In a recent survey, 75% of the fastest-growing staffing firms said they consider themselves early adopters of technology, suggesting that building the right tech stack is a key element of their success.
And when it comes to your tech stack, nothing is more important than automation. Automating repetitive tasks frees up your recruiters to spend time on more valuable aspects of their jobs, like building relationships, innovating the candidate experience, and making more placements. This can be a major differentiator in terms of putting your company ahead of the pack.
Here are some key areas where recruiter automation can make an impact for your staffing firm.
1. Resume screening
Resume screening is often one of the biggest timesucks for recruiters. Data from LinkedIn shows that recruiters spend an average of 23 hours of screening resumes per hire. It’s no surprise that this is one of the biggest bottlenecks in the recruitment process:
- Nearly 80% of candidates admit to applying for jobs they aren’t qualified for
- Over 40% of resumes don’t meet the job requirements outlined
- 250 candidates send in resumes to apply for the average corporate job — of which only about 5 get called in for an interview.
This all adds up to a whole lot of wasted calories.
Fortunately, pouring over resumes is the perfect job for a computer. The most intelligent resume screening tool uses AI and machine learning to understand what to look for in resumes. These platforms look for qualified candidates based on what they have learned from past successful candidates and any other factors that may have been programmed into the algorithm.
The AI gives a suggested ranking of candidates that helps recruiters narrow the field. For example, if there are some absolute must-have skills or qualifications, the AI can prioritize the candidates who meet those criteria to the front.
Another benefit of automating your resume screening is that AI can help eliminate some of the implicit bias involved with recruitment. Because it makes decisions based purely on data, rather than someone’s intuition, it can uncover candidates who otherwise may not have gotten a second glance.
As with all the tools in this list, not all resume screening tools are created equal. Some may be more effective than others in helping you reach your goals. For example, if the AI is just parsing resumes based on keywords, it can lack context and may screen out qualified candidates who just haven’t used the right keyword combinations.
2. Pre-screening chatbots
Chatbots or virtual recruitment assistants can be used alongside resume parsing software. The idea is that a chatbot can help to gather all the information needed to screen a candidate, even if there is missing information on their resume.
One hesitation that staffing firms might have about using chatbots is that not all of them are built to be a user-friendly experience. Most people have had some kind of poor interaction with chatbots, largely due to the particular bot not understanding the context around the language being used.
But, chatbots are evolving rapidly, and those that have more sophisticated NLP (Natural Language Processing) abilities tend to provide a better experience. For example, tools such as Mya use a combination of NLP and machine learning to provide an enhanced screening. The key distinction is that it’s a conversational AI, capable of drilling down into more detail and providing a more human-like interaction. This creates a better candidate experience and yields a more relevant list of pre-screened candidates.
3. Video interviews
Preliminary interviews are another time-consuming exercise for your recruiters. They deal with issues like no-shows, scheduling conflicts, and of course, losing time on unsuitable candidates.
Recruitment automation technology can help to mitigate those headaches and effectively save your recruiters a bunch of time.
Automated video interview solutions, such as Sonru, asks those preliminary interview questions for you. Candidates can book for an interview any time that suits them, and recruiters won’t be wasting time on no-shows or rescheduling if anything comes up.
Automated interviewing also standardizes the interview process. It allows for the exact same questions to be asked of each candidate, in the exact same way. This helps give your team some clear-cut data when making their placement decisions, rather than have any sneaky biases enter the equation.
4. Interview scheduling
If your recruiters are still going back and forth via email or over the telephone to schedule interviews and other appointments, then they’re not operating as efficiently as they could be. The average hiring process takes about 23.8 days, so anything you can do to shorten it gives you a clear advantage over your competition.
The most frustrating and time-consuming part of manually trying to schedule appointments is the back and forth. Automated schedulers, like Staffing Referral’s calendar tool, eliminate all that, giving candidates options they can book on your team’s calendar, whenever your recruiters are available.
5. Communications
How well your recruiters communicate plays a key role in the overall candidate experience, but communication, too, is a time-sink during a busy day. It’s common for important communications to be delayed or forgotten about while recruiters get on with more pressing tasks.
There are a few different channels through which you can now automate communications in your staffing firm. For example, Herefish allows you to automate key email messages, while TextUs can help you with automated text message outreach.
Think of how much time your recruiters can save by automating their most common outreach to candidates and placed talent. For example, you can automatically send acknowledgment emails or text messages to candidates who apply, letting them know when to expect to hear back from you. It’s often the not knowing that causes candidates to look elsewhere, so an automated system can give you an efficient way to set expectations and improve the candidate experience.
6. Candidate feedback
Have you ever felt like your firm is playing catchup in terms of candidate feedback? Do issues fester unnoticed because you don’t always have clear insight into your candidate experience? If you’re relying on recruiters to ask for feedback, there’s a good chance that you’re missing out.
It makes much more sense to be able to be proactive rather than reactive, so it’s important to be on top of your reputation management (before your reputation really needs “managing”!).
This is another area where automation can shine. Tools such as Great Recruiters help staffing firms to automate the review process and get real-time feedback. This can be a real time-saver for recruiters, helping them stay on top of issues before they blow up. It’s also a great way to protect your online reputation. It’s much easier to stay ahead and avoid getting a poor online review than to try to walk it back after the fact!
7. Referrals
Of course, we can’t have a discussion on recruitment automation without bringing in the referral process. If your firm is still using spreadsheets, manual data entry, or other analog forms of referral outreach and tracking, you’re missing out on placements.
Automated referral management systems allow for quick, easy referral outreach and provide a simple process for candidates to bring their friends and colleagues to your firm. The automatic tracking means that both your team and your candidates know exactly where they stand at any point in the process.
Staffing Referrals provides automated referral programs that are easy to set up and run. It also helps expand the reach of your referral program with a referral link that’s easy for your talent pool to share on social media, in their email signatures, and even in a quick text.
When referrals are consistently one of the most reliable, valuable sources of candidates, leaving the success of your program to chance just isn’t an option anymore.
Automation: A competitive edge for staffing firms?
Recruitment automation technology gives staffing firms so many opportunities to gain a competitive edge by:
- Engaging with talent more quickly and consistently
- Saving recruiter time so they can focus on more optimal tasks
- Producing better screening results
- Keeping on top of sentiment and feedback about the staffing firm
- Producing more top-quality referrals
- Mitigating or eliminating hiring biases
There’s an upward trend of technology adoption in the staffing industry, especially in automation solutions. Staffing firms that don’t adapt risk being left behind.
Want more info on how an automated referral platform can help you grow faster? Schedule a demo today.