With the influx of graduates entering the workforce each year (this number, of course, varies from industry to industry where demand for certain jobs are higher than others), you’d think that the job market is veritably saturated with talent. The hard truth is this— candidate scarcity is still one of the biggest challenges for most Malaysian employers. Employers are undeniably spoilt for choice when it comes to surveying the talent pool for potential employees, yet most struggle to hire the right person for their company needs. Compounding the issue at hand is the fact that some employers still gravitate towards inefficient recruitment habits, which make the hiring process unnecessarily tedious.

The race to securing top talent

This inefficiency when it comes to hiring poses as a serious problem as good quality candidates are snapped up quickly. Moreover, the modern job seeker is highly selective when it comes to the search for a job— often considering company culture and reputation— among many other factors, before sending in their job applications. The pressure is on for employers to act fast and implement powerful recruitment marketing strategies in order to attract the right candidate for the job. So how does your company gain a competitive edge over others in the race to secure top talent?

Before starting to pull out all the stops in a frenzy to find "the One", consider this. Recruitment has taken a turn for tech with the rise of job portals in recent years. These sites have proved to be an invaluable tool for both employers and job seekers alike, accounting for an estimated 50% of hires worldwide. Not merely a means to post job listings, job portals offer a multitude of additional benefits for the Malaysian employer:

• Speed and convenience - screen potential candidates on-the-go and post jobs with a click of a button.
• Wider reach - obtain a large pool of candidates to choose from, unfettered access to resume databases.
• Company branding - gain visibility and establish online company presence.

Job portals work both ways too; a survey by Hays Asia reveals that 60% of Malaysians found online job websites to be the most successful method of finding a new job. How’s that for a win-win situation? Get a head start with these job portals.

1. Jobstreet.com

Paid; pay per package

With more than 90,000 employers and 3.6 million candidates on the platform, Jobstreet is by far the most popular choice for Malaysian employers and job seekers. This job portal promises services beyond posting a job ad, offering guidance and support to employers new to the hiring scene. It's tried and tested approach to attracting talent has earned it the moniker of Southeast Asia's largest online employment company.

5-star job ads

Effective recruiting begins with the perfect brief. Jobstreet Learning Centre provides guidance on how to craft the perfect job ad, among many other helpful hiring tips. The job portal prides itself on offering a range of resources with the purpose of assisting employers in their search for prospective employees. Worried your job ad doesn't measure up? Feel free to get in touch with their support team who are more than happy to edit and rewrite your ads for you.

Smart recommendations and access to embedded industry data

Jobstreet's extensive database comes with a number of perks, including intelligent recommendations specific to your company. Get instant industrial salary suggestions when you create your job ad, as well as suggested screening questions tailored specifically to the job. The platform also makes use of integrated sourcing, which instantly recommends prospective candidates for you once your job ad is posted.

Quick and easy candidate management

Jobstreet's SiVA Recruitment Centre does it all! Create job ads, manage candidates, access the Jobstreet Talent Search tool, and coordinate your recruitment activities with key stakeholders all on one online platform. The employer dashboard allows for convenient and easy access to updates; its intuitive interface easily helps you keep track of applications.

Choose Jobstreet for:

• Its commitment to providing guidance and support to new employers via Jobstreet Learning Centre.
• Access to millions of viable candidates across Southeast Asia.

2. LinkedIn Job

Paid; monthly subscription (Lite and Corporate)

Professional social network, headhunting tool and job board— LinkedIn does it all. Boasting a huge user base of 600 million users, with 25 million+ job seekers using the site per week and 35 job applications every 2 seconds, it’s a trusted job portal that gets the job done, literally, claiming to account for a successful hire every 8 seconds. The business-focused social network has refined its products over the years to offer an arsenal of tools to help you find your next hire:

Precise and personalised targeting

Thanks to LinkedIn Job's efficient screening system, 80% of hirers receive a qualified applicant in just 24 hours. It makes use of targeted promotion to help your job posts gain high visibility to potential candidates, who will encounter your job listings via their Linkedin feed, emails, push notifications etc. Its simple applicant management tool effectively screens out candidates who don’t meet your minimum requirements; plus, it takes the edge off by rejecting your applicants for you.

Craft the perfect job post, even when you’re on a time crunch

With 139 job description templates to choose from, as well as access to auto-generated descriptions based on similar jobs on the site, you’ll have your job posts up in no time.

