Most businesses place high importance on attracting and hiring the best candidates. However, as the war for talent intensifies, many companies don’t realize that their hiring process could be costing them the very talent they are looking to attract.

In this article I’d like to explore how your traditional online application process could be costing you talent and how to fix it.

Biases In Traditional Online Job Applications

Traditional online job applications have a variety of biases that can affect the hiring process.

This is down to the simple fact that many traditional online applications have been created in order to filter out candidates based on certain criteria. The result of this filtering process is an applicant pool that has been screened and selected for the position based on an employer’s pre-determined needs.

The downside to this is that businesses may be missing out on diverse talent pools or talented candidates who don’t come from traditional backgrounds, limiting their access to quality talent which is a disaster in today’s increasingly competitive landscape.

To overcome this, employers need to rethink their whole online application process. By changing your approach and focusing on applicant engagement rather than focusing purely on pre-selected needs, you could attract a diverse range of skilled individuals to your company.

Traditional Online Job Applications Limit Unique Communication Styles and Creativity

One of the biggest downsides of traditional online job applications is the lack of opportunity for candidates to express themselves fully and freely during each stage of the process. Candidates often cannot demonstrate their skills in traditional online applications because they are one dimensional and have pre-determined questions with limited scope for more creative responses.

For example, a traditional online application may ask for an applicant to list their top three skillsets, giving them a list of pre-determined skills to choose from. This is a problem because it does not offer candidates the opportunity to share their skills in creative detail, such as providing examples of how they used their skills in different situations or dealt with difficult situations. The lack of opportunity for self-expression can lead to low engagement rates and people becoming disillusioned about applying at all, which leads to talent leaking from your pipeline – costing companies valuable hires down the line.

In addition to limiting a candidate’s ability to show off their creativity, traditional online job applications also restrict the opportunity for people to express their unique style of communication. Everyone communicates differently, so your online job application should not only be easy to navigate, but it should also allow for different formats of communication to be used.

Some examples of this include:

• Having a place for people to type out their responses to a list of questions.
• Allowing candidates to answer the same set of questions using video rather than written responses.
• Giving candidates the chance to showcase their skills by giving them tasks that they need to complete online, such as: create an e-book presentation with 20 slides on how your company’s product works.

Traditional Online Job Applications Can Turn Off Passive Candidates

Passive candidates, those candidates who are not actively looking for a new job opportunity, can be dissuaded from applying if your online job application process is too restrictive or demanding.

Traditional online job applications can take upwards of 15 minutes to complete, which is an intimidating amount of time, particularly if the person applying isn’t actively looking to change jobs or they have no real connection to your brand. This can cause a lot of passive candidates to just not bother applying because they don’t want to spend that much time on the process.

So, what is the alternative?

One option that your company could consider is to host a virtual lunch and invite potential candidates to attend, ask questions and get to know more about you and your organization. The key here is to allow this to be an opportunity for potential candidates to learn more about your business, rather than a sales pitch for what you can do for them.

Doing so will allow your organization to engage and connect with candidates who are already qualified, but not actively looking to change jobs or organizations, which is a huge asset in the war for talent that many companies don’t recognize they have access to.

If done well, this may also provide an opportunity for these individuals to find out more about how their day-to-day work would look like at your company – something they might not be able to get from just reading posts online or filling in a job application.

In conclusion, if your organization has been struggling to attract the talent you need, then it might be time to re-evaluate your whole online job application process. Need some advice? Feel free to book in for a call with me and I’d be happy to discuss.