Hiring the best job candidates is one of the top priorities for all recruiters and Human Resources professionals. This is typically the case all the time, but certainly during times of high hiring volume.
The goal is always the same: hire the best candidates possible in the shortest amount of time possible. However, there are only so many hours in a day. (And you don’t plan to use ALL of them recruiting and hiring talent . . . right?)
Enter recruiting automation. When you can automate parts of the recruiting and hiring process, good things happen. In short, you can get more done in less time. In terms of the process, you can complete critical tasks more effectively.
Automate the recruiting process and reap the benefits
But enough with the generalities. Let’s dig down into the specifics, shall we?
Below are three of the major benefits of recruiting automation:
Automate for increased productivity
Recruiters and HR professionals are always trying to increase their productivity. However, increasing productivity is not necessarily about getting more things done. It’s about getting more of the right things done. And getting more of the right things done when they need to be done. This is the value of recruiting automation. It helps to increase not just the quantity of the productivity, but the quality of it, as well.
It makes sense, then, to automate tasks that are not as critical. Sure, every step and task is important to some degree. However, time is of the essence. As such, you must automate the least important tasks and activities so you can focus more on the crucial ones. When done correctly, this allows you to make better decisions more quickly. And this leads to the second benefit of recruiting automation, which is:
Automate to improve hiring leads
Hiring more quickly doesn’t mean much if you hire the wrong people. In fact, it’s almost better to hire nobody than to hire the wrong candidate. This underscores the importance of quality, and recruiting automation’s role in helping to achieve it in your hires.
Even if you hire the right person and you don’t want to fire them, they may not stay at the company very long. Retention is another big concern in the marketplace, as evidenced by the ongoing Great Resignation. Hiring job candidates you like is one thing. Hiring job candidates you like and holding onto them long-term is another.
Automate for a better experience
Recruiting and hiring is all about the job candidate experience these days. Recruiters and company officials provide an exemplary experience, especially for top candidates. Providing such an experience requires more time, energy, and effort. These days, though, not providing a great experience will almost certainly hurt your efforts.
Once again, recruiting automation to the rescue! By automating the less important and more mundane parts of the process, you can devote more time to the candidate experience. The better the candidate experience, the more engaged candidates will be. The more engaged candidates are, the more likely they will stay in the process and you can hire them.
How to automate the recruiting process
Now that we’ve discussed the benefits of recruiting automation (the “why’), let’s discuss some of the tools involved (the “how”). There are certain parts of the recruiting and hiring process that are more conducive to automation than others. While many are at the beginning of the process, not all of them are.
However, focusing automation on these areas can reap benefits. Those benefits involve a time and energy savings that you can apply to other, more impactful areas.
Automation in recruitment: email
There are a couple of big reasons why job candidates drop out of the hiring process. First, a recruiter and/or a company is not communicating with them enough. Second, they don’t know where they stand in the process and what the next steps are.
Email is a great way to communicate with candidates to engage them. But as you know, it can be time-consuming. And as we’ve discussed, time is of the essence. With recruiting automation, you can ensure that you’re nurturing top candidates without sacrificing precious time.
Automation in recruitment: job posting
Using recruiting automation with job posts or advertising is one of the best ways to save time. Ideally, this can help on multiple levels.
First, you can target and hopefully source qualified job candidates. Second, you’re saving time while you target and source these candidates. And third, you can brand your organization in a positive way. (Employer branding and the candidate experience are critical these days.)
Automation in recruitment: the process
There are other areas in the recruiting process that can benefit from automation. They include background checking, pre-employment assessments, and interview scheduling. Then, of course, there is social recruiting. Sourcing job candidates on social media requires a tremendous amount of time to do correctly and effectively.
The key is to automate the things that need automated so that you can focus more on the things that don’t. It’s possible to “go overboard” with automation, but that would be self-defeating. Effective recruiting automation results in both quantity and quality. If you automate too much, you could sacrifice quality in the long run.
Top Echelon’s recruitment automation software
Top Echelon offers a powerful and intuitive applicant tracking system (ATS) with a polished and refined CRM. Our ATS has many features that allow users to automate certain parts of the recruiting and hiring process:
Email marketing—With Top Echelon, you can create and utilize email templates. This allows you to save time while also staying in front of qualified job candidates.
Job posting—You can post jobs to sites such as ZipRecruiter, LinkedIn, Monster, Glassdoor, and more. In addition, you can post jobs to your organization’s various social media sites.
Activity Planner—Schedule events and calls and set triggers for anticipated activities. This way, you’ll know what to do and when to do it, saving even more time and energy.
See more of Top Echelon’s best recruiting software features for additional recruitment automation strategies!