Recruiting automation technology helps talent acquisition professionals do their jobs more effectively—hiring teams that take advantage of automation software hire better candidates more quickly.
Maybe it’s better to start with what recruiting automation is not: robots taking over HR jobs. Not even close! Recruiting automation is when we use software to support recruiting processes—automation enhances the interviewing experience for both talent professionals and qualified applicants.
Automating manual tasks that take up valuable time and energy makes the recruiting process more efficient. Using software for tedious recruiting tasks—like sending follow up emails, lining up appointments, or screening applications—saves both time and money.
Not only that, recruiting tools exist to make the hiring process more effective by engaging with talent and ensuring interviews are accurately assessing each applicant. Put simply, automating software helps hiring teams find the best candidates for open positions.
There are plenty of ways to automate the recruiting processes. Here are just a few examples of what daily activities can be automated to make a recruiter’s life easier and help them hire great candidates more quickly:
Maintaining relationships with a vast talent network is next to impossible for one HR professional to manage on their own. An applicant tracking system (ATS) can help keep track of and stay connected with potential talent.
Recruiting software can automate communications—it can regularly share newsletters, posts to social networking sites, or manage email campaigns. Those regular communications can help maintain a relationship with your brand and a pool of talent. Increased candidate engagement will then convert to higher quality applicants when new jobs become available.
Automated recruiting software can help create and share job listings with recruiting platforms or directly with candidates in an ATS or candidate relationship management system (CRM). Advertisements and updates on postings on job boards can also be automated.
Candidates are up to date on job postings in real-time, and HR professionals don’t have to worry about managing every aspect of dissemination.
Reviewing initial applications manually is the most tedious and time-consuming job that recruiters have. Considering that up to 88% of applicants often aren’t qualified, this is a huge loss of time and energy for hiring personnel.
There are more efficient ways to advance the interview process. Taking advantage of software that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to automatically screen resumes or recorded video interviews will help narrow down the pool of potential interviewees. Then recruiters can focus on the most promising candidates for the job.
Trying to sync calendars for a meeting is hard for anyone, but especially so for busy professionals. Automated recruiting software can help avoid scheduling conflicts by allowing candidates to self schedule interviews or follow-up meetings without any hassle.
Background checks, reference checks, and skills testing can all be managed by automated recruiting software. Talent acquisition professionals don’t need to spend time managing these screenings, data entry or other manual tasks—they need to spend time investing in top talent.
Not only can recruiting technology simplify this aspect of the hiring process, it centralizes candidate information and reduces unnecessary paperwork. Files don’t get missed or misplaced, and the need to keep track of each menial detail is gone.
Sending automated follow up messages to individual applicants or new hires is effortless with automating software. Automation software can use AI and chatbots to easily keep in touch with candidates.
Communicating with other members of the hiring team is streamlined with recruiting software too–everyone has access to the same data, whether that includes resumes, background checks, interview scorecards, or video interview highlights.
Recruiters spend close to a third of their working hours each week finding candidates for just one open position. Considering that the most qualified candidates are often off the market within 10 days, recruiters don’t have time to waste.
“most qualified candidates are often off the market within 10 days”
Now that machine learning is advancing, software has developed to meet the needs of recruiters—and companies—that want to find better hires more quickly. With an increasing need to attract top talent in a candidate-driven market, recruiters are eager to try anything that gives them a competitive edge.
In fact, 68% of recruiters think that investing in recruiting technology is the best way forward. With automation software, hiring teams can screen applications more efficiently, focus their energy on best-fit applicants, reduce time to fill, and provide a high-quality candidate experience.
Companies with high-volume hiring goals stand to benefit much from recruiting automation tools. Manually screening job applications, fact checking, and managing interview communications (like interview scheduling, follow-up feedback, or sharing highlights with other members of the hiring team) are all tasks that can be done more efficiently with automation technology.
On the other end of the spectrum, a company with smaller hiring teams would also greatly benefit from recruiting automation software. Teams looking to make the most of their resources—particularly maximizing their limited time—should consider automating as much of their workflow as possible.
When it comes down to it, any company would do well to invest in recruiting automation software. Maximizing the recruiting process improves the quality of the candidate experience, reduces time to fill by 60%, and results in more qualified hires. Streamlining recruiting also saves money by reducing inefficiencies and increasing recruiter productivity. What company wouldn’t want that?
What goes into hiring top talent quickly? There are many ways automating parts of the recruiting process can serve the interview process.
With the help of recruiting automation software, time that recruiters used to spend reading through the resumes of unqualified candidates can be spent focused on activities that make them most productive. Automation isn’t about eliminating human interaction—it’s about fostering relationships with top talent to improve the quality of hires.
