When investigating software to assist your recruitment function it’s easy to be overwhelmed by feature lists and the latest ‘must have’ functionality. The key to finding the right system for you is understanding if and how the technology will help you to achieve your recruitment goals.
Goal: Source More Candidates Directly
How: Posting vacancies to job boards, careers sites and social media platforms should be pre-requisites of your recruitment software if direct sourcing is one of your objectives. Social Search functionality lets you proactively search for candidates via networks like LinkedIn. Ensure that reporting tools can monitor traffic from each channel so you can measure which provide you with the best candidates to help focus your future campaigns.
Goal: Communicate your Employer Brand
How: Recruiters are increasingly operating as marketers, promoting your Employer Brand online needs software that is customisable to meet your recruitment processes and communicate your Employer Brand promise. Look for tools that facilitate prompt and personalised communications that update candidates on their progress; a convenient and intuitive application process via an informative careers website and ensuring the entire candidate journey can also be carried out on mobile devices will each reflect your company as an efficient, accommodating and considerate employer.
Goal: Build and Nurture Your Talent Pool
How: Having a well-stocked pool of passive candidates can help you have the right candidates in the right place and at the right time, but it’s critical to ensure that you engage with your talent frequently to ensure that when the passive become active you are top of their mind. Look for communications tools and automated rules that allow you to target and interact with the right candidates to keep them engaged for when suitable roles arise. Skills matching can help, so you’ll need to be able to maintain your own library of skills, good online recruitment software will help you pinpoint the best matches in your talent pool and then engage them directly, via email and SMS.
*Foyles – received 4,000 registrations in 8 months
Goal: Reduce Your Cost of Hire
How: Reporting tools that provide tracking and visibility of effectiveness of spend to help streamline expenditure and focus on the most effective channels. Social media integration and candidate portals assist in sourcing candidates directly and building a Talent Pool, reducing reliance, and therefore spend, on external recruitment costs.
*British Heart Foundation 50% reduction in agency spend
Goal: Build Your Recruitment Capability
How: Make sure that the system helps you work better with hiring managers, ideally giving them their own online portal where they can see all of the jobs and candidates they are currently involved with. Cool tools include the ability to bulk print CVs for interviews, instantly see the recruitment pipeline and access their recruitment diary to schedule interview slots. Make sure hiring managers will be able to access the system from anywhere and on any device – so they can take interview notes and manage their tasks via their tablet, smartphone or laptop.
Volume recruitment campaigns, such as graduate and apprenticeship schemes, need the capacity to manage thousands of applications in a short period of time for which you’ll need bulk communication tools, assessment centre / interview scheduling capabilities and an application process that won’t require recruiters to re-key information.
Goal: Reduce Time to Hire
How: Legacy Applicant Tracking Systems tend to focus on what happens once your vacancies have been advertised, but to accelerate your time to hire look for tools that also make your job requisition process more efficient. A cloud based system configured to your internal approval processes for new openings will help ensure every stakeholder can collaborate irrespective of their location or device of choice – so you can ditch those spreadsheets. Other features to look for include: pre-screening using ‘knock-out’ questions to minimise the number of inappropriate applications, and intelligent skills matching and shortlisting tools that help you home-in on the best talent for each job.
*Agilysis – saved 40 days of admin time per annum; Matalan reduced time to hire by 20%.
Goal: Improve Your Candidate Experience
How: First, make sure candidates can find you, your recruitment software should integrate with job boards, your careers site and your social media profiles. Second, make the application process convenient, candidate portals should be mobile responsive to allow candidates to apply when it suits them, not only when they have access to a PC. Make sure candidates can see the next steps in the process, book interview and assessment centre slots and gather feedback.
*Oxford Instruments – reduced candidate handling time by 75%
Goal: Improve Your Quality of Hire
How: Skill matching and social search tools can ensure you are long listing candidates that have the appropriate skills and qualifications for the role, instantly narrowing your search. Pre-screening questions built into your application process will help filter out candidates that don’t meet minimum requirements saving both their time and yours.
When you are ready to offer a job to a candidate make sure the reference collection process is also managed and monitored by the system, it should be possible to send out reference requests, prompt referees to respond and escalate back to the candidate if alternative references are required.
*Matalan – 95% acceptance rate of job offers
Goal: Manage Your Vendors
How: If you recruit both directly and via agencies look for solutions that help you engage with your vendors as well as benchmark their performance. Again, web-based portals can help you issue instructions to and receive candidates from vendors and track activity so that reporting tools can monitor supplier performance and identify those that are meeting your expectations, as well as avoid having duplicate candidates in your database.
Eploy’s online recruitment software has been engineered to address the challenges faced by recruiters and is built in response to customer feedback and a passion to engage every stakeholder in the recruitment process.