Recruitment is a critical business process and investing in humans is the biggest investment businesses can make. It is the ‘people’ who are truly at the helm of things when it comes to the overall performance of the organization. It is ‘who’ you are recruiting that determines ‘how’ you will perform as an organization.
“Human Resources isn’t a thing we do, it’s the thing that runs our business"- Steve Wynn
Technology is already having a huge influence on the recruitment industry. It is already being looked at as the game-changer in the realm of talent acquisition. Recruiting Automation is, therefore, gaining momentum. More and more organizations are looking at it as an intelligent way of augmenting their business by coupling intelligent technology and the right talent.
So dive in to know all about ‘Recruiting Automation’ and how it can truly empower an enterprise with all the benefits. The key to finding the right talent in the right way, eventually leading to the growth of any organization!
What is Recruiting Automation?
Recruiting automation is all about enhancing recruitment processes supported by technology (AI Recruiting) to automate all of its recruiting tasks and workflows, in order to empower and accelerate the hiring processes! Recruitment Automation is also called as a subset of Human Capital Management! Recruitment Automation tools are now being used by many companies to manage and empower all aspects of their workforce.
Why do companies need automation in recruitment process?
Well, why not? The need for Recruiting Automation stems from the need of tackling a lot of issues at hand such as information overload, increasing skills-gap and the need to address challenges related to employee satisfaction.
Few reasons validating the need for recruiting automation
- Traditional recruitment processes pose enormous challenges, especially in the wake of talent wars. Most companies engage in poor talent search processes leading to poor talent acquisition. As a result, companies are facing a huge loss in terms of time, efforts and money. An investment in recruiting automation can help companies engage better with qualified talent and get them on-board faster than usual
- Increasing information overload, databases and innumerable resume screening time are making organizations lose out on some good talent. Automated candidate sourcing and scheduling can essentially help HR make informed decisions quickly and recruit the right talent at the deserved position
- Recruitment processes directly or indirectly talk a lot about the company culture and the overall brand image. A recruitment automation process can help recruiters create fast, simplified and swift processes that can enhance the candidates’ overall experience with the organization
- Human intervention can lead to biases when it comes down to recruiting people. Recruiting automation can create clear and objective assessments yielding better results each time. You can validate, screen, select candidates based on the real-time information without any human biases affecting the judgment at the time of selection
Here’s a glimpse at the statistical data that reiterates the fact that automated recruitment is indeed the future and the need is crucial-
- 95% of job seekers think that they would reconsider applying for a company again if they had a positive experience the first time they applied.
- 85% of job applicants who didn’t actually get the job believed that the real person never really read their application or resume
- HR Managers spend an average of 14 hours each week on tasks that probably could be automated
How does Recruiting Automation really work?
Recruiting automation is a process and like any other process, it is designed to assist and enhance the hiring process at each stage of the recruitment cycle. Here are a few insights that showcase how automation in recruitment impacts each stage of the recruitment process-
Pre-screening candidates
With the automated tool, you can select the questions you want to distribute to the candidates with a set time for a pre-recorded interview. This not only saves a lot of time, but it also helps to compare candidates and their respective strengths and weaknesses. Weeding out the unnecessary and unsuitable; automated software can help to shortlist candidates through keyword management, wherein you acquire the real-time and the most recent and authentic candidate information.
Tools such as intelligent screening software automate resume screening while it acquires data on the performance and tenure of the candidates. It also enables to use of public data sources and the social media profiles of their candidates. It allows you to automatically rank and shortlist the strongest candidates after capturing the candidate’s experience, skills, and other qualities.
Scheduling Interviews
You can completely rely on the automated process with intelligent software at work that helps decide the interview schedules. There are tools that allow candidates to select the time slot and let them schedule and reschedule without having to manually intervene. The automated workflows facilitate valid background and reference checks to ensure that only authentic data is being made available. Some of the most popular tools that help schedule interviews are as follows-
Goodtime
This tool is a talent operations platform that is designed for interview scheduling and training too. With Goodtime, you can integrate with the interviewers’ calendars that allow for real-time availability of your candidate to pick a time and date for the interview.
TextRecruit
You can now get automated scheduling that sends a link to the candidate to schedule a time directly on your calendar with this tool. These links can be sent on a one-to-one basis, or in a campaign to interview many people.
Interview schedule
This tool enables you to find the best schedule as you simplify most of the manual parts of your recruitment workflow and can connect your automated interview scheduling with the calendar to avoid any time lags or ambiguities.
Interview assistant
This online interview scheduler facilitates a quick and easy way to create and schedule new interviews. Also, lets the candidates receive interview invitations and confirmations that reduce your work hassles.
These automated interview scheduling tools eliminate all the back and forth emails, unnecessary, rescheduling while they allow the interviewing team to view upcoming interview schedules in real-time.
