Is the era of remote work a thing of the past, soon to be a relic of bygone pandemic days? Will we someday hear grandparents reminisce about Zoom meetings and empty cubicles, the way their predecessors used to recall walking miles to school in the snow?
Despite what some recent headlines have claimed, working from home is here to say, according to experts. In fact, Google searches for “work from home jobs” and “remote work jobs” peaked in January 2023, nearly 3 years after the first wave of COVID-19 lockdowns. In the United States, 58% of employees can work from home at least 1 day per week, while 35% can work from home 5 days per week, according to McKinsey’s American Opportunities Survey.
Today’s workers – the youngest of whom began their careers in the early days of the pandemic – not only desire but actually expect flexible work options from their employers. The same McKinsey study revealed that, when given the chance to work remotely, 87% of people take it. And according to research commissioned by Employ, nearly half of all U.S. workers are willing to accept a lower salary to work remotely, while 30% say their ideal setup is 100% remote. As we’ve all seen over the last few years, many organizations have adapted their business models to reflect this new reality.
What remote work means for Recruiters
Flexible work doesn’t just change the game for businesses and their employees. Recruiters, too, have experienced seismic shifts in their profession due to this new normal. The rise of remote work has yielded a broader talent pool for many roles since companies can cast a much wider net when they’re not limited to local candidates within reasonable commuting distance. As a result, recruiters are left scrambling to sift through and review more resumes than ever before. This gives them a plethora of individuals to choose from, but it also means they need to sift through many more irrelevant candidates to find ideal matches.
Not only is it harder to find relevant candidates because the pool is bigger, but companies and recruiters who work for them no longer have a hiring advantage in their local markets. Now every organization must compete with behemoths in the same industry for the same limited supply of qualified talent, regardless of where in the world they happen to have offices.
With remote work going quite literally nowhere, how can recruiters adapt to the new employment landscape? RecruitBot can help. Our technology-first online recruitment software lets you search across a global database of 650+ million candidates, fine-tune your results by applying 25+ attributes, and move from search to hire 5x faster with the power of machine learning. As remote work continues to shape hiring practices, RecrutBot offers unique features that can unlock a wide range of effective recruiting strategies. Here are 4 that we recommend.
- Supercharge your candidate review process with machine learning
Instead of sorting through endless lists of candidates from all over the world, recruiters can rely on automation technology to do much of the preliminary work for them. RecruitBot allows you to take advantage of machine learning algorithms to reverse-engineer ideal candidates from your decisions and provide increasingly accurate suggestions over time, based on feedback from a recruiter, hiring manager, or anyone else using the platform. This is vastly different from AI, in which all users can expect the exact same results for the same search – so everyone who searches for “software engineers in San Francisco” sees the exact same talent pool, in the exact same order.
With machine learning, the model adapts to your needs and preferences by taking in 2 types of input: candidate data and the feedback you provide about each individual for the position you are trying to fill. Based on your previous decisions, RecruitBot’s AI recruitment automation software makes predictions about which candidates will be a good fit for the precise role you hope to fill. This means that the more candidates you rate, the better your suggestions will be – and the more tailored to your exact needs. It also means you can more aggressively expand your search over time, as the system understands your preferences and can still surface new “diamond in the rough” candidates that wouldn’t show up in conventional searches.
- Engage in more outbound recruiting
Traditional job boards and other inbound recruiting techniques generate pools of candidates that may be impressive from a quantity perspective, but tend to be less stellar from a quality one. Since anyone can apply, recruiters typically spend hours perusing irrelevant resumes to uncover that one “good enough” candidate (but rarely an ideal one). With outbound recruiting, recruiters scour various sources for qualified talent and only need to consider highly relevant individuals. This strategy can be particularly helpful when hiring for remote positions, since many job seekers don’t know how to search for those kinds of roles – even when they’re primarily interested in working from home.
And yet, while outbound recruiting can yield a huge payoff, it comes at a considerable cost in terms of a busy recruiter’s time and energy. That’s where RecruitBot comes in, making outbound recruiting strategies more scalable, cost-effective, and time-efficient for all involved. When done right, it can feel like inbound recruiting, except all of the candidates who respond are of the same quality as in an outbound campaign. Our internal research suggests that 1 out of 2 candidates found through RecruitBot are relevant, compared to 1 out of 10 on LinkedIn.
- Reach out to employees at companies with recent layoffs
In the U.S. tech industry and beyond, mass layoffs in 2022 and 2023 put tens of thousands of people out of work. This means more people are on the job market, creating new opportunities for recruiters to fill roles – including hard-to-fill positions that have remained vacant for long periods of time due to lack of suitable talent.
But beyond that, recruiters can benefit by using online recruiting software to target individuals who remain employed at companies that recently conducted layoffs. These people are “loose in their seat” – concerned about job security and more open than usual to weighing other options. At this uncertain stage of their career, they may be particularly likely to consider alternate working conditions, like a shift to remote-only or a part-time return to the office. RecruitBot’s rich search capabilities enable recruiters to find these individuals by applying 25+ attributes, including current employer. Users can also filter search results by DEI characteristics, specific schools and credentials, skills, and more.
- Personalize messaging to put flexibility front and center
Recruiters serve as an organization’s ambassador to potential hires. They’re in a unique position to highlight an employer’s various selling points, such as leading-edge education benefits, a dynamic workforce, a commitment to supporting local communities, or anything else candidates might appreciate. At a time when more and more job seekers expect remote work options, recruiters can benefit by crafting a strong narrative around a company’s flexible work policies or hybrid setup. This type of framing assures candidates that potential employers can meet their demands, driving a boost in interest and response rates.
RecruitBot’s email customization tools make it fast and easy to build effective outreach campaigns that put flexibility front and center. Recruiters can choose from a variety of customization methods to send hyper-personalized emails or reach out to candidates in bulk, using template variables to semi-personalize each message. These tools streamline the communication process and engage more candidates in ongoing conversations, allowing recruiters to focus on what they do best: building relationships.
Want more ideas on how you can use RecruitBot to rethink your recruiting approach in an era of remote work? Request a demo now.
