Making a Case for Inbound Recruitment in India

India is often described as the land of paradoxes. Nowhere is it more apparent these days than in the job market, where more than 80 percent of companies routinely fail to fill key positions in a country with the world's largest workforce. Clearly, the current outbound recruitment models favoured by HR departments in India cannot be solely depended on to drive talent recruitment. Inbound recruitment may offer a way out of the current crisis. In this article, we explore the pros and cons of inbound recruitment for the Indian job market, with inputs from Rohan Sylvester, Talent Strategy Advisor at Indeed and an expert on the subject.

The Relevance Of Inbound Recruitment In India

At present, the Indian job market is primarily an outbound market, where recruiters routinely make cold calls to selected candidates and scope out their willingness to join an organisation. But this is a fairly new phenomenon, explains Rohan Sylvester.

“The switch to an outbound model happened maybe 10–15 years ago. Before that, employers would advertise a job opening in the newspapers inviting candidates to come in for the interview.”

Inbound recruitment, in contrast, focuses on attracting and engaging potential candidates through strategies like compelling employer branding, content marketing and networking. Interested jobseekers are incentivised to contact the recruiters, which is the opposite of cold calls and job postings.

Potential Advantages Of Inbound Recruitment

In recent years, Indeed, India has identified inbound recruitment as a promising model for the Indian context. Rohan Sylvester identifies several key benefits from this approach:

“We have seen a lot of psychological benefits for a jobseeker choosing the job that they want to do. We found them more likely to feel that they would succeed more at a job if they themselves are the ones to choose it.” 

The process is also quicker from the candidate's perspective, since they do not have to go through the whole process of getting convinced by the recruiter – they arrive already convinced. However, the real benefits of inbound recruitment, according to Rohan Sylvester, manifest on the employer side.

The outbound model is more time-consuming, with the recruiter having to complete 7 or 8 steps to get the candidate hired. In inbound, the candidates who contact the recruiter have already completed the first 3 or 4 steps.

"All the recruiters now have to do is to help them navigate the interview process, the accept-the-offer stage, and the joining stage. So, the 7-step process literally becomes a 3-step process for a recruiter, bringing both time and cost savings," explains Sylvester.

Inbound Recruitment And Quality Of Hires

The impact that top talent can have on an organisation is quite well documented. The Harvard Business Review estimates that all-star teams made up of the very best employees are 8 to 12 times more productive than average. The secret behind the success of organisations like Apple is their relentless focus on attracting the crème de la crème of the talent pool.

These individuals have the skills, experience, and constant drive for excellence. 

And these individuals know that they have options in the job market. According an Indeed survey, 90 percent of top performers actively search for new job opportunities at least a few times a year. To attract them, you need to know how to inspire them.

These candidates use online job boards, search apps, and company career sites – all inbound recruitment channels – when looking for their next job. Only 4 percent of recent top performer hires were passive/not searching for a job when they were hired.

Common Challenges Of Inbound Recruitment In India

Resistance to change is the biggest obstacle most organisations face when implementing an inbound recruitment strategy in India. Historically, India has always been a labour surplus market. Recruiters often experience a flood of irrelevant applications when they deploy inbound recruitment.

“As a recruiter, you often have to go through 95 bad applicants before you get to the 5 skilled ones who are genuinely interested in working for your company. And that can be a deeply frustrating experience for obvious reasons,” explains Sylvester.

Outbound recruitment offers a much better experience in contrast. “Instead of speaking to 5 relevant people out of 100, you get to speak to 20 or 30 hand-picked candidates. Recruiters simply do not need to talk to too many irrelevant candidates.”

Another major issue is the lack of relevant skills among recruiters. “It is not their fault – they are simply not fully equipped to handle this new world of recruitment marketing and need to be trained on these platforms. So they are more comfortable doing things they have done in the past.”

How Can Organisations Implement Inbound Marketing In India?

The first thing one must understand about inbound recruitment is that it is not a valid option for every recruitment scenario. For low-skilled jobs with a surplus of qualified candidates, inbound is not the best option.

For some high-skill positions like data scientists, the candidate pool is much smaller in India. In such situations, inbound recruitment can work well, but only if you understand how the process works, cautions Rohan Sylvester.

“We say that if you will first recognise how the process works then only you will understand where it works well. Then you need to sequence the way you hire talent. You need to categorise your jobs into those we know inbound will work for.”

Time is often a limiting factor, forcing organisations to use outbound for some jobs – a process called “sequencing your tactics.” 

“After that, you need to look at shaping your candidate pipeline. How that is done is through job titles, job descriptions, career sites, application process, company reviews - all of these will together help you bring talented candidates in an inbound process,” explains Sylvester. 

In particular, Sylvester flags the importance of wording your job descriptions – candidates want to know specific things like basic pay, benefits, and other advantages. They also want to know what is expected of them. Including this information will improve your ability to attract good candidates.

Another critical aspect is candidate experience. If recruiters fail to respond promptly to an inbound application, it can lead to a bad experience.

The Importance Of Follow-Up

Inbound recruitment is an ongoing process with plenty of room for continuous evolution and optimisation. A feedback loop is essential to maintain this process. The good news here, according to Sylvester, is that measurement is fairly simple.

The application process is a good place to start. Completion rate on applications is a key metric that provides valuable insights. If the completion rate is low, it is an indicator that something is amiss in the process.

Interview metrics are more nuanced and company-specific. Sylvester had this to say – “Selection ratios, of course, that is fairly subjective, changes from company to company. Some companies are very proud that it is really hard to clear one of their interviews. Others, less so.”

In many ways, inbound recruitment is like e-commerce. Content plays a significant role and metrics like impressions, clicks, and start to apply are all significant. They can provide insights into the effectiveness of your branding, content strategies, and other related aspects of your inbound funnel.

The Impact Of AI On The Future Of Inbound Recruiting

The world is in the midst of AI/automation frenzy with the rise of disruptive tools like ChatGPT and Midjourney. Since content creation plays a major role in inbound recruitment, the job of recruiters might get a tad easier in the coming age of automation.

However, Rohan Sylvester strikes a note of caution on companies actively embracing these new AI tools. Reliability is a big concern when it comes to the output from LLMs – we already have news of AI hallucinations generating factually incorrect content.

AI are trained using data sets, which may have in-built bias, as reported by the Harvard Business Review. Utilising such tools in recruitment would be akin to automating bias, which is one of the worst outcomes for the long term from an employer perspective.

Limited AI is already being deployed in many areas of recruitment. General AI is where most of these concerns regarding copyright, reliability, and bias comes to the fore. According to Sylvester, when used with due caution, AI can be beneficial for inbound recruitment:

“We should ideally be using artificial intelligence in places where the human touch is not necessary. Where tasks are repetitive, or need to be scheduled. Things that are administrative, and will free up recruiters to do things which a computer or an artificial intelligence cannot do.”

Conclusion

A majority of organisations in India are struggling to fill vacancies in high-skill/high-level positions despite a trend of massive lay-offs and surplus talent. While outbound remains the preferred approach for low-skill positions, inbound recruitment offers some clear advantages in finding the right candidates for high-skill/senior-level positions.

However, success in inbound recruitment relies heavily on a thorough understanding of its limitations, strengths, and the intricacies of its multistep recruitment funnel. The Indeed Apply tool simplifies many of these aspects, offering employers an easy-to-use tool to implement inbound recruitment. The candidate application process is streamlined to create a better experience for job seekers. To learn more about Indeed Apply, visit our Employer page today.