Having employees is essential to keep your business running. However, this does not mean that you can randomly choose people to hire and have them complete your business processes. You need to screen every individual that you want to hire to ensure that they are qualified to do the job you assign to them.
This is where the recruitment process plays a huge part. This process allows you to know applicants and assess their skills before you decide whether to hire them or not.
It is an effective process that has been used by various companies for several years. However, this process can become tedious for your recruitment officers if done manually. Without the use of the proper tools and technology, your recruitment process will be slow and ineffective.
As a business owner or supervisor, you might have thought of ways to make your recruitment process more efficient. Maybe, you might have even been curious if recruiting can be automated. Fortunately, technology has advanced enough to allow for recruitment process automation.
What is Recruiting Automation?
Recruitment process automation is a kind of technology that allows you to automate certain recruitment tasks and systems. Since this technology can only address a few steps in your recruitment process, starting with HR automation does not mean that you can do without your recruitment team. You still need the expertise of your HR team to hire qualified individuals for your company.
Why Invest in Recruitment Process Automation?
This advancement in the recruitment field can greatly increase your HR department’s productivity while reducing your cost-per-hire. It will also make your recruitment process much quicker and more efficient.
Additionally, recruitment process automation will significantly increase your company’s competitive advantage in hiring. By taking advantage of this technology, you can reach more qualified individuals and improve your business’s overall talent profile.
Automating your recruitment process is also one way to practice lean recruitment. This type of hiring process allows you to recruit individuals while reducing costs and producing the least waste possible.
How to Automate the Recruitment Process
Automating various steps in your recruitment process is now easier with the use of recruitment automation tools. To help you get started, here are some ways on how to automate the recruitment process of your company.
Sourcing Candidates
The most common way of reaching potential applicants online is by posting job ads in various job portals. This is an effective way of displaying your job vacancy to several individuals who might be qualified for the position.
However, have you ever thought about reaching individuals where they spend most of their time online? Why not leverage the power of social media and use it to find the most ideal candidate for your company?
This practice is called social media recruitment. By using this method, you can gain access to a larger pool of qualified talents who are also part of the younger generation.
You can automate this process by using a social media recruitment management software. This software allows you to automate your posting on social media websites, such as Facebook and LinkedIn, saving your HR team up to several hours every week. It can also be utilized to schedule posts for multiple social media platforms to be published at a certain time and day.
Additionally, you can use a social media recruitment management software to ensure that your company’s recruitment messaging is consistent throughout all the social media platforms that you use. This is possible because you can easily create one post and publish it to various social networking sites without having to switch between several apps or websites.
Aside from using the internet, you can utilize your available resources to source candidates for an opening in your organization. You can do this by launching an employee referral program in your company.
In this type of recruitment method, you should encourage your current employees to suggest individuals whom they think are qualified enough for the open position in your organization. They can refer their friends, family, and even colleagues who are in the same industry and tell them about the opportunity available in your organization. To entice your employees to refer suitable candidates, give them incentives and rewards for every successful referral that they provide.
To better manage your employee referral program, use an automation tool like an employee referral software. This technology allows you to track every referred candidate and see where they are in the recruitment process. You can also use this software to manage the incentives received by your employees for each of their successful referrals.
Pre-Screening
Automate your pre-screening process by using ATS tracking solutions. This software can help you screen unqualified candidates early on and save your recruitment team some time.
You can use an ATS to filter through resumes and sort applicants by adding keywords and phrases relevant to the job vacancy. Resumes that do not contain the necessary keywords that you set will automatically be screened out. This leaves your HR team with less resumes to read through after the pre-screening process.
ATS can also be used to automatically rank applicants’ resumes. The software will assess the resumes based on how well they match the job description you have provided on your job advertisement.
By using the ranking provided by the software, you can focus on the more qualified candidates first. Doing this can help you find the applicant that will best suit the open position much easier.
Interviews
If you are screening several candidates for different positions, scheduling interviews for everyone can be confusing and tiresome. First, you need to know every involved party’s free time to find the perfect schedule for the interview. This might mean sending several messages to both the applicant and the hiring manager, which can be time-consuming.
To avoid the hassle of several back-and-forth emails and calls, use a candidate interview scheduling software. This is another way on how to automate your recruitment process.
This software works by allowing your HR team to avoid overlapping interview times, double-booking interviews, and inaccurately recording candidates’ information. With these advantages, your recruitment team can save several minutes—and even hours—in processing every applicant.
Additionally, an interview scheduling software can be used to automatically send reminders to applicants and hiring managers before an interview. This tool can also remind hiring managers to provide feedback for the candidates they have interviewed.
Updates and Other Types of Communication
When screening several applicants, you might need to send the same message to each one over and over again. This task can be manageable if your HR team is only screening a small pool of applicants. However, if you are recruiting at scale, sending updates and other forms of messages to every candidate can be a tedious task.
Some of the messages you send to applicants may be about following up on documents, invitations to interview, and reference requests. To make this task easier for your HR team, consider investing in an ATS.
With an ATS, you can inform a candidate what you need from them or provide them with updates regarding their application in just a few clicks. This software can automatically send the necessary messages to several candidates, so you do not need to double check every single detail about the applicants you are contacting.
ATS can also be used to personalize the messages you send to candidates. Even if you are using a templated message to contact them, this software can automatically personalize your message by including the applicant’s name in the body of the text.
Monitor Applicants’ Progress
Easily monitor and manage your candidates’ journey with ATS. This software can help your HR team see how each of the candidate in your recruitment process is doing.
Your recruitment team can use ATS to see any of the latest activities related to a specific candidate. They can also use this software to get a full view of the entire hiring process and see how every candidate is progressing in the recruitment funnel, whether they have just completed the initial assessment or is already up for a final interview.
Secure Data
One of the best features that you can enjoy when using ATS is the robust security it offers. When using this HR automation software, you do not have to worry about the leakage of any information—whether your company’s or the applicant’s.
ATS can keep email addresses, professional credentials, home addresses, contact numbers, and other sensitive information safe from being stolen by cybercriminals. With this software, you can have peace of mind knowing that your company’s confidential information will never fall into the wrong hands.
Automation is the Future of Recruitment
Forget the traditional method of recruiting and screening candidates. You can now make your hiring more efficient by taking advantage of recruitment process automation tools. By using the appropriate software for your recruitment process, your can assist your HR team in finding the most qualified individuals who can bring success to your organization.
If you would like to learn more about additional recruitment process automation tools that you can use for your organization, contact us at Skillfuel. We look forward to helping you improve your recruitment process.
