How Recruitment Marketing Can Create an Effective Virtual Hiring Process

We live in an unprecedented recruitment marketing era. The convergence of new technology combines with the unpredictability of the COVID-19 pandemic. This has created an environment in which no one knows what to expect, or how to leverage it. 

That might be why, according to some estimates, an expected 85 million jobs will go unfilled by 2030, leading to trillions of business costs. The emergence of future jobs will require new needs that companies don’t know how to train for. Moreover, they’re not sure how to leverage recruitment marketing in a way that prevents this in the first place.

That said, a solid recruitment marketing foundation can go a long way towards creating an effective virtual hiring process preparing your organization for both the present and the future. Before we get into those details, let’s cover some basics in the modern environment.

Explaining the Hype Cycle of Human Capital Development

Regardless of its application, new technology tends to form a familiar pattern. Its introduction leads to unrealistic expectations, which inevitably leads to disappointment when expectations can’t possibly be reached. That disappointment, however, forms a more realistic set of expectations, leading to consistent productivity once the technology’s benefits are optimized and implemented.

Developed by the thought leaders at Gartner, this is what’s become known as the Hype Cycle of New Technology. It can play a significant role in human capital development, as well.

In one recent forecast, Gartner estimated that by 2025, 60% of organizations will have invested in a cloud-based human capital management technology suite. Different technologies within that suite, of course, are on different slopes of the hype cycle. Some are especially relevant to talent recruitment:

  • AI in talent acquisition is still in the inflated expectation upswing, estimated to reach peak productivity in 5 to 10 years.
  • Virtual assistants in recruiting are on the same upswing but estimated to reach their productivity peak in 2 to 5 years.
  • Video recruiting, onboarding, and recruitment marketing, are all on the slope of enlightenment, on their way to peaking productivity within the next five years.

Put differently, more advanced recruitment technologies like AI and virtual recruitment assistants may be receiving all the hype right now, but that hype has not yet translated to actual business benefits. Recruiting video and recruitment marketing, on the other hand, are realistic and desirable technologies to implement now to improve recruitment practices.

recruiting video

The Impacts of Virtual Hiring Practices

Consider the above technology trends in virtual hiring as the background. They matter now more than ever because COVID-19 has moved talent acquisition into the digital space, with few disillusions that a non-virtual recruitment funnel will ever truly return.

According to the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), 70% of hiring managers believe that fully and partially virtual hiring practices are here to stay even beyond COVID. As one industry professional put it,

“Job interviews will largely continue to be conducted virtually. Even for businesses resuming in-person operations, I expect that virtual and automated interviews will instead replace many in-person touch points, helping to accelerate timelines while also providing a critical layer of safety as we continue to observe social distancing rules.”

Over the past year, virtual recruitment has become the expectation among both job seekers and industry-leading employers. The problem, of course, is that not everyone was or is prepared for that seismic shift.

Think about it from your own organizational and internal HR perspective. Can you interview candidates effectively using only virtual technology? Can you provide a realistic preview of what the job will entail, and can you build effective training modules to prepare new hires for that job?

For too many organizations, the answer is not an automatic yes. That, in turn, leads to dissatisfied employees and high turnover rates. The SHRM, for its part, expects general turnover rates to skyrocket once the pandemic ends and immediate income needs are replaced once again by long-term satisfaction measures. The business costs of that trend could be massive.

How Recruiting Videos and Immersive Recruitment Marketing Can Solve Virtual Hiring Challenges

Fortunately, that horror scenario does not have to be the default. Preparing your company for a comprehensive virtual hiring strategy now can pay significant dividends later.

This is where the hype cycle of human capital development comes back into play. Certain technologies, from video recruiting to digital onboarding, are available now, on the slope of enlightenment, and moving towards peak productivity. You just need to know how to leverage them. 

How Simple Videos Can Make a Significant Impact

Let’s start with the basics. Video can be a crucial piece in recruitment marketing but still tends to be underutilized. You can use it in a few different ways as your candidates move through the recruitment funnel:

  • Create a basic overview of your company’s mission and culture.
  • Introduce other members of the team with whom the position will interface.
  • Embed videos with more depth about responsibilities into job postings.
  • Use video summaries and explainers to promote the job on social media and other digital channels.

To accomplish these goals, of course, your videos will need to be high-quality and represent your organization well. But as long as that’s the case, and as Gartner’s curve shows, simple integration of video throughout your virtual hiring cycle can go a long way.

Immersive Visuals to Communicate Space and Culture

Of course, your recruitment marketing efforts can and should go beyond simple videos or images. More interactive opportunities allow you to truly showcase your company in two central ways:

  • Show the space in which your employees work, and into which new hires would be introduced. That effort can knock down some of the barriers between candidates and their future jobs that naturally exist when recruitment is fully or largely virtual.
  • Leverage visuals, especially interactive visuals, to showcase your company’s culture. Show off your communal spaces, allow your teams to talk on your organization’s behalf, and emphasize the artifacts that make your culture unique and desirable.

The more immersive these visuals are, the better. Simple videos are a great start. But what if candidates could interact with each medium, taking an active role in exploring their potential future employer? What is undeniably desirable in the early recruiting stages becomes a necessary step when it comes to the latter stages of your virtual hiring processes.

Virtual Reality Environments Designed to Improve Onboarding and Training

Speaking of which: let’s talk a bit more about the need for virtual onboarding as part of your recruitment marketing. This piece becomes truly crucial if you want to avoid the turnover rate spikes expected if you cannot give your potential candidate a realistic virtual preview, preparation, and training for their future jobs.

Here, experts at the SHRM recommend virtual reality technology as the most effective digital onboarding method. It’s an effective way to allow your new talent to truly immersive themselves into their future work environment, previewing your company in ways that would be otherwise impossible.

These are not temporary benefits necessitated only by COVID-19, either. As explained in one recent article, in light of necessary COVID-19 changes, the positive effects of VR training won’t go away with the end of the pandemic:

According to the study, it takes about two hours to complete classroom instruction, 45 minutes for an online course and 29 minutes of VR training to teach the same content. Further, the managers receiving VR training said they felt more connected to what they learned and more confident about using those skills than if they had learned them in a classroom or in an online learning module.

In other words, the effectiveness of VR training and onboarding will remain in place. That’s why industry leaders like PwC have fully embraced the concept, making it a core part of their recruitment marketing efforts.

Creating a Comprehensive Recruitment Strategy With the Help of Virtual Tours

As is the case with so many aspects of business, the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated virtual hiring trends that would have been upon us regardless. That introduces undeniable challenges, but also comes with significant opportunities. HR professionals who are aware of and can pivot towards these trends can build strategies specifically to recruit and retain high-level talent within their industry and expertise.

The key to success: leveraging human capital management technology that’s on the slope of enlightenment. And that’s where virtual tours enter the equation.

Virtual tours, of course, are not a magic bullet that will automatically fix all of your virtual recruitment needs. However, implemented correctly, they can play a core role in your recruitment marketing strategy.  They can provide that realistic preview, communicate your culture, and build immersive experiences for potential employees.

You can even use them as hubs to showcase some of your other recruitment videos, creating comprehensive virtual environments specifically designed to increase and improve your hiring processes in a digital environment.

Of course, you need the right software platform to make that happen. Concept3D has worked with many other clients on tours designed for recruitment marketing, and our experience can help you move further into the virtual hiring space. Contact us today to learn more about our work and start the conversation about a potential partnership.

By |2021-08-16T04:12:20-06:00April 19, 2021|Business Enterprise|0 Comments

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