Enjoy fuss-free payment and value for money

LinkedIn Job encourages flexible spending by allowing you to set a daily budget, automatically pausing your job post when it reaches your total budget. A major plus is that you only pay for views from candidates who click on your job post and there is no extra payment for recommended candidates. For a breakdown on how exactly LinkedIn Job's products are working specific to your company, look no further than its Performance Summary Report for employers, which delivers key metrics, like InMail response rates and Job Slot utilisation, right to your account.

Choose LinkedIn Job for:

• Its massive user base, take your pick out of millions of job seekers across the globe.
• Its professional repute with employers and employees alike.

3. WOBB

Paid; annual subscription

Does your company want to utilise the latest recruitment marketing trends to attract quality employees? A burgeoning youth platform founded in 2014, WOBB specializes in employer branding to attract Gen Y and Gen Z job seekers. WOBB’s relatively fledgling status as a job portal compared to the likes of LinkedIn Job and Jobstreet, has not deterred it from aspiring to reach greater heights; following its inception and the release of its mobile app it has rapidly gained traction and is proving to be a strong contender among local and international job portals alike. Here’s a couple of features that every employer can benefit from using WOBB:

Access to passionate Gen Y and Gen Z job seekers

WOBB has long been lauded by employers for its ability to attract young, tech-savvy job seekers— 86% of the users on its platform are, in fact, Gen Y! Their Tinder-esque mobile app allows job seekers to swipe right on jobs they love, actively engaging otherwise passive candidates and thus accelerating the hiring process.

Company branding made easy

The job portal offers a range of tools and services which gives your company a chance to showcase its unique work culture, thus attracting viable, like-minded candidates. In particular, its use of content rich media (a combination of professional photos, videos and interviews) to create a personalised company profile page allows your company to construct a spell-binding narrative bound to entice any job seeker.

Friendly user interface/ employer back-end system

The process of posting a job listing on WOBB is simple enough; employers are given fully customisable means of purchasing credits called Job Slots which allow you to post, re-post, and replace jobs as much as you like within a 12-month period. Its virtual interviewer Aivi (Artificially Intelligent Virtual Interviewer), helps employers screen through potential candidates by mimicking the traditional Q&A process of a face-to-face interview. Employers may then assess the responses to determine if the interviewee is the right fit for their company.

Choose WOBB for:

• Its creative approach to employer branding and showcasing company culture.
• Its user-friendly interface that caters to the needs of every employer.

4. AngelList Recruit

Free; pay for more features

What started as a social network for entrepreneurs and angel investors in 2010 has since evolved to AngelList Recruit, a powerful job portal connecting millions of candidates to employers around the world. The subsidiary of AngelList caters mainly to recruiters from tech businesses and startups, featuring international employers with the likes of Twitch, Uber and Discord, as well as local brands like dahmakan, kaodim and lalamove, just to name a few. Check out what this startup-centric job portal has to offer:

Great for start-ups

AngelList Recruit touts itself as the world’s largest startup community, not without good reason. With over 3.2 million of the most responsive, startup-ready, remote-first talent at your fingertips, finding the right fit for your startup has never been easier. This job portal goes the extra mile by offering a range of services to guide budding startups along the recruitment process. For one, its Company Profile feature allows you to provide a multi-faceted account of the people, the culture, and the funding unique to your company. AngelList Recruit is all about helping your startup gain visibility too; craft a compelling Company Profile and your company stands a chance to be featured in their newsletter. Pricing-wise, the job portal offers tiered subscription plans with startup-friendly pricing to meet your needs.

Go beyond a candidate’s resume

Long gone are the days of making a decisive judgement on candidates solely based on their resume; AngelList Recruit’s rigorous Assessment grants employers access to a range of testing modules designed to get unique information from candidates that otherwise wouldn’t be found on a traditional resume. Looking to hire for a highly specialised role? Incorporate testing materials that cover Front-End Web, Back-End Web, Full-Stack Web, Android, and iOS to find the next developer for your startup. AngelList Recruit takes into consideration both structured data (e.g. programming experience) with unstructured data (e.g. career goals) when helping you find the perfect candidate. Try their Curated feature and have an internal team of recruitment experts hand-select your candidate for you.

