VRA comes to the rescue - Five steps to awesomeness

It stands for Virtual Recruitment Assistant – an amazing innovation that improves candidate communication and streamlines the recruitment process. Let me introduce it to you!

In this post, I present five elements in which VRA can be involved in the lives of a recruiter and a candidate. There are two sides in every situation. So, as a result of this, I deliberate both perspectives. Take a look and enjoy superior experiences every step of the way.

1. Job application & Review

RECRUITER: Based on several studies, candidates do not want to fill long application forms and answer to millions of questions. Why would they? Candidates cannot afford to apply to only one company or position, and therefore, they often need to go through several application processes. If filling up one application form takes more than an hour, you know how much it takes to apply to several companies. It is a lot of wasted time.

In the application, adding basic info, CV, resume, and additional links are enough. You get all the info you need, and you avoid your candidates dropping the application process already in the beginning. Moreover, VRA enables you to see the candidate info and documents in one view, plus do reviews at the same time. Scanning applications is convenient and efficient. Consequently, you see, investing in Candidate Experience does not impair recruiter’s experience.

CANDIDATE: You know – we know – how hard job hunting is. It takes time and effort in any case. We wanted to ease the application process by minimising the information required in the application. When you apply for one of our customers, you do not need to fill up 10 pages long applications, ever. Only the necessary information is required. However, we recommend not sending the same application letter to everywhere. Customise it based on the positions, and remember to mention why you are interested in working for that particular company.

2. Status updates & communication

RECRUITER: Our Virtual Recruitment Assistant empowers you to communicate individually with your candidates. Therefore, you can send status updates automatically to your candidates throughout the recruitment process. You can let them know when their application is received, when the application is being reviewed, and more. What’s best, this does not take more time from you. Our VRA, exploiting intelligent automation, takes care of it for you.

CANDIDATE: Do you, sometimes, feel like you are sending your application to a black box which you never hear back from? We want to change this and make sure you know how the process is going forward and what is happening with your application. You will know when your application is received, reviewed, and when the interview is going to commence. No more you are left in the dark.

3. Evaluation & Feedback

RECRUITER: We have created a simple-to-use scorecard, which you can use for evaluating candidates. You can value motivation, work experience, languages, skills, and so much more. You can also add your own blocks to the scorecard so that it best matches your company’s needs. Moreover, you can organise candidates based on the evaluation. This helps you in making the ranking and selecting the most suitable ones for the interviews round.

The actual magic in our Virtual Recruitment Assistant lies in personalised feedback. The VRA takes advantage of Artificial Intelligence and Natural Language Processing (NLP), and therefore, empowers you to send personalised feedback to all of your candidates. The feedback will be based on the evaluation you have made, but the VRA is taking care of the writing. Again, this does not take more time from you; it is just a few mouse clicks.

Request a demo here!

CANDIDATE: Would you like to know why you were not selected for a position? Now you can. You do not even need to ask for the feedback; it is given to you straight away. Our solution helps to make this happen. The feedback is based on the evaluation of the recruiter, which the VRA has changed to a readable form. You will know what the recruiter considered good in your documents and what you could do better next time. We want you to learn from each recruitment process and have a chance to develop your skills. Hopefully, it helps you to be employed faster and get your dream job.

4. Intelligent Analytics

RECRUITER: You must want to know how your recruitment process is performing not to talk about the experiences of the candidates. Estimation is not good enough; we serve you the real data. In one view, you see the most relevant data; e.g. how many applications you have received, how many are hired, and what is the duration of the application process?

After sending the feedback, you can also ask for feedback from the candidates. They can rate the feedback with five-step scale, which will let you know how you are performing. If you wish, you can also collect free comments and find out even more. The feedback you receive will help you to step up your game and deliver even better candidate experiences.

I would like to give you one example. We have used NPS scores with our customers and tested sending some candidates an impersonal ‘thank you but no thank you’ letter, and some of our personalised feedback letters. Then we have studied how many of the candidates would recommend the company to their friends, even though they were not selected themselves. We found out that on average, 20% of the candidates would recommend the company to their friends after getting the impersonal letter. With our personal feedback letter, the average is 70%. There is a huge difference as you can see.

CANDIDATE: Feedback is a two-way street. You definitely deserve to receive feedback, but you should also have a chance to respond to the feedback. After getting the feedback letter, you can rate the feedback with five hearts (1-5). That feedback is anonymous; so you can give your honest opinion. You often have a chance to give feedback in writing as well. So when you do, tell what you think. The recruiter can learn from it.

5. Talent Pipeline & Communities

RECRUITER: If you are lucky, you receive several useful applications. The downside is that you cannot hire them all at once. The VRA enables you to add the suitable candidates to a talent pipeline and mark them with different tags. This means that you can store the data of the exceptional candidates and use it in your future recruitment processes. Maybe next time, you do not even need to open a position. You can first contact the candidates you already know are interested in applying for you. And since you have treated them well and taken care of the candidate experience, they are still interested in your company. Just keep your fingers crossed, they are still available.

CANDIDATE: It is upsetting when you do not get the job you were aiming for. But don’t lose your hope; applying might not have been in vain. We offer recruiters a chance to add your application to their talent pipeline so that they can contact you when there is another available position that could suit you. Hold your breath – you never know when your phone is ringing and your dream job is waiting for you. All this can be yours today.

Candidates! Keep applying to these awesome companies who are investing in candidate experience. We sure hope you get the first position you are applying for, but if for some reason it is not, you are still treated with respect and get the feedback you deserve.

Recruiters! Request a demo to experience the Virtual Recruitment Assistant. We would love to show you how our solution works the magic. It is super easy to use and plug-and-play; you can start the usage right away.