Independent Recruiting: How to Start Your Career Using Technology

Timing is everything. It’s an oft-heard cliché, but for those considering a transition to the “gig economy” as an independent recruiter, there’s never been a better time than now.  

Job openings and employee resignations reached record highs in 2022, and companies across the globe are relying on independent recruiters more than ever before to help them find workers with the proper skills. 

For those who are considering a career as an independent recruiter, it’s important to understand that the current war for talent is being fought and won with technology.  

To have the best chance of success as a freelance recruiter, especially if scalability is one of your goals, you need to be aware of the newest innovations in HR technology that can help you launch a successful career.

What is an Independent Recruiter?

An independent recruiter - sometimes called a freelance recruiter or recruitment consultant - is a professional who specializes in helping organizations find and hire the right candidates for their open positions. 

Independent recruiters work as self-employed individuals or as part of a smaller recruitment firm, and typically offer their services to a range of clients in various industries under the form of RPO or Recruiting Consultant.

They are responsible for sourcing and screening candidates, coordinating interviews, and negotiating offers and salaries on behalf of their clients. 

Unlike internal recruiters who are employed by a specific organization, independent recruiters have more flexibility in their work and can work with multiple clients at the same time. Your job as an independent recruiter is to understand the hiring needs of your clients and then tap into your professional network to locate the most suitable candidates.  

You’ll be responsible for creating job postings based on the skills your client needs, running recruitment campaigns, and performing preliminary assessments to narrow down your top candidates. 

Most independent recruiters first gain the required experience by working for an HR department as a recruiter, or they may have even worked directly for a staffing agency before starting out on their own.  

To be successful as an independent recruiter, you need to have exceptional communications skills, an expansive professional network, and a firm grasp of modern HR technology. 

The Role of Technology

Since the days of the pandemic, the rapid innovations in HR technology have done much to enhance a recruiter’s ability to seek out and hire the proper talent for their clients.  

It goes without saying that an independent recruiter will benefit from having a strong social media presence once they start freelancing, but that’s only a start. 

Remember, our global society is connected via technology and the internet.  After laying the proper foundation on social media, and with a bit of online marketing and sales skills, you can use the Internet to promote your business and secure your first few clients.  

LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook are all obvious platforms to be operating on, and spreadsheets may even play a role at first.  However, if independent recruiters hope to compete for the best talent, then it’s important to understand how the following technologies can help.

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1. Software-as-a-Service

Costs play a huge role in any business, and one of the most remarkable innovations for any business in need of software solutions but without the resources to invest in file servers or networking infrastructure is Software-as-a-Service or SaaS technologies.  

SaaS systems are software platforms that are hosted in the cloud by a 3^rd party vendor who is entirely responsible for the support and availability of their software platform.  An independent recruiter only needs a licensed subscription and an internet connection.  In fact, many of the innovations in the SaaS industry have focused on HR and recruiting systems!

The Benefits of SaaS Recruitment Platforms

SaaS recruitment platforms are subscription-based software that can be accessed with any device from anywhere in the world.  

The real advantage of these cloud-based solutions is that they give you the means to compete with much larger companies by giving you access to the same powerful HR platforms that Fortune 500 companies are using. 

Businesses everywhere are becoming privy to the many advantages of adopting these cloud-based solutions, and that’s set the SaaS industry on a trajectory to grow by over 25% every year through 2028. 

The beauty of SaaS is that it also allows for scalability, so as your client list grows, your Recruiting solution can handle it.  

Finally, with cloud-based solutions, your privacy, data protection, and security concerns are all handled by the SaaS software vendor.  That means independent recruiters don’t have to worry about the liability of protecting candidate data when using a SaaS HR software platform.

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2. Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS)

A lot of independent recruiters tend to head into the freelance world without much more than their knowledge of spreadsheets and the ability to use Facebook and LinkedIn to build their professional network.  

That kind of “bare bones” approach is certainly one of the more economical ways to start out as a freelance recruiter. 

However, for recruiters who want to take full advantage of what HR technology has to offer - and if scalability is on your radar - then you need to understand why so many industries, staffing agencies, and small businesses have an applicant tracking system (ATS) at the center of their recruitment efforts.