Perhaps the biggest time saver of all: finding the right people to interview can be done quickly and efficiently with automated resume screening. Keywords, phrases, and qualifications can be assessed by recruiting software. Resumes that don’t match a job description or skills requirements can be passed on without taking up the recruiter’s time.
Even better, technology has been developed to pull those same details out of video recordings using conversational AI. Pre-recorded video responses can be screened and rated for fit, and the best applicants can then be scheduled for interviews.
Sometimes just finding a mutually agreed upon time for an interview takes up too much back-and-forth. Using automation technology to allow top candidates to self-schedule takes that tedious chore off the recruiter’s plate.
Pre-interview data collection is also simplified with the right recruiting software—hiring teams don’t need to spend time tracking down demographics, collecting certifications, or managing background checks. These tasks all can be offloaded to automation services.
Most importantly, interviewers shouldn’t need to spend time coming up with new questions before each interview. Good interviewers know that to fairly assess a candidate’s hard and soft skills, they need a set of standardized, unbiased, and relevant questions. Thankfully, some software solutions will provide pre-approved questions to help guide great interviews.
When interviewing multiple candidates at the same time, it can get easy to forget who’s who. With systems like Clovers, being able to review applicant information, interview notes, and video highlights makes interviewing—and decision making—much less complicated. Applicant files are organized, centralized, and easily navigated.
Here’s the positive impact: every time recruiters assess candidates more efficiently, they are hiring more effectively. Recruiters can easily share interview highlights—in the form of video recordings, highlight clips, notes, or interview scorecards—with other members of the hiring team. Speed of communications translates to reduced time to hire.
In turn, reduced time to hire means that companies are able to save time, money, energy, and can engage—then hire—top talent before anyone else. When reviewing candidate data is easily accessible, the best candidate can be placed in the right role quickly.
With automated recruiting software, candidate data, interview notes, and interview recordings can exist within the same easily accessible system. Hiring teams won’t need to keep track of files in messy cabinets or risk losing paperwork in the shuffle. Recruiting technology keeps the hiring process streamlined.
Extrapolating data is easier with automated recruiting software too. Getting stats on time to hire, retention, and recruiter productivity can help identify areas for improvement. Tracking schedules, important follow-ups, and communication between departments (keeping track of what Employee Health might need at the same time as Human Resources can get complicated!) can be managed with the help of a centralized recruiting system.
Using recruiting software and AI can also help compare each candidate and their ratings, background, and interview responses. Using the same intelligent interview software to make those comparisons makes the recruiter’s job less complicated and helps make objectively strong hiring decisions. In the case of recruiting, the technology isn’t there to replace the hiring team. It’s there to enhance their ability to hire great people.
Job applicants aren’t just one-trick ponies—they’re dynamic people. Each candidate comes with a unique set of skills, past experiences, capabilities, and areas for growth. A great interviewer is able to identify each potential hire’s strengths and weaknesses then assess for job fit. Recruiting technology can help with those assessments.
Interview software that supplies questions to assess a variety of skills is invaluable to hiring teams looking to find the best candidates. This reduces prep time and also helps make sure interviews are consistent.
Software that improves an interviewer’s skills will also help them evaluate candidates more accurately. This is particularly important when it comes to reducing interviewer bias. Recruiters should know that applicants who might not have seemed like a good fit at first glance might actually make great employees. On the other hand, interviewers who hire the first person they click with might miss out on someone who could have been an asset. Smart hiring teams know that diversity is key to their company’s success, and using technology to help ensure unbiased and fair interviews will help them achieve their goals.
Recruiting automation software is also important to anyone who values candidate experience. A great interview experience can help move the needle on whether or not a potential hire accepts an offer—87% of interviewees said a good experience could change their mind if they were unsure about taking a job.
Another important statistic: 4 in 5 applicants report that their interview experience directly reflects how well a company values its employees. Show applicants that your company’s brand is one that cares.
With automation software that makes data collection, scheduling, communication, and interviewing a seamless process, candidates are bound to feel as if their time and energy is being valued. They’ll be more likely to bring their great background to your workplace.
Automated recruiting software helps hiring teams find the best talent quickly. It gives the applicants a positive interview experience and ultimately reduces the time it takes to get those applicants into their new roles.
If you’re looking for a solution that supports recruiting with streamlined candidate screening, easy scheduling, effective interview prep, and conversation analytics, look to Clovers. Hiring teams that use Clovers save time, conduct better interviews, and—most importantly—attract and retain top talent. Request your demo today!
Jackie brings over a decade of HR technology experience to Clovers. She’s passionate about helping companies build talented and diverse (dream) teams and delivering an incredible hiring experience to everyone involved.