In these post-COVID times, the talent war seems to have intensified, and expecting to increase hiring by 51%.

The urgent need for digitization and confined demand have amplified the need for talent across industries. Recruiters are thus up against an incredible challenge. Needless to say, fast movers will get an advantage in hiring and onboarding quality talent.

HR departments can service their businesses satisfactorily only by adopting technology and optimizing their processes. One of the tools that can help recruiters achieve high recruitment mandates is a virtual recruiting assistant. 

In this blog, we will explore what a virtual assistant recruiter is and how it can help in different stages of the hiring process.

What is a Virtual Assistant Recruiter?

While hiring for their organizations, recruiters have to carry out multiple operational tasks.

For instance, they have to invite applications, screen the candidates and have first-level discussions, schedule interviews, and answer the questions of candidates. All these tasks slow them down.

A virtual assistant recruiter is a chatbot or technological platform that assists recruiters in making hiring an efficient process.

It reduces the operational workload of recruiters and allows them to focus on more meaningful aspects of their jobs, like engaging the candidates and spending more time with the hiring managers to understand their requirements.

How Does a Virtual Assistant Recruiter Help?

Following are the different areas in which a virtual recruiting assistant can help:

1. Enhance Candidate Search 

Chatbots are effective in connecting with passive candidates. This is the creamiest layer of talent that is not looking for work actively. Although they may not be looking for a job change, they can definitely be engaged for a future position.

However, they may not be comfortable talking to a recruiter as that demands some level of commitment. This is where a virtual recruiting assistant can make a difference.

Passive candidates can communicate with the chatbot to understand the current vacancies, company culture, and salaries without real commitment.

2. Manage Candidate Database

One of the problems recruiters face is of managing their existing database. It becomes more pronounced in large organizations where the hiring numbers are high. This is where hiring an assistant can make an incredible difference. 

Chatbots can help find suitable candidates from the database using keyword searches. Moreover, this virtual assistant recruitment system can also engage with them for fresh requirements.

This will speed up hiring and reduce the recruiters’ effort to approach these candidates through emails and phone calls.

3. Screen Applications

On average, recruiters receive 250 resumes for every open position. One can very well imagine the number of applications to be screened every month.

Due to the time crunch, recruiters spend only 6-7 seconds screening each resume. This can lead to the rejection of suitable applications simply because they are not in an appropriate format or do not have enough information.

A chatbot is like a work speed virtual assistant that can ask first-level questions and screen the candidates efficiently. This process can eliminate all the unqualified candidates even before they reach human eyes.

Moreover, chatbots can also rank and score applications for recruiters to approach only the best candidates.

4. Schedule In-Person Interviews

Once recruiters have identified the most qualified candidates they would like to meet, the next step is to invite them for interviews.

Calling all of them and scheduling interviews is a lengthy process. It not only takes time, but the to-and-fro can also disengage candidates.

Chatbots are more efficient as they can coordinate with hiring managers and candidates to set up interviews at their convenience.

5. Provide Candidate Feedback

One of the things that disengage candidates is not receiving feedback after their initial discussions or interviews.

As per a survey, almost 70% of candidates do not receive any communication after they have been rejected. Further, one in two candidates does not get any information after screening or interview rounds. 

Candidates prefer to hear back even when they have not made it. Such communication helps them focus on other job opportunities. Recruiters often do not have the bandwidth to share this information when they are already doing so much.

A virtual assistant recruitment system can automate this communication and share frequent updates to apprise the candidates.

6. Schedule Candidate Follow-Ups

Another task that slows recruiters down is following up with candidates who are in the interview process. The follow-ups can be to take assessments or to submit some documents. In some cases, recruiters also have to follow up for an interview date. 

With the number of positions recruiters are working on, looking into these aspects becomes tedious. A work speed virtual assistant like a chatbot can automate these steps and take charge of following up with the applicants.

7. Manage Data for Referral Programs

Referral programs are one of the best ways to source qualified candidates. These programs encourage your employees to refer their friends, ex-colleagues, and family members to apply for open positions.

The success rate at hiring qualified candidates is usually high in these cases as the employees can conv ince passive candidates to apply.

However, referral programs require a lot of data management. For instance, you have to identify if the candidate coming through this route is already there in your database or not. If yes, was this person interviewed earlier and rejected for some reason?

Moreover, you will have to keep track of the employees whose referrals have been onboarded to give them a suitable reward. A virtual recruiting assistant can make this process easier. 

8. Generate To-Do Lists

Finally, a virtual recruiting assistant can keep track of the stages the candidates are at in the hiring process. The dashboard view can quickly tell the recruiters what they need to do with each applicant.

This is a huge support as they do not have to manually track and remember what they need to speak with the next candidate.

Summary

In these times, when the hiring number at several organizations has skyrocketed, a virtual assistant recruiter can help the recruiters streamline the hiring process. Besides reducing the time to hire, it can also engage with the candidates and deliver a better hiring experience.