Buried by Applicants for Remote Roles? Try These 2 Clever Tactics
It’s official: Everybody wants to work from home. Well, almost everybody. In a recent study by McKinsey & Company, 87 percent of employed respondents said that if given the opportunity to do their job remotely, they’d take it. This holds true across industries, demographics, and geography.
The good news is that there’s never been more remote and hybrid jobs out there. As of this year, 16 percent of companies across the globe are fully remote. The bad news: That’s not enough.
New research shows that full-time or part-time remote jobs attract seven times more applicants than in-person positions. In July, remote job listings on LinkedIn — which comprised 17 percent of the total paid job listings on the platform — attracted 54 percent of the applications and nearly half the views (47%) compared with onsite jobs.
As Mary Kate Fields, data communications manager at LinkedIn, told the BBC: “The supply of and employees’ demand for remote jobs have both grown rapidly over the past two years, but demand has grown faster.”
Maybe too fast.
The thought of handpicking candidates from a global pool of unparalleled talent might sound like every recruiter’s dream. But what happens when you have more applicants than you can humanly handle?
Be selective about how you position your remote roles
A good way to stem the overflow of applicants, according to Jennifer Shappley, LinkedIn’s VP of global talent acquisition, is to be strategic about how you advertise your remote positions.
Posting a position as remote from any location could lead to a deluge of qualified job seekers — which may not always lead to the best candidate experience. Even with an agile applicant tracking system, recruiters run the risk of being overwhelmed by the volume of applicants and could possibly leave top talent waiting in the wings.
One easy tactic that can make the applicant pool more manageable: Post jobs as hybrid rather than remote, at least at first. You can always broaden the posting to remote candidates if you need to increase your applicant pool.
Make your jobs remote for candidates in targeted markets
Another effective way to control the floodgates, Jennifer says, is to post the job as remote in specific markets, but as hybrid elsewhere. This will reduce the volume of applicants, while still allowing your organization to target markets that have stronger pools of talent.
The goal, Jennifer says, is to identify the right pool of applicants. “More,” she says, “is not always better.”
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