As an HR professional, I know how frustrating it can be to bring a new employee on board, spend time and money to bring them up to speed with the team, and then discover it’s a bad fit. Often, the new employee and company struggle for longer than they should, hoping to make it work, before finally realizing it’s time to part ways. Fortunately, emerging technologies are providing a range of new tools to support both job seekers and employers in finding the right fit.

Openreach, for example, turned to virtual reality (VR) when it needed to hire 1,500 trainee engineers. To gauge how comfortable potential recruits would be with on-the-job tasks like climbing high poles, the company set them up with VR sets and had them try it in a virtual world. The goal was to attract serious and committed talent by first giving them an on-the-job experience, then offering them the opportunity to apply for the position.

As new technologies emerge, newly employable generations emerge with them. To attract this talent of the future and keep themselves competitive well into the digital revolution, brands are leaning on digital tools — VR, augmented reality (AR), digital document workflows, and digital signatures.

The competition for talent is heating up, though. Employers will compete not only against other companies for talent, but against the lure of self-employment — 70 percent of Generation Z is self-employed and loving it.

In turn, HR professionals are realizing that providing a great candidate experience is vital to attracting digitally savvy millennial and Generation Z candidates.

Some key technologies are set to change the hiring process and how brands are using them.

Talent of the future has left paperwork behind

Digital signatures are already dramatically accelerating the recruitment process, bringing added convenience for prospective employees and HR professionals alike. With an all-digital document workflow, potential employees can complete, sign, and return an application in a record two minutes, even from a mobile phone via tap-sign capabilities.

And data-aware prospects don’t have to worry about sensitive data breaches because their information can be fully protected — aligning with stringent security regulations — and only visible on an as-needed basis by select department employees.

Living and immersive CVs showcase talent of the future

VR, when combined with other technological capabilities, is not just transforming the available position exploration, but the application process as well. Laurell Warrell, a human-computer interaction student at Georgia Tech, explored in what ways a PDF file and an immersive virtual-reality experience intersect. The result: architects, graphic designers, animators, interior designers, and other creative professionals can showcase their work by immersing potential employers in their creations.

Living documents make the PDF-to-VR-CV transformation seamless. Job candidates can scan paper documents to PDFs straight from their mobile phones. Then, throughout the polishing and finalizing process, a smart-file version of their original document provides searching, sharing, editing, commenting, signing, merging, rearranging, and storage capabilities.

For example, by merging disparate documents, rearranging them to create a PDF, and creating doorway links to each of their PDF images, candidates allow employers to explore their work as a progressive journey. In this way, the CV is transformed from a static document into a living and immersive experience.

Virtual and augmented reality show interviewees where their future lies

Further, AR capabilities open up the candidate pool by allowing brands to interview remotely. New capabilities allow candidates to “holoport” into the interview scene from anywhere in the world via 3D representation, then interact with the environment and the people in it as if in a face-to-face interview. Whereas video interviews may dampen personalities and communication cues, Holoportation brings them to life for a living video interview.

Forward-thinking brands compete via forward-thinking talent

Forward-thinking brands are attracting top millennial and Generation Z talent via the technologies they’ve grown up with. Likewise, brands would do well to lean on upcoming generational insights and tools to thrive in the digital revolution. It’s up to HR teams to impress upon brand leadership the importance of transforming their recruitment and hiring processes if they want to keep attracting top talent.

To learn more about how to embrace the future of work with competitive talent experiences, watch Adobe Think Tank’s The Role of People in the Future of Work.

Source: https://theblog.adobe.com/forward-thinking-brands-re-engineer-hiring-for-the-future/