In today’s unpredictable job market, attracting and placing top talent is no easy feat. Recruiters are battling pressures to be quick and efficient at moving candidates through the hiring process before losing them to other staffing agencies.
The good news is you don’t have to do it all. Automating day-to-day tasks like sourcing, screening, and scheduling can relieve some of the burdens and keep your business a step (or two) ahead of the competition.
Recruiting automation software creates a better staffing experience
Recruiting automation software encompasses quite a few tools to improve the applicant experience, streamline your recruiting efforts, and ultimately help you place more candidates.
We’ve rounded up the best of the bunch to simplify your search for solutions, and categorized them by the specific aspects of the hiring process they help improve. So let’s dive in.
End-to-end applicant tracking solutions
An applicant tracking system (ATS) supports tasks like creating and managing a candidate database, posting open roles, and communicating with candidates throughout the recruiting process.
Bullhorn can help you manage the hiring process from sourcing to onboarding. Its integration with LinkedIn will save your recruiters time by pulling information directly from candidates’ profiles into your database. Its integration with your vendor management system (VMS) will help you track all client activity and link it to your candidate placement efforts.
JobAdder‘s workflow creation capabilities streamline hiring efforts. Its candidate-matching tool helps you quickly find the best matches for open roles. Finally, its agency panel management platforms will make communication between your firm and clients more transparent by tracking all recruiter activities related to candidates.
Create workflows in JobAdder to streamline your hiring processes. (Source)
Avionté includes a CRM for client management, an ATS for candidate tracking, and payroll and billing tools to organize your firm’s back office. These integrated tools make it unnecessary to toggle between systems. Instead, you can see all of your firm’s activities in one place. It also includes video interviewing tools and mobile onboarding features to make the hiring process seamless.
JobDiva is another system that includes everything your staffing firm needs to manage candidates and clients and keep your business running. Its CRM and ATS will help you keep track of your existing clients, candidates, and prospects, while its financial tools and VMS synchronization will help you manage the back office and grow your business.
Candidate sourcing
Remember the Rolodex? Few people in business today do. It’s a dinosaur, but it did keep names at your fingertips. Today, there’s far too much information to keep it all in your mental Rolodex.
Fortunately, there’s a smarter way to source top talent: recruiter automation. Below are some tools that automate the referral process so you can obtain the maximum number of qualified candidates.
Textio simplifies the writing process before you even send out a single job post. Using natural language processing, it grades the language you use in your posts to flag gender bias and encourage inclusivity. With this type of text editor, you can be sure that your job descriptions don’t discourage qualified applicants.
Propellum automates the job posting process by migrating them from your ATS directly to your job site and other job boards you use. Its software helps you create filters for your posts to make sure you’re targeting the right candidates. These tools ensure qualified candidates see your open job posts.
Hootsuite helps you manage social media advertising. Once you connect your social media profiles, you can write posts that advertise your open jobs. Hootsuite’s tools help you create calendars far in advance so you can ensure your posts frequently appear on relevant social media channels. Its publishing tools also help you schedule posts for the best time, making it more likely that qualified candidates will see them.
Staffing Referrals automates your referral program to ensure that your clients aren’t missing out on the most qualified candidates. Staffing Referrals integrates with your ATS, so referred candidates show up automatically in your database. Using its tools, your team can see 57% more referrals, helping you increase your pool of top talent with little extra effort.
Sense takes advantage of the fact that many candidates are currently using their phones to search for jobs and communicating with recruiters via text. This software allows you to put a personal touch on automated conversations, keep tabs on NPS trends, and quickly catch issues that could negatively impact the candidate experience.
TextUs accelerates sourcing efforts with an automated texting solution that’s ten times faster than email and phone calls. So you can send out job openings to more people in a way that is more likely to get quick responses.
WorkN is a white-labeled, mobile-first platform that automates the busy work of recruiting and provides a complete in-app experience for candidates. It helps recruiters build talent pools and quickly connect job seekers with only the opportunities that best match their skills and interests.
