Recruitment is a highly competitive and dynamic field that requires constant adaptation to changing market conditions and talent needs. In today’s digital era, recruiters face additional challenges such as access to resources, bandwidth limitations, and candidate expectations. To overcome these obstacles and stay ahead of the curve, recruiters need to leverage the power of recruitment automation.
In this article, we will discuss what recruitment automation is, what drives the need for it, what benefits it offers, and what tools and strategies you can use to automate your recruitment process.
What Is Recruitment Automation?
Recruitment automation allows recruiters to automate parts of the hiring process, from the first point of contact with candidates to extending an offer letter. Recruitment automation can be considered as a set of tools as well as a group of strategic activities that optimize the recruiting approach.
Recruitment automation uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) technologies and tools to understand, evaluate, and learn from the qualifications and characteristics of applicants. These technologies can help recruiters find, attract, and engage candidates who are most likely to be a good fit for the role and the company culture. Recruitment automation can also help recruiters communicate with candidates more effectively, provide feedback, schedule interviews, and make data-driven decisions.
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What Drives the Need for Recruitment Automation?
The need for recruitment automation stems from several factors that affect the recruitment industry today. Some of these factors are:
- The growing demand for talent: As businesses across industries become increasingly digital, they need skilled employees to build, implement, and maintain new tools and solutions. The demand for tech professionals has never been higher [1], and it is expected to grow even more in the future. This creates a talent shortage that makes it harder for recruiters to find qualified candidates for their open positions.
- The changing expectations of candidates: Today’s candidates are more informed, empowered, and selective than ever before. They have access to various sources of information about potential employers, such as online reviews, social media, and referrals. They also have higher expectations for the hiring process, such as speed, transparency, personalization, and feedback. Recruiters need to meet these expectations in order to attract and retain top talent.
- The increasing competition for talent: The talent market is becoming more globalized and diversified. Candidates have more options and opportunities to work for different companies across different locations. Remote work is also becoming more common and acceptable, which expands the pool of candidates for each position. Recruiters need to stand out from the crowd and differentiate themselves from their competitors in order to capture the attention and interest of candidates.
- The rising cost of hiring: Hiring is an expensive process that involves various costs such as advertising, screening, interviewing, testing, background checks, travel expenses, relocation expenses, etc. The cost of hiring can increase even more if the hiring process takes too long or if there is a high turnover rate among new hires. Recruiters need to reduce these costs by making their hiring process more efficient and effective.
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Benefits of Recruitment Automation
Recruitment automation can provide various benefits for recruiters and employers alike. Some of these benefits are:
Save time: Recruiters spend a lot of time on manual and repetitive tasks, such as searching for candidates, sending emails, scheduling interviews, and updating spreadsheets. Recruitment automation can streamline these tasks and free up recruiters’ time for more strategic and creative activities.
Improve the quality of hire: Recruitment automation can help recruiters find and hire better candidates based on data and evidence. For example, recruiters can use a candidate screening tool to filter out unqualified candidates based on predefined criteria, a candidate assessment tool to measure candidates’ abilities and aptitude, and a background check tool to verify candidates’ credentials and history.
Reduce time-to-fill: Recruitment automation can reduce the time spent on sourcing, screening, and interviewing candidates by automating these steps or making them more efficient. Recruiters can use a sourcing tool to find passive candidates from various platforms, an interview scheduling tool to coordinate calendars and send reminders, and a video interviewing tool to conduct live or asynchronous interviews.
Enhance candidate experience: Recruitment automation can help recruiters provide a positive and engaging experience for candidates throughout the hiring process. For example, recruiters can use a chatbot to greet candidates and answer their questions, an email marketing tool to send personalized and timely messages, and a gamification tool to make the hiring process more fun and interactive.
Eliminate hiring biases: Recruitment automation can use objective and standardized methods to evaluate candidates based on their merits and suitability for the role. Recruiters can use a blind hiring tool to hide candidates’ personal information that may trigger bias, such as name, gender, age, or ethnicity, a diversity hiring tool to attract and retain diverse talent, and an analytics tool to monitor and improve hiring outcomes.
Real-Life Examples of Recruitment Automation
Here are some examples of how recruitment automation can be used in different stages and scenarios of talent acquisition:
Candidate screening: Recruitment automation can help recruiters filter out unqualified candidates and focus on the most promising ones. For example, recruiters can use a screening tool to automatically rank candidates based on their resume keywords, skills tests, video interviews, or other assessments. Recruiters can also use a chatbot to interact with candidates and answer their questions, collect their information, and evaluate their fit for the role.
Unilever, a global consumer goods company, used AI, including a chatbot called Unabot, to assess job interviews. This has reduced over 100,000 hours of human recruitment time. [2]
Interview scheduling: Recruitment automation can help recruiters coordinate and confirm interviews with candidates and hiring managers without manual intervention. For example, recruiters can use a scheduling tool to sync their calendars with candidates’ availability and preferences, send automated reminders and confirmations, and reschedule or cancel interviews if needed. Recruiters can also use a video interviewing tool to conduct live or recorded interviews with candidates remotely and securely.
