A Day In the Life of a

Modern Recruiter

®
 contents ®

6
Introduction:
14
A Day In the
The Evolution Life of a
of Recruiting Modern Recruiter

8 22
The New Roles Conclusion:
of Recruiters Anyone Can
Be a Tech-Savvy
Recruiter

© 2016 Recruiter.com, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

IT TAKES THE RIGHT TOOLS
TO FIND THE RIGHT PEOPLE
Finding and hiring the right candidate requires a highly specialized set of tools for every aspect of talent acquisition.
So iCIMS specifically designed software to proactively build pools of talent, recruit and track new applicants,
and onboard the next great, new hire. To learn more, visit iCIMS.com.
©2016 iCIMS, Inc. All rights reserved.
 INTRODUCTION: THE EVOLUTION
OF RECRUITING

A
t its core, recruiting has always been and will always
be a people-centric business. The best recruiters focus
on building relationships with candidates and providing
top-notch candidate experiences.

However, the ways in which recruiters build relationships and

provide candidate experiences have changed over time. Up
until relatively recently, recruiting was done largely through
newspaper advertisements and signs in shop windows. Over the
past couple of decades, however, recruiters have found
themselves in possession of an arsenal of brand new
recruiting tools, including social media sites, applicant
tracking systems, candidate relationship management
platforms, video interview technology, data analytics
tools, and much, much more.

The Internet has also altered the way in which candidates go

about applying to jobs, giving rise to the “consumer candidate.”
The consumer candidate is unlike anything recruiters have seen
before. The consumer candidate doesn’t just apply to any Over the past couple
old job. Instead, they research all potential employment
opportunities and make careful choices about the kinds of
of decades, recruiters
companies they want to work for. have found themselves
Given access to so much new technology and faced with a brand in possession of an
new kind of candidate, today’s recruiters have had to adapt.
In fact, recruiters are no longer just recruiters. If they want to arsenal of brand new
win the war for talent, recruiters have to play a number of
roles simultaneously. recruiting tools.

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 This is why employer brand-
ing is so critical to modern
recruiting strategies. If recruit-
ers are to gain the attention
of top candidates, they need
to paint their organizations as
Candidates want exciting,innovative, supportive
communities in which candi-
more than dates can thrive. The goal of
employer branding is similar to
traditional job the goal of product branding:
It aims to prove to consumers
descriptions: They (in this case,candidates) that a
product (in this case, a role and
want to know what an organization) is the best
companies are choice for them.
really like on As part of their employer
branding efforts, recruiters
the inside. must engage with candidates
on social media. They must
maintain accessible career
portals that are full of exciting
content. They have to pitch job
opportunities as if they were
THE NEW ROLES OF RECRUITERS salespeople pitching products.
They need to ensure that all of
R
their candidate-related activity
ecruiters must wear a lot of different hats in 2016. Let’s
presents an authentic view of
take a look at five of the most important roles that today’s
what the company is like.
top recruiters are playing in their organizations:
Recruiters must also become
1. Marketer
marketers in their sourcing
Experts have long held that recruiting is similar to marketing,
and targeting efforts. Posting
and that fact has never been truer than it is today. Consumer
and praying will get recruiters
candidates want more than traditional job descriptions: They
nowhere in today’s world.
want to know what companies are really like on the inside.
Instead, recruiters have to
leverage marketing technol-
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ogies to make sure they are
sending the right messages
to the most qualified candi-
dates. The war for talent is
fierce. If recruiters are to be
heard above the din of their
competitors, they must fo-
cus their efforts on the most
relevant segments of the
candidate population.
2. Content Creator
This role is directly related to the
role of marketer. Marketers have
learned that the best way to
attract consumers on the Web
is by creating and sharing rel-
evant content that consumers
find enjoyable and informative.
For recruiters, content mar-
keting can take many forms. It
can be funny, industry-relevant
memes shared via social
media. It can be insightful
content posted on company
blogs. It can be a video
depicting a day in the life of
an employee at the company.
It can even be a recruiter-run
site where the recruiter shares
job-search tips and tricks.
No matter what form a recruit-
er’s content marketing efforts
take, the content needs to
be interesting and relevant to
the candidates. Endless blog
| Page 9
 preferred by which types of
candidates, recruiters must
also know how to use these
platforms in the right ways.
Each social media plat-
form has its own (unspo-
ken) code of conduct. For
example, Reddit users don’t
usually respond well to recruit-
ers who join their communities
just to post job opportunities.
Similarly, Twitter users want
recruiters to engage in
conversations with them –
not just repeatedly tweet at
posts about why Company X is so great won’t do. Better, instead, to them about the same open-
write and share in-depth articles about the state of the industry or ings. This is why recruiters
post video interviews with employees about the company culture. must become social media
experts. They have to be smart
3. Social Media Expert about the platforms they
Social media is where candidates hang out these days –which use and how they use those
means it is also where recruiters need to go if they want to get in platforms – otherwise, they’ll end
touch with top talent. up driving talent away instead
of attract it to their organizations.
However, recruiters must be smart about their social media
conduct. All social media platforms have their own specific user 4. Tech Expert
bases. Which social media platform a recruiter uses to engage Social media isn’t the only tech
with candidates will depend on the type of talent the recruiter Recruiters have to
needs. For example, a recruiter would have more success
looking for creative employees on Pinterest and Instagram than
be smart about the
on LinkedIn, which has a user base mainly comprised of people platforms they use-
in the professional services industries. Tech employees tend to
congregate on places like Reddit and Stack Overflow. otherwise they’ll
Writers, journalists, and millennials in general often spend much of
their time on Twitter. end up driving
In addition to knowing which social media platforms are talent away...
tool that modern recruiters
need to master. Applicant
tracking systems (ATSs) are
integral to recruiting success
today. Candidate relation-
ship management platforms
(CRMs) allow recruiters to
maintain pipelines of poten-
tial talent. The rise of remote
work arrangements means
more and more companies
are adopting video screening
and interviewing technologies.
Career portals are critical in
employer branding efforts.
The list goes on and on.
Because the Internet plays
such a significant role in the
recruiting process today,
recruiters must turn to various
tech tools that can help them
make the most of their time
on the Internet. Furthermore,
the Internet allows recruiters
to collect more candidate data
than ever before, and they