Candidate selection
Next comes the culling process. Once you’ve found candidates, you need to select the best ones in your talent pool for a given client.
The following screening and assessment tools can help you create objective scores for both hard and soft skills, taking some of the guesswork out of candidate evaluation and matching.
PsyMetrics aids candidate screening by giving you access to a library of pre-built tests or the option to create your own custom skills tests. These assessments save recruiters time during the evaluation process by creating an objective standard every candidate must meet before moving to the next phase in the hiring process.
Harver‘s pre-employment tests help you evaluate skills and culture fit to pick the best candidates for your open roles. Harver is specifically built for volume hiring, so its screening processes can evaluate many candidates in a short amount of time. By building assessment workflows, you can automatically move candidates through your pipeline quickly, reserving in-depth interviews for highly qualified candidates.
Use Harver to assess and rank candidates. (Source)
eSkill‘s testing library evaluates candidates’ soft skills, as well as industry-specific, job-based skills. You can also create custom assessments to fit your agency’s processes or for specific client needs.
Ideal uses AI to help you score, screen, and match candidates. It screens candidates based on their responses to chatbot questions, resulting in a score for each incoming applicant. Recruiters can then reach out to only top-scoring candidates who best fit the open roles.
Interviewing
Recruiters spend two-thirds of the recruiting process on interviews — that’s a huge time commitment. These automation tools save time by taking care of tedious interviewing tasks like scheduling and pre-interview prep.
GoodTime allows candidates to self-schedule their interviews. That means fewer back-and-forth conversations about a time that works for everyone. Plus, GoodTime integrates with your ATS so you can track all candidate communication and interview data.
GoodTime makes scheduling interviews easy for candidates and recruiters. (Source)
HireVue helps you facilitate on-demand interviews, allowing candidates to submit video recordings of answers to standard interview questions. On-demand interviews help both candidates and recruiters move through the interview process faster. Candidates can submit responses, and recruiters can evaluate them in their own time, only scheduling in-depth interviews with the most qualified candidates.
Spark Hire is another video interview software that helps streamline the interview process. With video recordings of interviews, you can quickly and easily send interviews to hiring managers. Sharing recordings helps hiring managers evaluate candidates at their convenience, as well as see how your interview process works.
Communication and chatbots
Over 80% of candidates say they’d like to see better communication from recruiters during the application process. Using your ATS to set up autoresponders is one step you can take to automate communication. But chatbots and other tools help candidates feel guided through the interview process without recruiters having to hold their hands every step of the way.
ConveyIQ automates communication throughout the hiring process. With ConveyIQ, you can automate email and SMS personalization and facilitate one-way and two-way interviews. You can even follow up with surveys to get candidate feedback on communication during the application process.
Staffing Engine allows you to create a virtual employee to ask qualifying questions and connect candidates with recruiters. The conversational AI bots start moving candidates through the recruiting process via your website, social media, or text messaging.
XOR uses AI-powered chatbots to automate screening, scheduling, and onboarding. XOR can guide candidates through the application process, answering standard questions during and outside of office hours. By taking charge of these repetitive tasks, recruiters can focus more on evaluating top talent.
XOR guides candidates through the application process. (Source)
Olivia is an AI assistant that helps recruiters manage and evaluate candidate data. On your career site, Olivia can answer candidate questions or guide candidates through the application process by asking screening questions to qualify them. Olivia can also schedule interviews and take on similar tasks that would normally require several emails to finish.
Hire better, faster
The average time to fill a position is 42 days. By automating parts — or even all — of your recruiting process, you can create a wider pool of top talent, place qualified candidates, and wow clients in a shorter amount of time.
Happier candidates + happier recruiters = happier clients. That’s a strong success equation.
What tools have you used to improve hiring for your staffing agency? Let us know by tweeting @StaffReferrals with your suggestions.