Andri Granziol

Advantages and disadvantages of digital recruitment

In the age of digitalization, HR departments are expected to use the new media for recruitment as well. This certainly offers new opportunities and seems cost-effective - but it also harbours certain risks.

• When researching and addressing people via social networks, you can quickly get lost in the jungle of data. The time spent on finding and contacting a suitable candidate should not be underestimated.

• Interesting candidate profiles tend to be contacted more frequently, which reduces the probability of a positive response in the long run. HR therefore has to contact a correspondingly large number of candidates - even those with rudimentarily maintained profiles - and then identify them more precisely, takes a lot of time.

• Applicants who come to an interview via direct contact are in the passive applicant role and expect the job to be made appealing to them. In this case the company must 'market' itself and not the applicant - it is a completely different procedure compared with the classical application situation.

• Employer branding can be damaged by undirected enquiries: the addressed persons assume that their CV has not been properly evaluated and that the company therefore does not work professionally. Further contacts are then not desired.

In order to avoid an oversized expenditure of time and negative publicity, external personnel agencies, which are specialized exactly in it, are engaged more and more frequently.

• Due to their expertise, they can efficiently search the social networks and of course other channels, including their own database, for the profile they are looking for.

• They approach candidates independently of your company and often maintain contact over many years until a change of job becomes an issue.

• A complete qualification and aptitude test are just as much a part of the standard as the clarification of the candidates' motivation to change.

• Companies only receive suitable and interested candidates, which leads to a significantly higher interview quality and employment rate.

You can concentrate on your core business and delegate the time-consuming recruitment to professionals.