An independent recruiter’s success hinges on the strength of their network, the ability to find the right applicants in the proper amount of time and on whether they can provide candidates with an appealing experience. 

That’s precisely what the best ATS systems on the market are designed to achieve.  Today’s ATS systems have evolved to become much more than a database for inventorying and organizing candidate data. 

The ATS systems on the market today are powerful, multi-faceted HR technology platforms engineered to dramatically streamline the entire recruitment lifecycle, and many are offered as cloud-based solutions (SaaS). 

In many ways, an ATS system is an organization’s chief strategic HR asset, trusted to carry the heavy, monotonous workload consisting of creating postings, publishing to hundreds of job boards, sourcing candidates, etc.  Finally, one of the best things about these cloud-based solutions is that they’re designed with customization in mind meaning they’re very adaptable to businesses of all sizes.

More than 9 out of 10 hiring professionals credit their ATS systems for having significantly improved their hiring processes, so considering an ATS platform should definitely be a priority for any professional that’s responsible for talent acquisition and recruiting. 

READ MORE: 7 Applicant Tracking System Features That Boost Your Recruitment

3. Recruitment CRM

Recruitment CRM is a powerful tool included in modern ATS systems that are proving to be especially useful to staffing firms, recruiters, and headhunters.  

These professionals have the unique responsibility of managing the information and communications they have with the clients they’ve contracted with.  

An ATS system that includes recruitment CRM software gives independent recruiters a platform to easily organize and manage candidates’ pipeline and their client affairs in a way that strengthens these important relationships. 

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Accelerating Communication & Collaboration with Technology

One thing you can count on as an independent recruiter is the fact that you will need to engage with your candidates - and clients or hiring managers - often. And, you will be expected to keep your clients properly informed.  Fluid communication between your clients and candidates will be a crucial component in delivering a good experience to both parties.  

This is where technology can also be quite valuable, considering the array of communication and collaboration platforms that are available to help you facilitate quick and easy conversations.

We already discussed the importance of having a Recruitment CRM tool in place to optimize communication with clients. This is another reason why smaller businesses and staffing agencies are embracing ATS systems that offer recruitment CRM tools as well as other resources to optimize their communication and collaboration efforts.  

With a cloud-based solution like an ATS at the heart of an organization’s recruitment efforts, key stakeholders can be provided with access to the same central repository of information, keeping everyone on the same page.

Using Technology to Protect Privacy

Nothing is more important to an organization today than its credibility.  Without it, the chances of success sink dramatically.  To protect your credibility as an independent recruiter, you need to demonstrate that the technology you use is capable of properly securing the privacy of your prospective job candidates.  

Historically, hackers like to target the same personal data that recruiters often work with.  For example, social security numbers and home addresses.

If you can’t demonstrate to your clients and candidates that you’re capable of protecting their privacy, your credibility as an independent recruiter can suffer, and no one will want to share their private information with you.  

Fortunately, SaaS recruitment platforms like ATS offer a solution to this problem as well.  With a SaaS recruitment platform in place, it is the responsibility of the software platform’s vendor to offer a service that fully supports compliance with recruitment and data privacy laws such as GDPR.  It’s another way that these cloud-based solutions are helping freelance recruiters compete with larger players.

Conclusion

As a freelance recruiter, you are in charge of running your own business.  To do so successfully, you need to take advantage of the innovations now included in the modern HR tech stack.  Most important of all is the recruitment platform that you ultimately decide to go with.  Earlier, we touched on the advantages of going with a cloud-based solution like a SaaS ATS platform.  If you are considering an ATS system for the first time, you need to go to a veteran organization with a worldwide reputation for developing powerful HR software solutions. 

Manatal’s applicant tracking system is capable of automating a wide array of recruitment responsibilities and can help you provide candidates with the best possible experience that technology allows.

If you’re interested in seeing how well Manatal’s ATS platform can fit into the future of your independent recruiting business, take advantage of our 14-day free trial to understand how we can help you power your career as an independent recruiter.