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It is imperative that
recruiters become
tech-savvy experts.
need tech solutions in order to
manage this data successfully.
Modern recruiting is insepara-
ble from these and other tech
tools, so it is imperative that
recruiters become tech-savvy
experts. They need to keep up
with the latest innovations in
talent acquisition technology,
and they need to adapt their
processes to the changing of
the times.
The good news is that this
doesn’t mean recruiters need
to become software engi-
neers. The best tech tools for
recruiters are those that make
it easy for recruiters to get
going as soon as possible.
5. Data Scientist
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This is the newest of all the
recruiter’s roles, and it has
not quite become an industry
standard yet in the way that
the previous roles have.
However, many recruiters –
especially at larger organiza-
tions – have already begun to
act as data scientists, and there
is reason to believe that we are
heading toward a point where
all recruiters will perform
similar functions.
As mentioned above, modern
recruiting is a technology-
driven process. Recruiters
cannot perform their job
without access to the right
tech tools. Many of these
tech tools include data
analytics features that make
it easy for recruiters to
collect, track, analyze, share,
and act on candidate-
related data. As these data
analytics features become
more and more advanced
and easier and easier to use,
data analytics will become
another critical job function
for recruiters.
For example, through data
analytics, recruiters can now
track which of their recruiting
channels bring in the most
high-quality candidates. They
can also track the amount of
money they are spending on
each channel, and they can
use these two sources of data
to make smart choices about
which channels deliver great
returns on investments, and
which channels are not worth
their time.
In the future, it is likely that
recruiters will do even more
with data. They may, for
example, be able to use
A Day In the Life of a Modern Recruiter
candidate and employee data
to construct profiles of their
ideal hires. They may also be
able to detect when passive
candidates are most receptive
to hearing job offers based on
social media activity. Some
technologies already give
recruiters these capabilities,
and it looks like data analytics
features will soon become
the norm.
| Page 13
 1. Employer Branding
Our recruiter arrives at her
office a little before 9 A.M.
Proper technology allows today’s She settles in with a cup
of coffee and gets to work
recruiter to be a marketer, a content on her first task of the day:
creator, a social media expert, a tech employer branding. She
knows that it’s critical to do
expert, and a data scientist all in the at least a little branding every
day – that’s how she keeps
course of one weekday. her organization at the top of
her candidates’ minds.
First, she logs into the
corporate Twitter account
to share a great new article
from the company blog.
That way, she ensures
that the organization’s social
A DAY IN THE LIFE OF media presence is engaging
A MODERN RECRUITER and informative. Twitter’s not
just another job board for her!
O
n first glance, it seems impossible: No one person could
possibly play all the roles that a recruiter has to play. That’s
just absurd!
Believe it or not, today’s top recruiters can play all these roles with
relative ease – provided they have the right technology at their
sides, that is.
To prove it, we’ll take a look at a day in the life of a modern,
tech-savvy recruiter. You’ll see how the proper technology allows
our hypothetical recruiter to be a marketer, a content creator, a
social media expert, a tech expert, and a data scientist all in the
course of one workday.
Page 14 | www.recruiter.com A Day In the Life of a Modern Recruiter
Then, she logs in to her own
Twitter account and LinkedIn
profile, where she shares a
video from yesterday’s in-
office team-building activity.
The high-energy vibe shows
her followers what her
company is really like – a fun,
exciting place full of passionate
employees who work hard
and play hard.
Next, she heads to the
company’s branded career
portal, which she and her
fellow recruiters were able to
create through their recruit-
ing software suite. Here, she
updates a recent job posting
with a video that the hiring
manager put together. The
video features team members
| Page 15
talking about their team dynamic and puts a human face onto
what could have been a pretty dry job posting.