For example, Hilton, a global hospitality company, used HireVue’s video interviewing platform to interview several candidates at once without a requiring recruiters’ presence and reduce its time-to-fill from 42 days to just five. [3]
Candidate evaluation: Recruitment automation can help recruiters measure and compare candidates’ performance and potential objectively and consistently. For example, recruiters can use an evaluation tool to automatically score candidates’ responses to behavioral or situational questions, analyze their personality traits and culture fit, and generate reports and insights. Recruiters can also use an analytics tool to track and improve their hiring metrics, such as quality of hire, time-to-fill, cost-per-hire, and diversity of hire.
IBM, a global technology company, used Watson Talent’s AI-powered analytics to predict candidates’ future performance and retention based on their skills, experience, and personality. [4]
Candidate engagement: Recruitment automation can help recruiters maintain and strengthen their relationships with candidates throughout the hiring process. For example, recruiters can use an email marketing tool to send personalized and timely messages to candidates, such as job alerts, application status updates, feedback requests, and offer letters. Recruiters can also use a gamification tool to make the hiring process more fun and interactive for candidates, such as quizzes, challenges, or rewards.
A good example of this case is Siemens, a global engineering company, which used gamified assessments to engage candidates in immersive scenarios that simulate real-world tasks and situations. [5]
Recruitment Automation Tools and Strategies for Your Workflow
Here are some of the recruitment automation tools and strategies that you can use for your workflow:
Sourcing tools: Sourcing tools help recruiters find and attract qualified candidates from various sources, such as job boards, social media, professional networks, and talent pools. Sourcing tools can use artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to identify and rank candidates based on their skills, experience, and fit for the role. Sourcing tools can also send personalized messages to candidates to invite them to apply or join a talent network.
Screening tools: Screening tools help recruiters filter out unqualified candidates and focus on the most promising ones. Screening tools can use AI and ML to analyze candidates’ resumes, skills tests, video interviews, or other assessments. Screening tools can also use chatbots to interact with candidates and answer their questions, collect their information, and evaluate their fit for the role.
Scheduling tools: Scheduling tools help recruiters coordinate and confirm interviews with candidates and hiring managers without manual intervention. Scheduling tools can sync calendars with candidates’ availability and preferences, send automated reminders and confirmations, and reschedule or cancel interviews if needed.
Scheduling tools can also use video interviewing platforms to conduct live or recorded interviews with candidates remotely and securely. For example, Zoho Recruit1 is a scheduling tool that helps recruiters schedule interviews with candidates using email templates, calendar sync, and video conferencing.
Evaluation tools: Evaluation tools help recruiters measure and compare candidates’ performance and potential objectively and consistently. Evaluation tools can use AI and ML to score candidates’ responses to behavioral or situational questions, analyze their personality traits and culture fit, and generate reports and insights. Evaluation tools can also use analytics tools to track and improve their hiring metrics, such as quality of hire, time-to-fill, cost-per-hire, and diversity of hire.
Engagement tools: Engagement tools can use email marketing tools to send personalized and timely messages to candidates, such as job alerts, application status updates, feedback requests, and offer letters, providing a smooth experience to candidates. Engagement tools can also use gamification tools to make the hiring process more fun and interactive for candidates, such as quizzes, challenges, or rewards.
Automated Applicant Tracking Systems
An Applicant Tracking System (ATS) is a recruitment automation tool that combines the recruitment automation aspects mentioned above into a single platform, allowing recruiters to smoothly stride through the hiring process from end to end.
This is an area where Manatal specializes as a recruitment tool. With Manatal, you can pretty much automate your recruitment right from the beginning until the end. You can use Manatal’s job posting function to publish your job ads across over 2500 channels, including Indeed, LinkedIn, Monster, CareerJet, and JobStreet, in one click.
When it comes to managing candidates, Manatal consolidates candidates’ information into a single database, making it convenient for recruiters to go through their talent pool. That’s not all. Manatal’s Candidate Enrichment further strengthen your database by browsing the web and migrating information from candidates' available online profile to Manatal's platform, allowing you to get to know your candidates beyond their CVs.
Plus, Manatal’s AI Recommendations automatically scans job descriptions, extracts the key skills and requirements, and cross-references the results with your talent pool to help you identify individuals who best fit the roles.
On the candidate engagement site, Manatal’s automation ability also got you covered. With its Mass Emailing feature, you’ll be able to reach out to your candidates and connect with them throughout the process. Within a single click, you can send out updates and notifications to candidates, providing them with a seamless experience from end to end.
LEARN MORE: Ways that Manatal ATS can automate your process
LEARN MORE: What is recruiting automation?
Start a 14-day free trial with Manatal today and discover how its innovative feature can automate your recruitment process while helping you identify the right candidates within a few clicks.
Citations:
1. Having one of these in-demand tech skills can help boost your pay by nearly $40,000—here’s how
2. Unilever saves on recruiters by using AI to assess job interviews
3. How Hilton, Google, and More Have Dramatically Reduced Their Time to Hire
4. IBM artificial intelligence can predict with 95% accuracy which workers are about to quit their jobs
5. Training at Siemens rises to challenges posed by digitalization
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