How Virtual Assistants Help Recruiters Spend More Time Hiring

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With 11 million job openings in December and a record number of people leaving their job, hiring is taking on an unprecedented level of urgency. It’s a job seeker’s market, and recruiters need to bring their A-games to the candidate experience. 

According to Workable , the majority of candidates that accept interviews and jobs hear from the employer within two days. But the average response time recommended by Indeed  is three weeks.

A report found that 68 percent of companies said candidate drop-out is a genuine problem, and the biggest reason applicants disappear is poor communication.60 percent  of recruiters say that they regularly lose candidates before they can schedule an interview. 

On the flip side, 89 percent of job seekers say that their recruiter’s contact can make them accept a job offer faster. While looking for ways to remain competitive, businesses turn to virtual assistant services to speed up recruiting and provide better candidate experiences.

Keep reading to discover why virtual assistants will be even more important for recruiters in the future.

Shortage of Recruiters 

As if the hiring environment weren’t challenging enough, research has found a shortage of recruiters will last well into 2022.  The same research found three times as many recruiter jobs posted in August 2021 compared to January 2021. 

LinkedIn also said demand for recruiters increased 6.8x from June 2020 to June 2021.  

With a lack of recruiters, the current ones at your company will find it even more difficult to take on the extra workload.

Recruiters Are Bogged Down With Admin Tasks 

It’s no secret that sourcing, screening, and scheduling are the three biggest time consumers for recruiters.Astudy  found that recruiters and HR executives spend 86 percent of their time on these administrative tasks. For example, it takes up to two hours to schedule a single interview. Multiply that by dozens of candidates, and the time adds up.  

Recruiters want to spend their time building relationships, mapping out talent-building plans, working with hiring managers, communicating with top candidates, and moving people through hiring and onboarding processes. But instead of doing strategic work that moves the business forward, they are stuck doing administrative tasks they can easily delegate to someone else. 

Technology can help with some of the back-office work of applicant processing, but tech can also backfire. Some 90 percent of job seekers do not trust so-called “robot recruiting,” and anonymous communication can be why they drop out.  Thankfully, virtual assistants can help with that. 

Virtual Assistants for Recruiting 

How can companies speed up the recruiting process, improve the candidate experience, and increase hiring capacity amid shortages of applicants and recruiters? 

More businesses are turning to virtual assistant services to support internal recruiting teams to accelerate hiring and build team capacity while demand for recruiters is high. Remote assistants can do much of the leg work to free recruiters to focus on moving employees through the talent pipeline, including: 

  • Searching for candidates based on job description criteria
  • Screening incoming applications for must-have skills and experience
  • Scheduling in-person and video meetings
  • Preparing tear sheets and resumes for interviewers
  • Following up with candidates about the next steps in the interview process
  • Entering and maintaining candidate data on your ATS
  • Staying connected with high potential recruits that do not get hired immediately

Using virtual assistants enables recruiters to: 

  • Find more candidates faster
  • Quickly weed out the underqualified applicants
  • Respond faster to qualified candidates
  • Get interviews swiftly scheduled

The Three S’s (sourcing, screening, and scheduling) of recruiting happen in the background while the recruiters spend their time on the high-value work that builds the business. Recruiting is not a novel use for remote assistants. Outside salespeople spend just23 percent  of their time actively selling to prospective customers. Many sales teams use virtual assistants to perform similar functions as recruiters, but the language is different. 

  • “Sourcing” is “prospecting”
  • “Screening” is “qualifying”
  • “Scheduling” is “booking a call”

Faster Access to Recruiting Support

It is also easier to hire a virtual assistant than a full-time recruiter. Virtual assistant service providers maintain a trained staff who can come on board in a week and contribute on day one.

You define the platforms and tools the assistants need to use in your business, and the service provider finds the correct matches. The assistants are employed and managed by the service provider, so there is little managerial lift on the client-side. 

Flexibility for the Changing World of Work 

We know that the world of work has changed, that the change is not over, and that HR and recruiting pros are at the center of disruption. The Great Resignation, the Turnover Tsunami, the Big Quit—call it what you will—is another curveball after two years of wild pitches.

Innovative technology and new staffing models are emerging that give businesses the flexibility to do more with less and connect people with opportunities. Virtual assistants offer meaningful work to people where opportunities are scarce and enable recruiting operations to meet business goals.  

Rob Vaughn is Head of Sales at Prialto.

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By Rob Vaughn