recruitment process lasted less than two weeks.

Oh wow. When the first online applications, LinkedIn and other viral platforms for recruitment appeared they were only thought to supplement the traditional methods like a concrete paper CV and cover letter, as well as face-to-face interviews (remember that folder you always carried with you?).

However, what we can see in the industry – or rather what we saw in the industry already in the past – is a dramatic change towards digital recruitment. The change has already happened though, and digital recruitment is everywhere; with the current war for talent in the IT industry, only the companies with a real digital recruitment strategy will survive.

Well, what does it mean to do digital recruitment? In the paragraphs to come I will try to explain both the candidate and the employer perspectives of digital recruitment.

What Will They Think of You?

For the jobseekers the online CV has almost totally replaced the paper version. Now it represents a candidate’s personal portfolio, which is based on their personal online data.

Candidates can present their extracurricular participation in different communities, they can share links to their online publications and showcase courses and other learnings. This will also help the work of the hiring manager or the recruiter, as they have an easier time assessing the candidate’s cultural fit, ability to learn and their proactivity.

When it comes to the job search itself, 30% of all Google searches are employment related, which means you have 30 more good reasons to ask yourself, how do you rank in Google?

If you are a company looking for the next Android superstar to build an amazing product, you need to make sure your company is found in Google searches. It is also crucial to ask how you are present in social media, and is it the most relevant social media.

Do you spend most of your efforts finding excellent candidates on LinkedIn, when in reality the candidates are mostly in Stack Overflow? 74% of all job seekers between the ages 18-24 found their last job through social networks. Yes, it might not be your target age group and yes, a social network is more than just your social media followers, but it does represent a trend.

The Waiting Game

After having made sure you are present where you need to be, and with the right audience, you should consider how the applicant is making his journey to your applicant tracking system and to a hiring decision.

While the first story of my mom I told in the beginning of this post is real, the second is not. Even with all the tools available, I still haven’t encountered a company with such an outstanding recruitment process. Typically, a recruitment process takes about 1-2 months from start to finish in Finland. Now, imagine there is this superstar candidate you have wanted to hire for ages.

He has read about your company, followed you on social media and interacted. He sees your job ad on social media and makes the decision to apply. He enters your mobile-optimized website and starts filling the application. How easy have you made it for him? Especially in the IT field, the war for talent has led to a situation where the candidate sees job openings and opportunities everywhere, and he will easily pass on your opportunity if it is not easy and fast for him to apply.

Go and make your candidate’s journey. How easy is it to apply on mobile? How long does it take? How fast can they expect an answer from you? How fast will they get the final answer? If your answer to the last question is two weeks, please give me a call. If your answer is more than a month, check my colleague James’ post about Lean Recruitment.

It’s All About Communication Skills

The core of digital recruitment lies in interaction. Long gone are the days when you could post a job ad on the job board and wait for the applications to flood in from doors and windows. The younger generation, who grew up with technology, acts in a similar way to a consumer.

They research you and your brand, what people say of you and how you position yourself. You need to make sure you are constantly communicating your employer brand in order to attract them. Like the online CV of the candidate enables you to see their fit for your organisation, the candidates also evaluate their fit for your organisation through your image as an employer. Besides employer branding, you need to be active in reaching passive candidates.

A great way to get to them and to build that relationship is to be present where needed. For example, if your target audience goes to Slush, be there. Let them see you and get a feel for you. Nurture that relationship and one day that long-term investment will pay off and you’ll land that next superstar.

We’ve come a long way from paper applications and phone booth screenings, but for many companies there is still much to do and improve to make sure to get the best talent. To be on the top of your recruitment game, put yourself in your candidates’ shoes.

One good way is to ask people from the younger tech-savvy generation what they think of your presence in social media, what kind of image it gives of you as an employer and how they could apply.