2. Posting New Jobs

Our recruiter is already on the company’s career portal, so she
decides to post a few new advertisements for jobs that have
just opened up. She also shares these new posts to multiple
third party job boards and the company’s corporate social
media feeds –  and she does it all through the same software
suite. She doesn’t need to waste time manually sharing
new jobs to each and every feed or job board. Just a couple
of clicks, and she’s done.

3. Sourcing Candidates
It’s not even lunch yet, and our recruiter still has plenty of time to
do some sourcing. She starts by looking through the talent pools all these messages, because with major calendar apps like
she has already cultivated via her recruiting software. her recruiting software tracks Microsoft Office and Google
all her email threads in one Calendars. Through this tool,
Actually, those talent pools basically cultivated themselves. Her location. She is able to quickly she can coordinate her
recruiting software features a social connection portal, which respond to each interested schedule, her hiring
allows potential candidates to easily demonstrate their interest candidate with more details manager’s schedule, and
in her company with a simple click of a button. Now, she has Believe it or not, about the role and instructions her candidate’s schedule, all
access to their social media profiles, and she can easily send alerts
to the candidates who might be interested in some of the new today’s top on how to apply. in one place. She finds
a time that is good for
jobs she has just posted.
recruiters can play Without leaving her recruit- everyone involved in the
ment software, our recruiter interview, and she sends out
After sending targeted marketing communications to her all these roles with also sees that one of an invitation. Her invitation
talent pools, our recruiter checks in on her own social media her candidates for a previously to the candidate includes a
feeds again. She looks through her personal network on LinkedIn relative ease – posted role is ready to personalized attachment that
for candidates who might be a match for her open roles. Once move forward with the outlines what the interview
she finds them, she imports data from their profiles and into provided they have interview process. It’s time will be like and where it will
her ATS. Now, her talent pool is even bigger – and she barely
had to lift a finger. the right technology to schedule an interview, take place – another capability
which is usually a major hassle her software suite gives her.

4. Communicating With Candidates

at their sides, that is. for recruiters.
After scheduling an interview
Our recruiter returns from lunch to find that she has already heard Our recruiter, however, is with a successful candidate,
back from some of the candidates she messaged about her new lucky. Her software suite offers our recruiter must deliver some
positions. She doesn’t have to scroll through her inbox to find scheduling tool that integrates more difficult news to the

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 candidates who didn’t make it
through the screening process.
Luckily, she can send
automated emails to these Never hearing back
candidates through her soft-
ware platform, which saves from recruiters is a
her plenty of time. The
messages may not contain major pet peeve for
great news, but the candidates
will appreciate the contact.
most candidates...
Never hearing back from
recruiters is a major pet peeve
for most candidates, and our
recruiter keeps her company’s
employer brand intact by
keeping people informed at
every step of the way.

