How are you measuring success rates/conversions of qualified candidates?
As a pharmaceutical recruiter, it can be a challenge balancing what a client wants in a candidate and what a candidate wants in a job.
Candidate Experience
The qualified pharmaceutical candidate’s experience, beginning from their first point of contact with you, will have a dramatic impact on their decision to move forward with an opportunity. Even though you have every intention of putting your best foot forward, it can be difficult to keep track of candidates.
Mobile Friendly
If your firm is not mobile friendly, you might be missing out on as much as 50 percent of potential candidates. And not having a mobile platform can reflect negatively on an applicant’s opinion of your capability to successfully place them in a position.
If your job board is mobile friendly, but job seekers don’t have an option to apply via mobile platform – or the submission process is too detailed or intricate to complete – you’ll also see potential pharmaceutical candidates turn away.
Especially when targeting millennial qualified pharmaceutical candidates, it is imperative for your company to have a fully mobile-friendly site, including a one-click apply or application process with similar ease. Failing to do so can mean losing up to 50 percent of potential applications you would otherwise have received.
And your mobile-friendly site must be compatible with both Android and iOS operating systems.
Into the Void
You won’t win over any candidates if they feel their application is lost in the void. Feedback is not only valuable, but essential if you hope to provide a positive candidate experience.
Converting a ‘No’ Pharmaceutical or Biotech Candidate to a ‘Yes’ Candidate
Candidates need clarity, transparency and honesty in situations where they weren’t the candidate of choice. Don’t forget to look at the process from the applicant’s point of view. They’ve taken the effort to seek out your company or firm, complete and submit an application. By taking the time to address why they weren’t the successful pharmaceutical candidate will not only help them in their job search, it will help build a better relationship moving forward with the candidate. By providing clear feedback on your reasons, today’s ‘no’ candidate will better understand your decision and what they need to do to become tomorrow’s ‘yes.’
Technology Complications
Technology is great – when it works. When it doesn’t work, or when you aren’t able to fully utilize their features, technology can slow the candidate screening process, creating a negative candidate experience. The completion of long applications and profiles when first applying for a job is a sure-fire way to turn pharmaceutical candidates away. It’s an even bigger issue when you’re looking at students or recent grads who are completing applications with several pharmaceutical recruiters using different systems in one day.
Finding great pharmaceutical candidates is hard enough. By streamlining your technology and making the most of its built-in features, you can ensure a better candidate experience overall and move forward with placements at a faster rate than ever before.
Technology continues to enhance the biotech and pharmaceutical recruiting process and here are some trends to consider as a hiring manager or head hunter.
Technology can significantly enhance your recruiting process
Tablets/smartphones are replacing computers as preferred methods of electronic communication – especially among millennials. It’s already beginning to replace many web-based approaches and options.
One-Touch/Easy Apply
The ease of submitting an application from your phone is a convenience that shouldn’t be overlooked. Streamlining the initial application submission process to accommodate mobile-based applications is essential to staying relevant. A recruiting process that is mobile friendly should be everyone’s goal for 2017, especially if you’re interested in attracting top Gen Y talent.
Texting
Texting is slowly edging out phone communications, and as widespread acceptance grows across industries, the recruiter who offers text as an option for communication will stand to benefit greatly. While you may personally have a preference for a phone call or face-to-face communications, adapting to the changing needs of the workforce will help you reach the potential candidates you’re hoping to attract.
Is texting the new email? No but you can’t ignore it in today’s application process.
Recruitment Technology Software
Thanks to the complex and intricate algorithms used by recruitment technology developers, it’s becoming easier to identify, attract and assess pharmaceutical and biopharma candidates. And their 24-hour response options mean faster response to qualified candidates. With advancements in interview assessments, these data-driven systems offer more than increased accuracy; they can actually help you make faster placements. And that means happy clients.
Blind Resumes & CVs
The use of blind resumes and CVs increased in 2016, and it shows little signs of stopping now that 2017 has arrived. By removing inherent and institutional bias from the recruiting process, blind resumes and CVs increase merit-based diversity. They’ve also been shown to decrease the risk of bad hires. It’s here that algorithms will play a dominant role in blind resume & CV assessment and pharmaceuticals candidate evaluation. At the very least, you no longer need to include your address in your resume. Companies will generally email all but the most important documents and a physical address is no longer necessary.
Video
If a picture is worth a thousand words, a video is worth a million. Well, closer to two million words for one minute of video, according to Forrester Research. Add to that, increased odds at Google showing your content a little love and it’s easy to see why video is a powerful technology trend for 2017. Just look at this 5:50 minute YouTube video Google Interns First Week. It’s been viewed more than five million times and has nearly six thousand responses, like Aliana Welth’s most recent comment, “is this supposed to make me want to work for Google?…cause it’s working.”
Leveraging technology to become more competitive, cost-effective and efficient can help you stand out. By embracing technology trends, you’ll be telling biopharma and biotech candidates you’re relevant, and your vacancies are relevant. Implementing just one of these technology trends for 2017 can help you attract the right candidate, speed up your hiring process, and make more successful placements.
AI/Machine learning for automated résumé screening
Let’s face it. The bulk of applicants are not qualified for the job. By some measures 75% don’t have the qualification listed yet will still apply. This makes manual resume screening the most time consuming part of the interview process. New AI applications like Mya, the newest job recruiting and application tool and IBM’s Watson can substantially shorten the
AI Can streamline your qualifying process but you’ll still need recruiters
qualification and screening process though, be careful, as no digital tool can replace human instinct and computers can’t read between the lines very well. There is a potential to lose qualified candidates through the process.
Clearly, technology is changing the way we apply to jobs and screen candidates. Recruiting is still however, very much a human dependent process and its success is still predicated on traditional human interactions. Keep a balanced approach and add technology to avoid bottlenecks but keep a human touch throughout the recruiting process to avoid making it feel too sterile and non-personal.
