How Recruitment Technologies Advanced Skills-Based Hiring

Like nature versus nurture, the experience versus skills debate is age-old, especially among hiring managers and recruitment professionals. 

Given the dynamism and fast pace of business today, the balance seems to be tipping in the favor of skills.  

Curiosity, coupled with a desire and hunger to keep upskilling and learning is fast becoming the number one priority for workers, and job seekers today.

That’s not to say experience is no longer valued; it’s just that technology has changed the way companies screen and rank job candidates to find applicants with the right skills quickly. New recruitment technology has the ability to drill down further, better analyze, and rate, the professional skills of candidates. 

Right skills for the right results 

While many of us were told to shine a bright light on work experience in our resumes, it’s no longer the primary focus – indeed, many recruiters advise candidates to push job skills to the top of their CVs. 

“Candidates with the right skill set - rather than the right experience - are more likely to help businesses achieve their targets and goals” is the prevailing thinking among many hiring managers today. 

In today’s hyper fast-changing results-oriented business world, candidates with the right skills, and who have a track record of constantly updating their knowledge and competency base, are more valued than people with years of experience performing similar functions within the same department. 

Employers want candidates who will keep their business or organization moving forward, often challenging the status quo, with a broad range of competencies whether talent-focused or personality-linked soft skills. 

Soft skills should not be underestimated. Because while a candidate may be technically gifted, they won’t add value to a business if they can’t communicate, manage stress, or are unreliable and difficult to work alongside. 

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What are the “hot” job skills today?

To highlight the “hot” skills in the job market today, renowned recruitment and reviews website, Glassdoor, recently identified the skill requirements that appear the most among postings for the site’s “top-50 Best Jobs.” 

The top technical skills today are:

Machine learning: understanding computer systems and algorithms that are able to learn and adapt automatically to user experiences and perform complex tasks

Distributed computing: linking together multiple computer systems over a shared network so they can collaborate, communicate and work together

Time series analysis: analyze a data sequence indexed in time order to extract statistics and other data characteristics

Statistical modeling: building a mathematical model that reflects statistical assumptions generated from sample data

Usability testing: evaluating a product or service by testing it out with users

And the most in-demand non-technical skills are: 

Product management: guiding each step of a product’s lifecycle from development and planning to execution and pricing

Contract administration: planning, negotiating, and managing contracts made with customers, vendors, partners, or employees

Project management: organizing resources to guide a specific task or event toward completion and lead a team to achieve project goals

Business planning: creating a roadmap that outlines the goals and functions of a business, showing critical thinking and close attention to detail

Account management: overseeing and nurturing a company’s client relationships and strengthening a company’s sales structure

How technology improves skill analysis 

Whether adopting a recruitment app or a Human Resource Information System (HRIS) solution, progressive hiring managers can use technology to improve their processes, measure aptitude, and analyze a candidate’s skill set to run strategic, more targeted recruitment programs. 

In simple terms, a Recruitment App or Applicant Tracking System (ATS) is a program that tracks and evaluates job applicants. ATS functions and technologies address the common issues associated with manual recruitment tasks such as posting job openings on sites, matching keywords, screening resumes, as well as storing, organizing, and protecting data.

By comparison, HRIS solutions are more “generalist” than ATS offerings. HRIS options are designed to integrate HR and IT to enable common HR tasks to be performed and tracked digitally. 

While HRIS software is seen as a “one-stop” solution for HR teams, it doesn’t offer enough specialist functionality to support sophisticated recruitment programs. HRIS offerings, for example, are built for desktops, not mobile phones or devices. This is a major recruitment barrier because the majority of job hunters today, prefer mobile channels to find and apply for jobs. 

ATS solutions are accessible on all devices and help recruiters better organize candidates and drill down on their skills in the following ways:

• Collect information, organize prospects based on education, experience, skillset, and filter applicants for the most qualified candidates 
• Sophisticated solutions use AI to screen and sort candidate resumes by scanning resumes, looking for keyword matches, and using other algorithms for data analysis
• This makes it easy to search and filter resumes and other candidate information, to save time in finding the best candidates 
• Recruiters and hiring managers can also view and share data easily thanks to user-friendly dashboards and configurable workflows including KPIs and industry benchmarks

In short, ATS solutions dig deeper into the job candidate’s skill base looking closely at how they applied skills in real case studies and the outcomes they achieved.

ATS offerings also enable recruitment teams and hiring managers to share feedback about a candidate easily, from all devices. Post-sorting resumes and identifying the best candidates, ATS platforms can add value in organizing employees by the percentage of effectiveness in the role, to handling the onboarding process of incoming workers.

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Have skills work from anywhere  

Forced to learn online since the pandemic, many graduates and first job seekers probably view working 9 to 5 in an office, five days a week, as a quaint tradition from a bygone era. 

They’re not the only ones because 61% of people working from home today say they’re not going back to their workplace because they don’t want to. This was a key finding from a recent survey run by the Pew Research Center in the U.S. 