And before you decide which ATS you want to select, you might want to consider the following factors-
- Able to connect your calendar and integrate it with your applicant tracking system
- Designed as per the number of employees who will be using it
- Match the types and complexities of your interviews
- Have the capability to schedule and reschedule interviews and pick alternative interviews in case of changes
To know more about ATS, read Top 5 ATS in the market for an in-depth review of each ATS
Recruiting and evaluating accurately wherever, whenever
With Automated recruitment software, you can easily capture the candidates' resume, access real-time candidate data and schedule the interviews too. You can do all this remotely through mobile apps that will make the process fast and convenient. You can now not just recruit fast but also evaluate the talent accurately. This method enables you to automate follow-up reminders to interviewers so that the evaluations are completed in the stipulated time right on schedule, enabling you to assess the real-time talent in real-time.
Documenting letters
With machine intelligence at play, you can now avoid manual loads of scanning and saving letters and forms. Automated software can help you generate and save digital formats of offer letters, appointment letters, etc. which can be securely saved on the cloud.
Easing recruitment operations
All candidate information can be sought at once, under one roof as one can now integrate the Candidate Relationship Management System (CRM) with other tools and software while simplifying the operations.
Automated recruitment does offer a huge advantage in terms of hiring the best, but with an array of software available in the market, how does one decide which one to go for! Choosing the right automation software is equally important so that you can actually leverage the technological benefits and get rewarded in terms of investment.
So typically, the criteria while choosing the right automated recruitment software could be any or all as follows-
Company Size
Different businesses have different needs. So, as per the company size, you need the right automated software tool that may differ.
Software type
There are various types of recruitment automated software available that build different tools for different requirements. As per the requirement, you can go for sourcing tools, recruitment marketing platforms, candidate relationship management and/or applicant tracking systems.
Easy use
An interface that allows for seamless use of tools can be one of the important criteria for selection. It is a mere waste of time and effort if the automated tool isn't convenient to use
Integrate flexibly
It is important that the recruitment software has the scope and room for agility to be able to integrate other tools into it. This will give you immense scope for introducing and integrating new tasks in your recruitment processes.
Free trials and demos are other ways to actually test and get a first-hand feel of the software before you actually invest in it.
Types of recruitment automation software
Here is a quick list of recruitment automation software that you can choose from –
Indeed- With 100 million strong databases, this is one of the biggest sources of external hires by far with an incredible 72% of interviews and 65% of hire in the US
Zoho Recruit - Zoho Recruit helps to source, track, and hire the best candidates, without any juggling required across different media. One can customize every aspect of the workday and automate tasks like sending emails, updating interview status, and more. Also, it gives detailed reports and analytics at your fingertips.
Entelo- This recruiting automation software helps talent teams more efficiently discover and qualify talent to hire faster. Entelo makes the recruiting teams more efficient. Its proprietary algorithms, AI, and end-to-end automation speed up candidate discovery and qualification processes.
Benefits of Recruiting Automation
The benefits of automated recruitment are plenty and it can help you make an informed decision. Let us look at some of the top benefits of recruitment automation-
Saves time
Any business needs to save time to be able to focus on the more crucial processes of business, instead. Recruiting Automation does just that. It saves a lot of time and effort from your HR department by automating most of the crucial processes. You get plenty of time to do the in-person tasks that need human intelligence and intervention.
Saves costs
It’s an investment that is going to reap huge benefits for your business by saving all the other costs. In short, it can give you better processes to get the best talent on board with higher retention rates that bring more growth to your business!
Fetches the best talent
Automation in recruiting can give you more valid searches to recruit on board the most talented people, enhancing the growth of the organization.
Source: Talent Search
The ROI factor in Recruitment Automation
Any tool or automated software is only as good as the ROI that it is capable of generating. Otherwise, the whole exercise of adopting and deploying such tools would be a waste. So how does Recruitment Automation create ROI?
Recruiting Automation can bring in intangible benefits and profits as it saves time and time is money for instance. However here are some pointers to be considered that can help you understand ROI associated with Recruitment Automation-
Cost per Hire
Given the traditional and prevalent hiring processes, it is the time that HR has to invest in the entire process of talent acquisition. So, Recruiting Automation can free up a lot of time for the Human Resource. Therefore time can be the first huge ROI measure for recruitment automation
Filling up positions
The amount of time HR usually spends on using job boards and talent acquisition agencies is huge and the search is tedious and slow at times. Automated recruitment software can ease up things saving both time and efforts; wherein your HR can invest that time in organizational development and other areas.
Takeaways
So, as against the popular belief, recruiting automation is not at all about taking the human out of the human resource. It is in fact, about empowering human resources to help them create more efficient and productive results. It can give you the benefits of lesser human intervention for a better selection of candidates. Thus, saving a lot of time, cost and effort of the company. Not to replace human recruiters; recruiting automation empowers human resources to enhance the process for better outcomes.