Excerpt: With so many options available in the marketplace, recruiters may feel overwhelmed while choosing the right recruitment software for their agency. This article will guide you through evaluating and comparing the software available and choosing the ‘right’ one that meets your client’s demands.
Every agency recruiter’s main priority is to find the best possible candidates for their client within the given time and budget.
This process involves identifying the candidates, screening the suitable ones, shortlisting and interviewing the best ones, which can be an utterly long and tiresome process.
Imagine getting thousands of applications for the job or the other way around, getting none! Both are a matter of concern.
Thus, a specialized tool is required to smoothen the process, known as a recruitment software.
Remember, no recruiting software is perfect; rather, it can be right for you according to your goals and challenges.
Before diving into the topic, we must understand the different types of recruiting software available and how we can use them?
Types of Recruiting Software
Recruiting software can be divided into four main categories according to the purpose they serve. These are—
- Sourcing Tools: These tools effectively find suitable candidates through gathering information from their online portfolios or social media accounts. They can also help connect the recruiter with both active and passive candidates.
- Recruitment Marketing Tools: These tools help the recruiter attract, engage, and nurture the applicant before applying for the job. In addition, it helps recruiters to reach out to multiple channels and gain an overall analysis of the hiring process.
- Candidate Relationship Management System: Such tools provide a stable platform to establish the connection between a recruiter and an applicant. LinkedIn reports that 83% of candidates are likely to deny an offer if their experience with an organisation is terrible. Providing lucrative salaries and perks is essential but can never beat the efforts to better experience and well-being. Thus, Candidate Relationship Management tools help provide a good candidate experience.
- Applicant Tracking System: Some of the basic features of an applicant tracking system include- resume parsing, storage, keyword research, filtering the applications and automatic email customisation. Therefore, an Applicant Tracking System is the most effective tool for the recruitment process.
How to Choose the Right Recruiting Software?
1. Know Your Goals & Challenges
Find out the most significant pain point in your recruitment process. It can be related to fewer applicants applying for the job post, improving the workflow, reducing the time spent on the recruitment process, or approaching passive candidates.
Knowing the challenges you face can give a clear picture of the features you want in the recruitment software.
Some of the challenges recruiters face include—
- Inability to reach out on multiple channels for talent acquisition
- Using no employee referral system- Best candidates come through existing references. Hence, a recruiter must integrate an employee referral system into the recruitment process. You can either directly reach out to the employees in person or use a software that does the same.
- Not doing proper marketing for the job posting
- Lack of branding ideas
- No structured email customisation and workflow
- Spending too much time sorting out the suitable candidate
- Not having proper SEO optimised content or career sites
- Inability to track the application forms
- Not doing proper analysis of the user experience on the site. You must know how many candidates visit your site regularly and leave
- Poorly designed database for the applications
- Poor or slow communication between the recruiter and the applicant
- Inability to integrate your Applicant tracking system with HRIS tools (Human Resource Information System) and employee onboarding and management platforms
2. Identify the Features You Need in the Recruiting Software
Once you know the biggest challenge, you can list out the features you specifically need in the recruiting software.
For example, spending too much time going through the application received, you can choose software that automates the screening process. Make sure to choose software that smoothens your workflow rather than complicating it.
Here are some features that you must find in a well-featured recruiting software:
- Automated workflow: Find a recruiting software capable of automating time-consuming tasks. Aberdeen Group reports that 59% of the recruiters don’t have the workforce or time to review the applications. Repetitive tasks such as screening the applications, sourcing, reaching out to applicants and interview scheduling can be achieved easily by the right recruiting software.
- Easy Software Integration: This feature reduces both time and friction in searching for an AI recruiting tool. Instead of searching from scratch, you can easily tour the ATS’s partner marketplace and find the best tool for your system.
- Improved Candidate Management: A recruiting software must be capable of finding, organising and contacting the passive candidates while managing the in-bound candidates effectively.
- User-friendly interface: Recruiting software is more like real estate for your work. A clean and attractive interface can fasten the work and improve the user experience. Nowadays, most recruiting software provides an attractive and user-friendly interface that includes unlimited customisation options, drag and drop functions etc.
- Analytics Dashboard: To improve the hiring process, one must know the low points in their system. A software that provides a dashboard that identifies the source of candidates, cost-per-hire, number of visitors etc., can be a game-changer in your recruitment process.
3. Find the Software That Meets Your Requirements
With the list of the features required in your hand, browse the marketplace and compare the available software to find the best match for your needs.
How to compare the software to find the one that matches your need?
One can take the help of review sites such as Gartner’s Capterra or G2 that provide detailed information about each software and the list of top recruiting software in the marketplace.
Going through the list will provide you with an insight into the most used software among your competitors. Also, the best way to choose the software is to have a hands-on experience. You can have a free trial or book a free demo for the software you want to use before buying the complete package.
With so much advancement in the recruiting process, everything can be AI-based but still, this doesn’t mean recruiters can sit back and relax. Here are certain things expected out of each recruiter:
- Whether online or offline, recruiters are needed to reach out to every channel to find hidden talent. Therefore, they need to deliver an omnichannel experience. Candidates feel much more comfortable with the recruiters who provide them with personalisation.
- A company’s branding is foremost. Of course, nobody wants to work with a company that doesn’t seem promising. But as a recruiter, you can have little to no say in this matter. What you are expected to do is present yourself in a way that speaks volumes. A candidate faces a recruiter before the hiring manager, so strong employer branding is necessary.
- Recruiters are needed to be expertise in a particular niche. Having proper knowledge of the niche will make talent acquisition easier.
It may take a little time to adjust to recruitment automation and find out the best option for the agency, but it is worth the effort. At the end of the day, if your recruitment agency is getting desired results from a chosen candidate, the whole process becomes a success.