What is the difference between a supermarket’s “essential” range and the “premium” range? The premium range might be organic and it might be processed in a more responsible way. It may taste better, last longer and be healthier- but at its core, the base product is still the same as the essential range.
This culinary example allows us to draw parallels with the world of recruitment software. There are many different products available to prospective customers. Many have features that are nice to have- things that make your life easier, things that differentiate one product from the other. But at their heart all recruitment software should have similar core features.
These are the core features that every recruitment agency needs: The features that drive your day to day recruitment. These are the kind of features that all recruitment software should not only have, but should be refined, improved and optimised.
In this blog series we’re going back to basics. We will explore the features that should be at the core of all recruitment software and explain their benefits, and how they work. Let's begin with importing candidates.
Import Candidates
Recruitment 101: A recruiter is only as good as the candidate they put forward. This might seem like schoolboy stuff to an experienced recruiter- the kind of thing you’d explain to a new starter on their first day- but it is the agency essentials after all.
Importing candidates means getting a candidate’s details (typically in the form of a CV) into the database. Good recruitment software tackles this task effortlessly, and should be achievable in seconds. In fact, there’s a lot of pretty advanced things going on here. Most notably, CV parsing, and skills matching.
CV Parsing
CV parsing (also known as resume parsing, resume extraction or cv extraction) refers to the way a CV is scraped for information, which is then transferred into the relevant fields in your recruitment software. When done well, CV parsing eases almost all of the administrative burden on recruiters, saving hours of work. If done poorly, it can turn every import into an agonising process: laboriously re-keying candidate information. Aside from reducing the risk of repetitive strain injury (RSI), good CV Parsing goes a long way toward maintaining the busy recruiter’s sanity.
Categorising and Skills Matching
Almost as important as CV parsing is skills matching. Skills matching looks at keywords (or close synonyms) in order to make it easier to find candidates in your recruitment software. This should also be automated, with the software itself suggesting skills to add to the candidate’s database profile.
Types of Import
There are two main ways recruiters can import candidates- either individually or in bulk.
Individually Importing CVs
The three most important factors in individually importing a CV are:
- Speed
- Accuracy
- SPEED MAN, SPEED!
In the war for talent, recruiters need to import CVs quickly and get the details over to the client before their competitors. Here is one of the ways you can do it in Eploy.
Of course, accuracy comes in a close second in the importance list. Sending inaccurate details to a client could be disasterous for your hard-fought good relations with the client.
Bulk Importing CVs
Uploading candidates in bulk is similar in principle. The three most important things here are:
- Accuracy
- Speed
- ACCURACY!
When uploading up to 500 CVs at a time, it is vital that the data is imported accurately. Any mistakes could result in an administrative headache no recruiter wants to manage. The importance of accurate CV Parsing and Skills Matching is pulled sharply into focus when managing a large batch import.
Candidate Import tools are essential recruitment software functionality, so it is important to test this functionality when looking at new recruitment software. Check the accuracy of the CV parsing, and the time it takes to perform an individual import and a bulk import.
The next blog will look at the other site of recruitment- clients- and how you can build and manage a client list within your recruitment software.