Recruitment automation is transforming the way companies attract, engage, and hire new talent. By integrating this technology, you can automate key parts of the recruitment process from sourcing candidates and screening applications to sending hiring forms. Smart automation frees recruiters from performing the repetitive but necessary tasks associated with processing and sorting applicants. This allows for faster hiring and allows recruiters to use their knowledge and experience to select the best candidate for the role from a larger cohort of qualified applicants.
Automating the recruitment process takes on even greater importance in an increasingly competitive job market. Today's talent shortage is increasing the time it takes to fill certain roles within an organization. The most qualified applicants are often on the market for a very short time before accepting an offer. The speed with which an organization can get from application to job offer and hiring contract will determine whether they are able to hire their dream candidates or whether they wind up working for the competition. Recruitment automation helps ensure you're not only filling positions as efficiently as possible but also with the best candidates possible.
An investment in the transition to automation is about more than speeding up the hiring process. It is about opening up a broader pool of possibilities for your organization and knowing that you are getting the ideal candidate for every role. The success or failure of an organization often comes down to the talent and commitment of its staff. Recruitment automation lets you leverage data analytics for better decision-making and maintain engagement with candidates throughout the hiring process, maximizing your chances of securing the top talent in your industry. By automating the repetitive tasks associated with the hiring process your team is free to allocate more time to person-to-person interactions and finding the person who will fit the role and your organization to a tee.
Time is Money in More Ways Than One
Time is money. You already know the deep truth of that particular cliche. Here’s the thing, when it comes to hiring, “time is money”” can hit on multiple levels depending on the industry you are hiring for. Hiring hourly is especially time-consuming, and the pool of potential applicants is usually deeper than the pool for salaried positions, but the trade-off is the higher turnover rate that means you are always hiring, and the wider variety of roles that you are filling. Both factors add time to the process. HR has to be available for screening, testing, and interviewing a diverse array of candidates across a wide range of aptitudes and skills. Recruitment Automation Software can be set up and programmed to manage the sourcing, screening, matching, interview scheduling, etc., for dozens of different roles. Your HR team can step in and take over the final stages of the process once the automation has narrowed down your selection to the most promising candidates. You can easily shave days, and even weeks, off of the time that it takes to get from job posting to hire.
Developing A Talent Pipeline
In the case of the busy hourly hiring ever-revolving door, automation will allow you to develop a well-stocked talent pipeline filled with pre-qualified candidates for every role that you frequently need to fill.
Recruiting automation software can manage initial sourcing, conduct initial screening, and sort candidates based on your requirements. This allows you to always have the top selection of the specific type of candidates you need right at your fingertips.
You can also use the talent pipeline as a tool to identify and flag your top candidates as they enter the system, schedule regular outreach or nurture them with electronic communication to keep the connection open and maintain the relationship between your company and your future staff.
Shifting Focus To High-Value Activities
Recruitment automation enables you to concentrate on the aspects of your work that have the greatest impact on your organization's success. As more organizations make the switch to automating the hiring process, the core job description in your HR Department will shift somewhat.
The Automation revolution is not replacing human workers. It is paving the way to bring back the skills we once valued most in our human teams, their unique personalities, insights, and other soft skills.
Here are just a few of the strategic areas that you can open up and explore
Strategic Acquisition Planning
With automation handling the lion’s share of the recruitment process, your recruiters can devote their time to strategizing. Rather than ticking off checkboxes on a hiring sheet, they will finally be able to showcase the unique talent and brilliance that earned them the position in the first place.
Strategic planning lets your recruiters really dig into the needs of the company and build out the roles that most need to be filled rather than relying on a cut-and-paste job description. When your recruiters have time to hone in on what the organization truly needs, you get candidates and new hires that are not only skillfully matched but are also a perfect fit for your company goals, ensuring a long-term, impactful addition to your team. This kind of strategic focus helps in creating a workforce that is not just efficient but also engaged and motivated, driving overall business success.
Building Relationships With Candidates
One of the core benefits of automation is the ability to free up humans to spend their work hours performing the tasks that only humans can do. There is no more human job than relationship building. When you are able to delegate repetitive tasks to the machine, you open up the time and the mental bandwidth to hold meaningful conversations and truly get to know your candidates before making your final decision.
Enhancing the Candidate Experience
Automated communication tools are pivotal in keeping the conversation flowing with your prime candidates. Candidates appreciate the speed and efficiency of an automated communication system that humans can often simply not deliver due to volume.
Email Automation
Email was made for automation. Today’s sophisticated tools go beyond a personalized greeting on a standardized form letter style generic message. You can set up a chain of emails with the next email selected and set out based on your recipient's action. This is a great tool during the recruitment process. Your candidate gets personalized, targeted, and relevant communication at the precise moment that it is needed and the timely nature of the messaging delivers a personalized and interactive feel that provides the human experience.
Text and notification Automation
Text messages and App notifications are among the most open and engaged of all communication formats. Like the email chains above, you can set up pre-set automated text options with the next message triggered by the recipient's response. The triggered message selection provides the interactive human experience of a conversation, and the short-form text content lets you get immediate information to the candidate in a way that you know they will see and take note of.
Analytics
Data point tracking, reporting, and analysis are important parts of the equation for anyone who wants to achieve true and lasting success. Knowledge is power, and you have to know where you started, how much progress you have made so far, where you need to focus your attention, and when you have succeeded.
Here is a quick guide to some of the most useful Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) you should be tracking to keep your recruiting and hiring process optimized.
Time-to-Hire
The Time-to-Hire KPI tracks the time that it takes to move one applicant through the hiring process. Measurement starts from the time that the candidate application or resume is accepted into the system or the time that the applicant successfully registers and completes the first step in the application process. Measurement stops when a candidate signs an offer to become an employee or contractor.
