The methods involved in hiring the right employees for your business have become more complicated. This is especially true if your business is growing and expanding. Simply posting a job opening and waiting for applications is no longer sufficient. Your business may now be required to seek out qualified candidates, review and assess resumes, conduct interviews, provide and gather feedback, communicate with the applicants, make and extended job offers and perform other tasks relating to the hiring process. All of this may be overwhelming to your recruitment staff if your business is small. This is especially true if your staff is small and your recruitment processes are disorganized and unstructured.
Using recruitment software is one way to organize your recruitment processes.
Recruitment and staffing processes can be extremely labor intensive and time consuming. Recruitment software can help automate some of the more mundane aspects of recruiting. More comprehensive software can provide automation for tasks such as candidate interview scheduling and screening. Many of the more robust recruitment software can integrate a recruitment customer relationship management (CRM) system. Other features can include candidate assessment and onboarding.
Automatic Tracking Systems (ATS) are the most widely used application software in talent acquisition. Typically, ATS integrates with a company’s applicant management system (AMS). The AMS is the technology used to manage recruitment work flows, processes and procedures from requisition to offer. Once a position is filled, the AMS is used to facilitate the onboarding process.
Recruitment workflows are improving and automating processes. Some of the features of state-of-the-art ATS include automated assessment of candidates and suggestions to the hiring team based on assessment. Others allow hiring managers to connect digitally with candidates in real time to answer candidates’ questions and ease their anxieties about the hiring process. The goal of the hiring process should always be to create the best possible candidate experience. ATS allow hiring managers to achieve this goal.
Recruitment processes become complex as the volume of vacancies increase. Consider the scenario where a recruiter needs to hire for 10 to 15 positions. In such a scenario, the recruiter needs to efficiently screen through hundreds of resumes and cover letters to identify the most qualified candidates, schedule interviews, take and document interview feedback, and notify management of the status of the hiring process. Without a centralized system to streamline and integrate all of the processes involved in recruiting, it is easy for information to be lost.
Recruitment software helps resolve numerous challenges in a hiring organization. Challenges can range from recruiters not being able to easily view the status of candidates in the hiring funnel to recruiters not being able to quickly view candidate information and facilitate the hiring process. Recruitment software helps streamline and automate recruitment processes to achieve the ultimate goal of recruiting: to help the organization hire the most qualified candidates. Good recruitment software achieves this goal.
Important Functionalities of Recruitment Software
Different software have different functionalities. Companies should decide on the functionalities best suited for their business based on their recruitment process, industry, volume and model.
A recruitment software should typically have the following features:
- Applicant Tracking System (ATS)
An ATS helps companies track applicants through the entire application process. An ATS gives recruitment team members a 360 degree view of all the candidates applied to a particular job opening. It also helps recruiters manage their job opening, track the progress of the recruitment process and collaborate with other team members involved in the same recruitment process.
- Resume Parsing and Candidate Screening
ATS extract important information from a candidate’s resume, like the candidate’s name, contact details, experience, education and skills. An ATS may also help recruiters evaluate if a candidate is qualified for the job. Automated candidate screening should be considerate and aids recruiters in final evaluation of a candidate.
- Posting and Distribution of Jobs
Recruitment software should allow the user to post jobs on the software, as well as help in distributing the jobs to other hiring platforms. It should assist users in managing their jobs, posting and reposting.
The software should allow the user to integrate the job postings on various hiring platforms. For Indian businesses, job post integration is very important because of the plethora of hiring platforms available. Recent ATS software focused on India, mention job post integration as an important feature.
- Interview Scheduling
Scheduling and managing interviews can be very time consuming. Recruitment software should help recruiters manage interviews and interviewer schedules and give reminders.
Rework the recruitment process to eliminate the need to comb through email chains to find interview information.
- Candidate Communication
The key to successful recruiting is keeping applicants informed about the status of their application as well as providing notification regarding next steps, whether it be a request to submit additional documentation, an interview, assessment, or an offer.
Many recruiting systems include templates for communicating with candidates. These templates often include the automation of communication reminders.
- Recruitment Analytics and Reporting
Measuring the effectiveness of recruiting efforts helps gain insight into the level of interest in open positions, effectiveness of sourcing efforts, and speed of the process.
Key recruiting process metrics include:
the number of applications
the source of applicants
the rate of conversion during screening and interviewing
the length of time it takes to extend an offer and for the applicant to accept
time to fill a position
performance of the recruiting funnel
average activity of recruiters
In addition to providing recruiting process metrics, many systems help HR leaders gain insight into the recruiting process by identifying the location of process bottlenecks.
- Process Automation
One of the major advances in recent recruiting systems has been the automation of processes. These systems can automate candidate status notifications, reminders, and other administrative tasks and may suggest recommendations to recruiting managers.
- Collaboration and Integration
Recruiting is rarely done by a single person. Many systems allow different users to be assigned different levels of access to the system and maintain recruiting records in a centralized location.
Some systems integrate with HR systems to transfer employee records and enable automation of processes related to onboarding new employees.
Integration can eliminate data entry and improve the hiring process.
The benefits of recruitment software
Efficient hiring
Software can automate tasks to help recruiters complete hiring tasks quickly.
Talent Management
Recruitment software can help recruiters manage their candidates.
Offer Visibility
Hiring managers can view the status of all open positions and where there are bottlenecks.
