MAKING YOUR RECRUITMENT TEAM MORE EFFICIENT: 3 TECHNICAL SOLUTIONS

As recruitment picks back up after major dips following the COVID-19 outbreak, recruiters are facing new challenges that make it harder for them to stay productive. The field was always fast-paced, of course, with professionals required to exhibit excellent organizational skills, consistent motivation, and strong efficiency — but now things are significantly tougher.

We’ll go into why this is the case, but for now let’s consider the plight of the average recruitment team. Prospective employers and employees alike are hungry yet demanding, unwilling to wait for sluggish recruiters to get their acts together. Anyone persisting in operating using an outdated playbook will struggle. In short, it’s time for a strategy overhaul.

Investing in new tactics has always served to make the recruitment process smoother and faster, of course — but the truth is that there’s been something holding back progress, and it’s the lack of technological innovation. Yes, even forward-thinking recruiters have been reluctant to embrace digital technology — fearing its cost, perhaps, or even its complexity.

At last, though, things are changing. 68% of recruiting professionals now believe that investing in technology is the best way to improve recruiting performance. And if you don’t match their commitment, you’ll be left behind.

In this post, then, we’ll explain a little more why efficiency is so important at this stage, then look at three technical actions you can take to make your recruitment team more efficient, majorly boosting your entire operation. Let’s get started.

WHY IS EFFICIENCY SO IMPORTANT IN RECRUITMENT?

To be a good recruiter and have a recruitment team that delivers results, you need to focus on efficiency. But why is this? Well, time is of the essence, and things can go very wrong if you can’t achieve swift turnaround times. React slowly to a recruitment request and the company in question could go with another agency. Worse still, you could earn a reputation for communicating poorly, leaving you battling to redeem your brand image.

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As for why things are tougher now than ever before, there are various factors making the recruitment process more complicated. Here are some of the key contributors:

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• Employee expectations have gone up. Recent years have heavily lessened the stigma around mental health, and workers of all kinds (but particularly those in office-based roles) have come to expect more than just decent compensation. It’s now vital to find the right cultural match, with employees wanting to feel that they belong at their workplaces instead of simply being viable puzzle pieces.
• Remote working has changed the game. Pandemic lockdowns showed that companies could remain in operation without conventional office schedules, and workers won’t ever forget that proof of concept. This means that it’s rarely as simple as matching employer and employee locations. The scope is so much wider.
• Hiring is even becoming international. The already-widened scope stands to get massively wider still as more businesses come to appreciate the viability of hiring not just remotely but also internationally. If someone can work from anywhere, then it really doesn’t matter where they live — and when your hiring pool is essentially the entire civilized world, that’s a recipe for confusion.
• There are so many viable channels. Recruitment doesn’t just go through a core set of job-listing sites. It’s now highly common for people to find positions through social media platforms, or mobile apps — and who’s to say that recruitment of the future won’t extend into video games? It’s tough to keep track of it all.

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On the whole, it’s the recruiters who can greatly accelerate their processes who’re best positioned to take advantage of this hectic employment market. If you can show that you have what it takes to stay ahead of the game, you can ultimately enhance your reputation. To that end, let’s get to some technical solutions.

THREE TECHNICAL SOLUTIONS THAT CAN RAISE RECRUITMENT EFFICIENCY

The key goal of using technology here is to enhance the process of tracking and managing your core recruitment tasks, freeing up your time so you can put it towards other things. But how can you do this? There are inevitably many technical solutions that could help, but let’s take a look at three particular actions you should focus on taking.

FULLY EMBRACE REMOTE-CENTRIC SYSTEMS AND SERVICES

Times have changed, and your processes must change with them. Take the core task of screening candidates, for instance, which is one of the most time-consuming parts of recruitment. Once upon a time it was managed through in-person meetings, but the scope and scale of today’s recruiting makes that approach highly impractical.

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Using scheduling tools such and videoconferencing tools you can strike the right balance between giving searches enough time and keeping your workload varied. In most cases, remote screening is just as effective as in-person meetings: and when there’s a pressing need for an in-person interview, you’ll have more time to make it work.

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And then there’s the rising interest in overseas hiring to consider. Being an effective recruiter in this area doesn’t just require you to operate internationally: it also requires you to understand the added logistical complications and take steps to ease them. Establishing a relationship with an employer of record service provider will help you find more interesting placement opportunities, and creating some relevant knowledge-base resources and FAQs will only help your cause.

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USE REWARD-LED PLATFORMS TO KEEP RECRUITERS ENGAGED

When team members aren’t feeling engaged by their work, their efficiency levels suffer. And one of the biggest ways to address this issue is to reward workers when they perform well or improve themselves in relevant ways. The positive feedback will ensure that they feel good when they get things done, incentivizing them to keep working hard.

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This is where running a reward-led training platform will make a huge difference. Running ad-hoc training sessions is extremely difficult because trainees will lose interest and struggle to pay attention. Laying out set training plans that are carefully designed to keep recruiters engaged and motivated will make a huge difference. When someone completes a key piece of training, they should earn a suitable reward, be it time off or further training of their choice.

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Even the most well-designed training course can be tedious at times, but anyone who’s been through it will be far more capable of tackling new tasks and developing their skills, so it’s worth doing everything you can to ensure that your team members push through the pain.

PROVIDE CRM SOFTWARE TO TRACK RECRUITMENT JOURNEYS

A CRM system provides a central repository in which a business can store customer and prospect data, track customer interactions, and carry out other relevant tasks. In truth, though, customer is quite a vague term in this context, as a CRM system can just as reasonably stand for candidate relationship management. There’s no foundational reason why not.

Deploying a CRM system to track recruitment journeys could make life much easier for your recruiters, allowing them to stay on top of applicant preferences and ensure that they’re reaching out at the most appropriate times to keep relationships strong. Additionally, since a CRM gathers vital information in one repository, it could grant you superior oversight and allow you to find key pieces of data when needed to supercharge your productivity.

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This will also make it simpler for you to source and place temps, giving you some much-needed flexibility. So if you’re not currently tracking recruitment journeys through a CRM-style system, this is a logical step to take.