6 ways job portals can beat social media

 
Nearly 55 per cent recruiters rated job portals as the most preferred source of hiring in a survey conducted by TimesJobs. With rapidly evolving recruitment processes, recruiters’ expectations from job portals have raised. The growing popularity of social media for recruitment is unable to overshadow the necessity of job portals

The key features which differentiate various job portals are quality of candidate database across functions and roles, details of skill-sets, user interface of the portal, search filters, ease of navigation for search and uploading of positions and speed of retrieval of relevant profiles.

Industry experts believe social media is one of the mediums to search good talent but this medium is not self-sufficient to provide best solutions to companies. “The reason being, the type of information required by employers is not catered to in the best fashion. These mediums are useful only for a dip check of the talent,” informs Vikas Malhotra, head HR, M3M India Pvt Ltd.

As a recruiter, what are the things a modern-day job portal should have to fit the bill? Amit Das, president and CHRO, Reliance Communications share 6 things which will give job portals an edge over social media, from both the candidate and the employer perspective:

1. Job portals should ensure that the candidates update their profiles regularly/periodically so that prospective employers will always get an updated profile and not an outdated/old version. This will be a win-win situation for candidates, employers and the portal, which will significantly enhance the conversion rates. Candidate profiles which have not been updated for more than a year should be filtered out during the search process in order to save time and effort for the recruiters.
2. Job portals should use smart search engines which only throw up relevant profiles. For example, the smart filter asks for specific skill-sets but doesn’t ask for the past experience in that particular skill. A CIO’s profile mentions Java in a project which he may have worked on 15 years ago. But his profile may still get picked up for a Sr Java Engineer position which requires similar qualifications and experience. Therefore, it should ask for experience of specific skill-sets in the recent couple of years.
3. Job portals need to provide value added services for their clients like industry specific job descriptions for comparators, CTCs being offered, competencies to be evaluated and psychometric tools at a preferential rate.
4. From the candidate perspective, job portals should invite them to update their profiles regularly and have a loyalty program around it, which subsequently upgrades them to a premium account. The profiles of all premium account members should be accompanied with a psychometric assessment report, which can be shared with prospective employers with the consent of the candidate. Job portals should have the functionality to help track the selection rate of candidates.
5. Job Portals should make their presence at social media sites through teaser campaigns to cast a much wider net on prospective candidates.
6. Job portals are unable to attract candidates at senior levels and those with specialized/niche skills, which restricts adequate availability of niche and senior leadership profiles. They should work towards tapping this talent pool. As most recruiters come to job portals, largely, for junior and mid level hiring.

Posted in: Social Media