In addition, 78% of people mostly working from home want to continue doing so after the pandemic, for a variety of reasons including health, commuting, and child care factors. 

Work from home or work from anywhere is no longer the exception in the workplace, which is good news for job seekers with in-demand skillsets. 

The world is their oyster, as recruiters and HR managers embrace boundaryless hiring – finding and appointing top talent regardless of where they live. 

Talent on demand 

It’s not just remote working that is here to stay, flexible or open talent models are also expected to become more widely adopted. Under flexible or open models, the options are wide-ranging from local freelancers operating in your workspace to tapping contractors and experts in different cities, regions, and continents. 

It offers the best of both worlds – organizations can access top talent across borders and time zones, while workers enjoy flexibility and self-control of their time. 

Agility is another benefit for companies. Flexible, or open talent approaches, allow them to scale up quickly according to business activity and available talent. They can also tap talent that is unavailable in their market – or outsource projects instead of hiring full-time staff or teams. 

Remote, flexible, and open working options are enabled by new recruitment technologies that push skills to the fore. Using ATS solutions that search for, and pull out the specific skills of candidates, hiring managers can quickly sift and list the job seekers who most closely match the requirements of a job or project. 

Browse through our collection of ready-to-use job description templates to ease your hiring.

Candidate and recruiter friendly

From the candidate’s perspective, ATS solutions appeal because they are mobile-friendly and often straightforward to use – key benefits for job seekers and recruiters include: 

Easy online application: Attracting a global talent pool requires a simple, mobile-friendly application process. An overly-complicated application page is a turn-off and many applicants who have a poor first impression would not go any further.

Applicant screening: No more manual checking and sorting of resumes – ATS allows HR workers to apply filters based on education, skills, and experience to quickly find the best candidates according to the specific needs of a role. 

Candidate database: An ATS solution often provides a centralized data system gathering all applications, including those who were screened out – they all go into a central “talent pool” to be accessed for future openings. HR teams can also find and suggest more suitable job offers to candidates who were initially screened out. 

Instant messaging and communications: Hiring managers can use ATS tools to schedule interviews at the most appropriate times, set up online interviews for local and offshore candidates in a centralized space. 

Onboarding: ATS tools also streamline the onboarding experience to help new hires – full-time or contracting – receive and view company policies, videos, and documents about company history and culture.

Get to know candidates better: ATS solutions can also be used to build a bigger, clearer picture of candidates. For example, they can build profiles by integrating and analyzing the candidate’s online footprint covering websites, news channels, and social media. 

Manatal users can create a new candidate using the software, and as soon as they do that, the AI tools browse the web in search of data on more than 20 social media platforms. This feature allows recruiters to get to know their candidates, their capabilities, and their goals. Once integrated, the platform displays all of the information from the candidate’s social media accounts on a single page.

How, why, where, and when we work has changed forever  

From the many HR-focused media stories and recruitment surveys published over the past 12 months, the hiring market has transformed since 2020. 

The “Great Resignation” for example, clearly indicates that many workers around the world are re-thinking how, why, where, and when they work. In some cases, they are re-evaluating to see how they can achieve a better quality of life, or work-life balance, or a more rewarding career path over the long term to avoid burnout. 

Trends like this underscore the importance of taking a long-term view on people management best practices. In the near term, companies that continue to run legacy hiring systems will struggle to compete in the talent market – especially if they want workers or teams with in-demand skills and capabilities. 

Candidates with strong skill sets, and project management expertise, can afford to be somewhat picky and selective. Their perception of a company starts from the application process – if yours is deemed clunky and painful to use, they will probably consider other jobs or projects ahead of yours. 

Modernize and mobilize with Manatal

ATS solutions enable companies of all sizes to provide a modern, fast, user-friendly online application process. If your company is in the market for recruitment software, there are many options available today. 

While many are more geared towards large corporations, Manatal is suitable for companies and organizations of all sizes. Manatal’s recruitment solution offers:

• Cloud-based services
• State-of-the-art technology 
• Collaboration tools to involve as many recruitment staff, hiring managers, and HR team members as you want

Manatal’s software is designed to simplify and speed up every part of the hiring process. Accessibility and affordability are other important features of Manatal’s three packages.

1. The Professional Plan for $15.00/month. For smaller operations, this is the perfect recruitment app plan that won’t break the bank. The plan includes as many as 15 jobs per account, unlimited hiring managers, and more. 

2. The Enterprise Plan for $35.00/month. Growing companies and middle-to-large operations may consider the Enterprise Plan. This package includes unlimited candidates, hiring managers, and jobs for a very reasonable price. 

3. The Custom Plan. This option enables companies to tailor a plan for their specific needs – it includes everything available in the Enterprise Plan with other customized features. 

Manatal solutions enable and empower recruiters, managers, and others in the hiring process to spend more effort on added value tasks such as getting to know candidates better, and less on repetitive, time-consuming tasks that are prone to human error.

Leveraging the best available ATS will fast-track your talent development programs in the near and medium-term and we invite you to start your 14-day Free Trial today.