Automating Recruinment: What Are the Advantages for Comoanies Looking to Hire?

Intro

Achieving growth and reaching goals is only possible with the support of talented and dedicated employees. You should know how challenging it can get to find candidates who bring real value to the company and contribute to its brand development. In an increasingly competitive recruitment environment, more and more companies are turning to automation to facilitate and optimize their work. But what exactly does this alternative consist of?

What is Recruitment Automation?

We hear a lot about marketing or sales automation, but very little about recruitment. Yet, this approach is increasingly favored by companies for whom hiring one or more employees is a real challenge. 

Recruitment automation simply means setting recruiters free from manual work by using tools that optimize the hiring process. Shorter lead times, cost reduction, and improved quality of hires are just a few benefits of recruitment automation. Thanks to this approach, recruiters can embark on an effective process and increase the performance of their KPIs by delegating manual and time-consuming tasks.

Key advantages of automation for recruitment

Recruitment automation offers many advantages:

• Quality of hires
• Time efficiency
• Anonymity
• Data-driven decision-making
• Competitive advantage.

Quality of hires

The first and perhaps the most important advantage is the quality of hires. Automation tools can search databases and online platforms for potential candidates based on specific criteria. This helps recruiters identify suitable candidates more efficiently and reach out to them directly.

Time efficiency

Recruiter saves considerable time since all time-consuming tasks are automated, such as screening resumes and scheduling interviews. They can devote this time to what is most important: conducting quality interviews with selected candidates and managing their teams.

Anonymity and equity

The risk of inequity is no longer on the table during an application process, which is especially valuable when the company is working on its DEI strategy. Applications become mostly anonymous, making candidates selected based on their background and skills. As a side bonus, a company’s reputation gets improved, as it contributes to the employer branding and makes the company attractive in terms of values. 

Data-driven decision-making

Automation generates valuable data and analytics, providing insights into the efficiency and effectiveness of the recruitment process. You can use this data-driven approach to optimize your hiring strategies.

Streamlined onboarding

Automated onboarding processes can help new hires complete paperwork, access resources, and get up to speed more quickly, leading to faster integration into the company.

Cost savings

While there may be an initial investment in recruitment automation tools, the long-term cost savings from increased efficiency and reduced time-to-fill positions can be significant.

How to automate recruitment?

This section shares how automation can bring efficiency to the recruitment process, but it is also essential to maintain a human touch and ensure a positive candidate experience throughout the process. Combining automation with personalized interaction can lead to the best results in talent acquisition.

Step 1: Identify pain points 

To kick off an automation recruiting process, you need to understand what’s setting you apart from it. Start by defining manual and time-consuming tasks that your team still needs to perform. Some of them may include: 

• Resume screening and parsing
• Candidate sourcing from job boards and social media
• Interview scheduling and coordination
• Sending personalized candidate communications
• Pre-screening questionnaires and assessments
• Background checks and reference checks
• Onboarding paperwork and document processing
• Data analytics and reporting for recruitment metrics

Step 2: Choose the right recruitment software

Research and select recruitment software that aligns with your organization’s needs. There are various tools available, such as Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS), candidate sourcing platforms, and interview scheduling software — we will discuss some of them below. 

Step 3: Create an attractive careers page

Design a user-friendly and informative careers page on your company website. This page should include job listings, details about your organization’s culture and benefits, and a clear call-to-action for potential candidates to apply.

Step 4: Implement an ATS

An Applicant Tracking System (ATS) is a critical component of recruitment automation. It helps manage job postings, track candidate applications, and streamline the hiring workflow. Choose an ATS that integrates well with your other HR systems and provides the features you require.

Step 5: Automate candidate sourcing

Utilizing tools that can automatically search through online job boards, social media platforms, and professional networks will make a huge difference. You will get to identify potential candidates based on specific criteria, such as skills, experience, and location.

Step 6: Resume screening and pre-screening questions

By implementing automated resume screening using ATS features, you can define criteria and keywords to identify the most relevant resumes. Pre-screening questions can also be automated to gather additional information from candidates before they move forward in the process.

Step 7: Automate interview scheduling

Use interview scheduling tools that sync with your team’s calendars to find suitable time slots for interviews. This reduces the back-and-forth communication and minimizes scheduling conflicts.

Step 8: Automate candidate communication

Automated email templates or chatbots will keep candidates informed about the status of their application and provide updates throughout the recruitment process. Candidates will appreciate receiving such information, setting you apart from competitors.

Check these automation tools

There are many tools on the market that allow recruitment-related tasks to be automated.

ATS

Companies often turn to an ATS (Applicant Tracking System) — a software tool that helps organizations manage and streamline their recruitment process by centralizing candidate data, job postings, and hiring workflows. This tool allows not only managing applications but also helps with the entire recruitment process.

ATSs are available in two forms:

• Locally installed software: you need to pay a license to install such a tool.
• SaaS (Software as a Service): subscription-based software that is hosted on a remote server.

ATSs offer a wide range of features such as:

• An enriched CV database with a filtering system
• Pre-selection of candidates to retain only those who match the vacancy, thanks to a matching and scoring systems
• Management of recruitment interviews, with the creation of detailed candidate profiles and reports
• Automated emails to send before and after an interview 

Among the ATSs available on the market, Bullhorn, CandiDesk, Flatchr, Jobvite, or Lever are the ones worth paying attention to. 

CRM

More commonly known for building customer relations, CRMs are also very suitable for recruitment. Faced with the phenomenon of candidate abandonment, the CRM responds to this problem by providing clear and regular information to candidates.

The goal is to maintain the candidate’s interest by nurturing them. In addition, a CRM will be perfect for communicating with candidates in a personalized manner, which will most likely increase their interest and investment in the recruitment process.

There are many CRMs perfectly adapted to recruitment, including TalentLyft, Talemetry, and Yello.

Chatbot

This “conversational agent” is extremely useful for providing answers at any time of day or night through different channels (website, SMS, Slack, Facebook, etc.). Make sure to pay extra attention to the chatbot you choose — they can either be a winning strategy for your company or scare candidates away. Check out Mya, Olivia, XOR, or Talla to make up your mind.   

Wrapping Up

Recruitment automation can be a winning solution for your business despite its size, with the faster time-to-hire and enhanced candidate experience. Most recruiting agencies adopt an automation approach to facilitate and expedite hires — you can always take your recruiting outside while keeping the quality of hires.