WFH and the shift to recruiting from a global workforce

The Covid-19 pandemic has created a permanent change in the workplace and experts predict there will be little going back. From a global perspective, 25-30% of the workforce is expected to work remotely this year alone.

This shift to remote work has huge implications for recruiting and has effectively made traditional recruiting obsolete. To engage a global workforce, recruiters need robust recruiting software that automates standard procedures and reaches across the globe to find remote workers who are the right fit for the jobs.

A new type of worker

Along with the shift to remote work and drawing from a global pool of contingent workers has come a variety of dominant positions: freelance, contract, consultant, part-time, independent contractors, temp workers and seasonal workers.

 Statista projects that 85.6 million people will be freelancing in the US alone by 2027, making up over half of the entire US workforce.

A study by the Page Group According showed only 26% of respondents in South Africa worked from home before the pandemic. Due to the lockdown, the number of respondents working remotely jumped to 79%. Although some are expected to go to the office for a set number of days, 71% of job applicants thought working remotely will be more important than ever before.

A new way to reach candidates

As organisations move away from a centralised company location, posting on local job boards will no longer cut it. Similarly, candidates no longer care about an employer’s location and want the freedom to live and work from where they want. This means recruiters must widen the net and target workers looking for remote work on remote-specific job board platforms.

 To find the right talent directly, job marketing automation tools such as Neptune can publish your job openings to search engines, social platforms, and job board aggregators, both locally and internationally. It can create automated talent pipelines and manage external talent suppliers, simplifying the recruitment process from start to finish.

Automating screening and validating candidates

In this new recruitment environment, in-person interviews have become a thing of the past. That doesn’t mean employers should miss out on face-to-face interviews with potential candidates two continents away.

 Using recruitment software, recruiters and employers can maximise candidate accessibility via video interviews, interview templates and scorecards. Assessment and background checking service integrations will allow for rigorous applicant appraisals.

 Multi-channel engagement includes making use of mobile chatbots for high-volume campaign management. Think SMS, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and other mobile web channels. These tools enable instant communication between recruiter and applicants located globally.

Conclusion

The benefits of tapping into a global, remote talent pool outweigh hiring locally as it gives recruiters access to large numbers of candidates from where they can pick and choose high-quality candidates. The downside is that recruiters could now receive thousands of applications for remote positions.

graylink’s job recruiting software can securely ramp up the AWS infrastructure to handle the potentially 100,000s of applications that come in. The result is a workable pool of highly suitable candidates to choose from.