What is Recruitment Automation? How Can I Use It To Hire Smarter?

robot arm is choosing a person out of many on a touchscreen, applying machine learning to the employee hiring process

Recruitment automation has the power to free up hours in your week while helping you hire great candidates faster. Best of all, it’s something any company can take advantage of. If offloading tedious tasks and lowering your recruiting costs sounds appealing, read on to learn what recruitment automation is and how you can use it to hire smarter.

What Is Recruitment Automation?

Recruitment automation is the process of using technology to automatically tackle talent acquisition and hiring tasks. Companies use recruitment automation to save time, hire faster, increase recruiter productivity and reduce hiring expenses. Plus, it can also lead to a better candidate experience, which contributes to the larger goal of hiring the best talent available.

In a world where employees–recruiting staff included–are being asked to do more with less, recruitment automation helps keep your talent pipeline moving while ensuring that nothing falls through the cracks.

Recruitment automation might sound advanced, but modern applications make it easily accessible for pretty much any recruiter with a computer and an internet connection to take advantage of. You might even have some automation tools already available to you in your existing applicant tracking system.

How Do You Automate Recruiting?

The best way to automate your recruiting processes is to think about your overall talent pipeline. Break it into phases–what are the different steps that every candidate goes through before (and even after) being hired?

For each phase, assess the activities that happen on the recruiter’s end. This can be helpful to think of in terms of cause and effect. For example:

Application comes in → Recruiter opens and reviews it

Candidate passes initial screening → Recruiter reaches out to schedule interview

Candidate moves to second interview → Recruiter sends skills assessment

For each of these cause-effect scenarios, there’s a task that takes place that can be automated, removing a task from the recruiter’s to-do list while keeping the hiring process moving smoothly along.

Benefits Of Recruitment Automation

Save time

If it’s a task recruiting staffers do five or more times a day, chances are it can and should be automated. Repetitive tasks eat up minutes here and there that could be better spent on higher-value activities, like having one-on-one conversations with candidates.

Accelerate hiring

When you’re juggling multiple candidates for multiple open positions, it’s easy to lose track of where everyone stands in the hiring process. These days good candidates are snatched up fast, so a delay of even a day or two could cost you a great hire. Recruitment automation keeps up the forward momentum and automates the process of following up with candidates so you’re never the bottleneck in your pipeline.

Lower costs

Hiring faster contributes to lower hiring costs. And, because you’re merely using technology to automate tasks rather than eliminating steps to cut corners, there’s no corresponding drop in the quality of candidates.

Increase productivity

When recruiters have fewer tedious tasks to deal with, they have more energy for tasks that require heavier lifting, mentally speaking. They’re able to get more done in the same number of hours–and are happier, too.

Handle surges in applications

During times when unemployment is high, sorting through the resulting mountain of applications for each open position can be overwhelming. Recruitment automation can help put order to the chaos and make sure qualified candidates aren’t overlooked.

Reduce bias

The more humans are involved in a process, the more bias is inherently involved, too. Removing some of the human element from your hiring tasks can help reduce bias that can unintentionally creep in.

Streamline the hiring process

Recruitment automation ensures that each step in the hiring process flows smoothly into the next, like clockwork. These are the kinds of small details top candidates pick up on, and it contributes to a better overall candidate experience.

Examples of Automated Recruitment Tools

Automation is everywhere. You may already be taking advantage of some of these tools without even realizing it. Here are a few examples:

Applicant tracking systems, which automatically track candidate and recruiter activity throughout the hiring process. These are one of the most widely used automation tools, offering useful features to help recruiters stay on top of tasks.
AI-powered chatbots on a company’s careers page that answer frequently asked questions about jobs and gather basic information from prospective candidates
Social media publishing tools that help companies push out regularly scheduled content that strengthens their employer brand
Interview scheduling tools that automatically contact desired candidates. Candidates are shown available time frames and can choose the one that suits them best, eliminating back-and-forth with one or more interviewers.
Email nurturing sequences that follow up with candidates after they’ve submitted an application or signed up to receive job alerts
Text message alerts that prompt candidates to finish submitting application materials or complete skills assessments
Programmatic advertising, which automates the process of buying and publishing job listing ads

These are just a few of the many ways forward-thinking recruiters can leverage automation to enhance their efforts.

How To Start Using Recruitment Automation

Assess your recruiting activities

As we touched on earlier, assessing the activities that take place during each stage of your hiring process is a crucial first step. A time tracking tool can be useful for quantifying the amount of time dedicated to different tasks. What are recruiters spending the most time on? Which of these tasks are good candidates for automation?

Start small

You don’t need to build an automated recruitment machine overnight. Instead, pick one or two of the most time-consuming yet low-level tasks to automate first, then build from there. This can make a dramatic impact over several months.

Leverage existing technology

Before you go investing in a suite of fancy new software, analyze the technology that’s already available to you. Your ATS likely offers at least some automation features. Are you using them all to their full potential? If you’re not sure, a consultation with your ATS provider is likely in order.

Enlist Expert Help

If you’re a large company, you might have the bandwidth to set up recruitment automation on your own. If not, you can reap the benefits of automation while also having the advantage of a personal, expert touch by working with a team of recruiting experts like the staffing professionals at 4 Corner Resources.

We help companies of all sizes deploy hiring strategies to find better candidates and hire the best fit for the job. Because hiring is our core competency, we’re proficient with the most cutting-edge recruiting technology and help our clients use it to hire faster, smarter, and at a lower cost.

Get in touch to discuss your hiring needs by contacting us now!