Time-to-Fill
The Time-to-Fill Metric tracks and records the time that it takes to hire someone to fill a specific role. The Time-to-Fill clock starts ticking the moment that you place the first job opening post and stops when you have secured a commitment to fill the requisition from your chosen candidate. This KPI differs from the Time-to-Hire KPI below. The Time-to-Fill KPI is specifically measuring your recruitment and candidate selection timeline. Knowing this timeframe will let you see how long it generally takes to get a candidate hired for a specific position. If you note that you have one position that is taking much longer to fill than others, it may indicate a need to revise the job description, improve the attractiveness of the offer, or reevaluate the sourcing strategies used to attract candidates. Addressing these areas can help streamline the recruitment process and reduce the Time-to-Fill, enhancing your organization’s efficiency in acquiring top talent.
Source of Hire
Candidates will find their way to your recruitment system through different paths. Most businesses make their open positions available to candidates through popular job boards like Indeed or Monster, as well as the company’s own website. You may be listed on Linked In and have posts on industry job boards. Tracking how many applicants come from each individual source will help you show you where you should be focusing your efforts for future campaigns.
Application Completion Rate
Approximately 80% of candidates will begin an application but never complete the process. Tracking Application Completion KPIs are a great way to tell if there is something that is turning people away from your application or whether you have got it dialed in just right. A low completion rate can be a red flag, signaling potential issues such as a lengthy or complicated application process, unclear job descriptions, or technical problems with the application system. By identifying and addressing these barriers, you can optimize the application experience, thereby increasing the completion rate and ensuring that you do not miss out on potentially qualified candidates due to procedural inefficiencies.
Promoting Diversity And Reducing Bias
A 2023 McKinsey report clearly proved that diversity in the workforce is good for workers and good for the company. McKinsey found that companies with the highest degree of diversity were 39% more likely to have above-average financial returns compared to companies with the least diversity.
Still, diversity has been slow to take off in many organizations, despite candidates increasingly making it clear that an organization’s inclusion & diversity environment was a determining factor in whether or not they would accept a position.
The deep-rooted biases tends to result in the same hiring decisions over and over. Businesses can overcome this by using an automated system to ensure that everyone gets a fair shot at open opportunities.
Blind Screening Processes
Reassure those who are concerned that more diversity will mean less merit by implementing a blind screening hiring process. A blind screening uses automated recruitment tools to process candidate applications, removing all identifying information like name, age, and gender. This leaves only the candidate's experience, skills, and qualifications. This technique allows you to be sure that all your hiring decisions are devoid of any discrimination.
Structured Interview Processes
You can further remove bias from the hiring process by creating a structured interview process that follows a uniform set of pre-approved questions for each candidate. Rate the candidate’s answers using a predetermined ranking system.
To reduce bias even further, consider using a generative AI recruitment automation tool to conduct the interview and evaluate the responses.
Implementing Automation with the Right Technology
There are always going to be those who resist change. You can set your team up for success by taking the time to think through every aspect of your transition carefully. Start by taking an assessment of what you are looking to accomplish with your recruitment system. Look for tools that are going to provide you with all of the automation and artificial intelligence capabilities you need. Once you have your shortlist, look through the fine print to find the tools that are going to integrate into your existing equipment and software as seamlessly and simply as possible.
Aligning With Organizational Goals
Having pinpointed the technology options, align your choices with what achieves the company's hiring objectives. If your aim is to shorten the hiring cycle, emphasize solutions that promise to reduce time-to-fill. When diversity is a primary goal, bias-free software should be at the top of your list. Benefits such as cost savings, better candidate evaluations, and improved compliance, as noted in resources about automated recruiting processes, underscore the importance of selecting technologies that further your company's specific goals. For each potential solution, evaluate how it contributes to targets like candidate quality, employer brand strength, and hiring timelines.
Integration With Existing Systems
Making the switch from a proven system to a new process can be daunting. You can ensure a seamless transition with a bit of research. While most tools should be broadly compatible with most common solutions it is still good policy to check all the fine-print so there are no surprises. Pay close attention to the type of computer systems and software your company currently uses. Opt for automation software that is API-first, meaning it’s designed to integrate easily with your existing systems through well-documented APIs. This approach not only simplifies integration but also enhances flexibility, allowing for customized adaptations and scalability as your company grows. By choosing API-first automation tools, you ensure that the new system works harmoniously with your existing infrastructure, minimizing disruption and maximizing the efficiency of your recruitment process.
Ensuring Data Privacy
77% of candidates would choose not to apply to a job at all if they didn’t feel secure about the handling of their data. Additionally, 78% of candidates were firm in their assertion that they would expect to be told exactly how a potential employer intended to use their private information, how it would be kept secure, and what they would be looking at specifically.
By providing total transparency early on, you can let candidates know you take their data protection seriously. Anytime you ask the candidate to share potentially sensitive data, offer a disclaimer and full explanation informing the candidate how you intend to use the information, who will have access, and how it will be disposed of or stored when you are done.
The Future Of Recruitment
The future is no longer an abstract “someday” lying far out ahead of us or just over the horizon.
The future is here and now. Artificial intelligence and automation is revolutionizing business. Autonomous cars are driving around our major cities, and more tasks will continue to be automated.
If you haven’t taken that first step into automating your office, automating your hiring process is an excellent place to start. Prospective candidates will appreciate the speed and efficiency that these changes bring to their job search experience, and you get the compound rewards of a more efficient and faster hiring process, a fully staffed business, and the best fit for the job every time.
If you’re ready to join the revolution, you can start by giving us a call today or click AppyHere: The Answer To Your Recruitment Automation Needs