Time Off
Recruiters can spend less time on administrative tasks.
Team Collaboration
Recruitment software can help hiring managers and recruiters view the same information.
Process Standardization
Defined steps in a recruitment software can help standardize the process for recruiters.
Process Improvement
Recruitment software can help evaluate which recruitment processes need to be improved.
Recruitment Software vs. Conventional
Conventional recruitment processes use a variety of unintegrated, manual processes. This is appropriate for low volume recruitment. Recruitment processes become complicated and difficult to manage when a lot of candidates need to be processed.
Conventional Recruitment Recruitment Software
Tracking candidates in files Tracking candidates in a database
Tracking candidates via email and phone Integrated communication
Scheduling via phone Integrated scheduling
Following up with Candidates Recruitment analytics
Reporting Reporting
Automating tasks can be beneficial in managing recruitment processes. However, this doesn't mean all recruitment processes should be automated.
Choosing The Correct Recruitment Software
Don't let the number of features on an offer determine your final choice. Rather consider the recruitment challenges your organization needs solutions for.
Consider the Volume of Hiring
Organizations that hire less than five employees in a given year have different needs from organizations that hire hundreds of employees in a year.
Consider Integrations
Review the applications that the software is integrated with. These include email, calendar, different job boards, Human Resource Information System (HRIS), payroll, assessment tools, and other integration software used by the organization.
Consider Process Automation
Review the processes within the software that can be automated. Determine if the automated processes are in line with the organization’s hiring processes.
Consider Reporting
The software should be able to automate hiring process reports to provide hiring management insights.
Consider Data Security
Since the software contains candidate’s personal information, it is important to ensure the software aligns with data protection laws and regulations.
Consider User Experience
The software should be easy to use to accomplish the desired hiring processes.
Prioritize the hiring processes to automate.
Is Recruitment Software Useful to Small and Medium Enterprises?
Yes. Frequent hiring by a small organization justifies the use of recruitment software.
The essential question is:
What level of recruitment complexity is appropriate for the business?
If recruiting processes result in recruiters spending excess time administering and re-administering the process, there is likely a case for investment in a third-party solution.
AI and Recruitment
The inclusion of AI in Recruitment solutions has advanced.
Familiarity with the Recruitment process has ensured the inclusion of AI in work flows for candidate sourcing, résumé screening and short-listing, conducting interviews, and communicating with candidates.
Risks associated with AI in Recruitment
AI systems should not replace Human judgment in recruitment. Recruitment systems and processes should be designed in a way to support fairness and relevance in recruitment.
AI in recruitment should be designed in a way to support the recruitment team in executing and administering the process rather than replacing or taking away the role of a recruitment team.
AI in Recruitment should not result in a “black box” or an opaque system in Recruitment process.
Recruitment Systems and Processes in a competitive market should enable the recruitment function to effectively and efficiently meet the end to end needs of the business.
This is particularly relevant to high-volume recruitment such as bulk hiring.
Software for Recruitment Agencies
Recruitment agencies have the added challenge of managing multiple clients, vacancies, recruiters and candidate pipelines.
The features used by agencies are similar to those required by in-house recruiters. However, the agency landscape is more complex and therefore a broader range of features are often required. These may include candidate and client databases, as well as job and recruiter management. Tracking and facilitating communication with clients, candidates and recruiters is also critical as is tracking and managing the recruitment process and administrative communications.
From an agency standpoint, a recruitment system that integrates client and candidate management within the context of a recruiter’s workflow would be valuable.
Recruitment Software
Recruitment software is used by companies to streamline their recruitment process, from posting jobs and sourcing candidates to screening and selecting the best candidates and facilitating their start employment.
An ATS (Applicant Tracking System) is a type of recruitment software that focuses on the recruitment process to manage and assess applicants. Other features of a recruitment software may include a candidate relationship management system (CRM), talent sourcing and acquisition, recruitment process automation and integration, recruitment and onboarding assessments and training.
The major benefits of a recruitment software is the integration of a unified platform to automate recruitment process and workflows, facilitate interaction and communication among recruiting teams and improve visibility of the hiring process. Recruitment software may also help in bulk recruitment.
What is the cost of recruitment software?
The price of recruitment software varies. Some software has a free version. Others charge based on the number of employees or recruiters, or charge based on monthly subscription. In India, ATS software is available individually and as part of an HRMS. When evaluating ATS software, businesses should look beyond the subscription price and analyze the total cost of ownership.
What should businesses evaluate prior to purchasing recruitment software?
Potential buyers should analyze the total cost of ownership. Additionally, businesses should look at the hiring volume, the features offered by the software, the integrations, how the software automates hiring, reporting functionality, usability, scalability, the security of the software, and the implementation process.
Additional Comments
The world of hiring is changing. More data is being generated and more hiring processes are becoming automated. As the hiring processes of an organization becomes more complex and voluminous, relying on manual processes to manage hiring can create additional administrative burdens on an organization.
Using Recruitment software can streamline the hiring process. The software can automate recruitment processes and hiring tasks. Prior to selecting recruitment software, an organization should analyze what processes have created a hiring bottleneck. Once hiring bottlenecks have been identified, software can be analyzed to automate hiring and integrate with other organization processes.
When hiring processes become more automated, hiring becomes less disjointed. Hiring processes can be integrated across the organization and measured to improve the overall business process.
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