5. Communicating With The hiring manager received the recruiter’s interview request
Hiring Managers earlier in the day, and he has approved it. The hiring
Many recruiters and hiring process moves forward smoothly, with few or no interruptions.
managers have tense re-
lationships, but not our 6. Screening Candidates
recruiter. Her hiring manager is Our recruiter’s next task is to screen a few candidates for one of
happy with the job she’s been her open roles. Her software suite features fully integrated video
doing. In part, that’s because screening functions, which means she doesn’t have to carry out
the software suite our recruiter individual phone screenings. Instead, she simply sends requests
uses has a specialized access to each candidate, asking them to provide a video. Candidates
portal for hiring managers. record and submit their videos through the platform, answering
questions specified by the recruiter. The videos are then attached
The hiring manager knows to the candidates’ profiles within the recruiter’s ATS. The recruiter,
what’s going on at every step the hiring manager, and any other team members involved in the
of the recruiting process. hiring decision can log into the ATS and watch these videos on
He’s been able to log in every their own time.
day and see the progress the
recruiter is making. He The recruiter watches a few screening videos, making notes about
and the recruiter can also each candidate. She also takes time to look through the feedback
trade important information forms submitted by the hiring manager on each candidate. The
through the software.

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 hiring manager was able to complete these forms on his time and
send them to the recruiter directly through the software suite.
The candidates are screened with ease, and she and her hiring
manager can collaborate on the decisions about which
candidates will move forward.

7. Data Analytics
With her day coming to a close, our recruiter decides to spend
some time on analytics. Her recruiting software tracks critical
metrics like time-to- fill, cost-per- hire, and equal employment
opportunity (EEO) compliance. She can then use her software
to generate reports on these metrics, which she studies closely.

Using these reports, our recruiter identifies which of her

campaigns are delivering results. She also identifies which of
her campaigns cost too much, which are taking too long, and
which run the risk of noncompliance. Armed with this data,
she can make smart decisions about how to tweak her less
successful campaigns so that they deliver great results at the
right cost to her organization. Now, when she’s ready for her next
round of campaigns tomorrow, she’ll know how to best proceed.

And there you have it: In the course of a typical workday, our
recruiter was able to maintain and strengthen her employer
brand, curate and share great content, build strong relationships
with candidates, source new candidates, screen candidates,
move the hiring process forward, keep her hiring manager
updated, and analyze her campaigns to make sure they were on
track– and she did it all through one software suite.

See how easy it is to be a master of all trades when you have the
right technology at your fingertips?

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 The best recruiting software
suites don’t require intensive
training. Instead, they are
streamlined, efficient platforms
designed with the end-user in
mind. The whole aim of these
platforms is to make life
When shopping easier for recruiters, not
harder. As long as you adopt
around, focus on the right software suite,
everyone on your team can
the user-friendliness be a tech-savvy recruiter.
of each solution... If you want your recruiters to
succeed in today’s world, the
most vital thing you can do
is choose the right software
suite. When shopping around,
focus on the user-friendliness
of each solution you try.
Remember that advanced
CONCLUSION: ANYONE CAN BE functionality and ease of use
are not mutually exclusive.
A TECH-SAVVY RECRUITER
The right software solution will
allow your recruiters to be

E
ven after seeing our hypothetical recruiter in action,
you may have some doubts. marketers, social media
experts, content creators, tech
experts, and data scientists –
“Sure, she was able to do it,” you say. “But she was tech-savvy. and it will allow them to
She knew how to use her tech tools to get great results! Not all be all of these things right
of us have time to be studying technology day in and day out. away, not after months of
There are reqs to fill!” specialized training.

Yes, it’s true that today’s recruiters can only succeed if they know Anyone can be a master
how to use their tech tools properly, but that doesn’t mean recruiter –  you just need the
every recruiter has to be a masterful tech expert with a degree in right software.
computer science.

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