Streamline the hiring process

Speed is absolutely crucial in the recruitment process. With that in mind, AngelList Recruit keeps things simple with a lightweight applicant tracking system (ATS) that integrates seamlessly across several platforms that may already be in your repertoire such as Greenhouse, Lever, and Workable. Their ATS reportedly minimises the time spent by employers on recruiting tasks by 4+ hours. Benefit from a centralised candidate management experience by enjoying the following perks: automated syncing across the aforementioned platforms, instant notifications, and the ability to drag and drop candidate profiles to determine which stage of the recruitment process they are at.

Choose AngelList Recruit if you’re looking to:

• Fill niche or highly specialised positions in your company.
• Advertise in a startup-centric job portal.

5. adnexio

Free; pay for further referrals

The brainchild of ex-PKR vice president Rafizi Ramli, adnexio uses artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to match your company with the ideal candidate. Its founder attributes his interest in AI recruitment systems to the unemployment and human capital development problems in Malaysia, citing adnexio is an "ecosystem that connects employers and prospective job seekers" via a smart machine called NEX. Sound intriguing? Read on to find out how AI-driven recruitment can bridge the gap between HR teams and potential candidates:

AI-powered recruitment

While most employers are no stranger to the advent of AI in recruitment, most AI solutions fail to consider the use of AI throughout the hiring process. adnexio hopes to take AI recruitment to the next level by utilizing these technologies to address hiring concerns beyond that of vacancy advertising. The job portal's high tech, AI job matching system, NEX, cuts down on a whopping 80% of the recruitment process.

Find the candidate of your dreams

NEX runs analytics on prospective candidates to rate their suitability. It collects a ton of data from job seekers— personal details, education, work experience, personality type, confidence level, leadership qualities, etc. via a comprehensive assessment process which includes a personality test and a 5-minute video interview. The results are compiled into detailed performance reports which are then ranked against the population. This ensures that you’re referred only to candidates who match your exact requirements.

A system that keeps on learning

As NEX trains on more and more data, the prediction model will execute iteratively to produce hiring recommendations with higher accuracy. These algorithmic prediction models only get larger with time; as such, you can expect to find the closest match as you continue to use adnexio. Did we mention that you can advertise vacancies on the site for free?

Choose adnexio if you’re looking for:

• A high-tech, intelligent solution to your hiring needs.
• A place to post jobs and access a whole host of recruitment tools virtually for free!

Hot tip: recruitment tools, social media recruiting

Job portals are just the tip of the HR technological iceberg; the modern employers now have access to a multitude of digital recruitment tools that provide simple solutions to nuanced hiring tasks. Perhaps you're now feeling inspired to integrate technology with your recruitment practices. Supplement your hiring process with these additional tools:

Recruitment tools

• Workable: aside from a centralised Applicant Tracking System (ATS), this recruitment software offers a full set of features to help you transform your hiring process e.g. a personalized hiring plan for budget tracking. Plus, it integrates seamlessly with job portals like LinkedIn and Monster to create a HR system that works best for your company.
• Interview Mocha: a skill assessment software that provides over 1000 aptitude tests ranging from those that assess technical skills e.g. coding, accounting as well as cognitive capabilities and language proficiency.
• Textio: create powerful job descriptions that bring in applicants 90% faster. Textio uses augmented writing technology to evaluate your job descriptions before you publish them, suggesting the best possible keywords to craft compelling job ads.

Social media recruiting

The advent of social media in recent years has brought about a new recruiting trend that looks like it's here to stay. Social media recruiting involves advertising job positions on non-traditional sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other social media platforms. If your company is looking to diversify its talent pool with young job seekers, social media might just be the right hiring channel to explore. This method of recruitment is also a way to strengthen your employer brand and make it known to prospective candidates.

Job portals: the key to hiring quality talent?

While by no means a comprehensive list of job portals in Malaysia, we hope this has helped you narrow your search for the platform best suited for your company's hiring needs. Keep in mind that technology is by no means the ultimate saving grace and should not work in place of good ol' hiring practices; ultimately, establishing company culture and branding will help your company attract the right candidates. Much like all business efforts, the multi-pronged approach seems to work best when hiring; using a combination of these job portals and other recruitment software will yield a good selection of prospective employees. Exercise a bit of lateral thinking and you'll find quality talent in no time!