Everything You Wanted to Know About Recruitment Technology (But Were too Afraid to Ask)

If your hiring activity was dormant, or at a low level during the lockdown periods of the pandemic, you were not alone. 

Around six in 10 U.S. CEOs said their companies implemented a hiring freeze or deferred new hiring in 2020 and 2021 according to a Fortune magazine survey of CEOs.

A rebound is on the cards – are you ready? 

Hiring activity is predicted to rebound in 2022 however. 

Economic commentators in markets as diverse as Singapore, Ireland, India, South Africa, and more, are bullish about hiring prospects in 2022 and beyond. 

Given the anticipated uptick, now is a good time to ask the simple question – are your hiring processes and best practices, and recruitment software and technologies relevant and ready for a hiring landscape that has changed profoundly in two years?

For example, are your current processes and talent spotting and recruitment management technologies still effective - and competitive - in a job market that has changed forever since the onset of the pandemic? 

Are they in line with the new expectations of many job seekers and hiring trends such as: 

Virtual job interviews 

Zoom calls and other online meeting platforms have made “virtual meet-ups” the norm rather than the exception - although face-to-face interviews are expected to return when occupational health and safety regulations change. However, there is widespread acceptance of virtual discussions now, including virtual recruitment which allows hiring teams and candidates to save time and money and enables a faster decision making and appointment process. 

Borderless recruitment  

The pandemic accelerated the adoption of flexible working policies, including how, and where, recruiters find talent – great hires don’t need to be sitting in your office anymore, nor in the same city, country, or continent. Hiring has gone global enabling recruiters to find the perfect hire - depending on the specifics of the job – regardless of geography, time zones, and cultural differences. 

Companies need to impress jobseekers

The rise of flexible working policies has changed the expectations of many job seekers and companies have to respond to these. Increasingly, the onus is on companies to stand out from competitors by offering perks such as flexible and remote working, health and wellness packages, and sick leave policies – benefits showing how much they care for employees. These mean as much, if not more than a fancy office, free car park, or recreation rooms. 

Technology matters too – especially to Gen Zers.

Having never known a world without the internet, they expect immediacy and access to information quickly and easily at any time. 

Their dependence on technology was highlighted in a recent survey run by Dell which found that 80% of Gen Z expect their company to provide laptops, tablets, and phones. 

Additionally, 91% said the technology also influences their decision to choose between similar employers – meaning offering the right tools and software to your Gen Z employee can be the difference between them choosing your company or seeking employment with a competitor.

Capturing the attention of job hunters, and attracting them to apply for open roles and positions is also closely tied to technology now. 

If your online job boards and application forms look clunky, hard to use, and time-consuming, many candidates will probably bypass your advertised role for others offered by competitors with better-looking job sites that are easier to use. 

Reboot your recruitment technologies and platforms

If your company is poised to employ new talent soon (but would like to ‘reboot’ recruiting software and new hiring best practices) to find and attract new employees, here is a starters guide. 

Recruitment management systems, resume management software, candidate relationship management systems, and more, are all part of the digital solutions stack that help businesses of all sizes (and budgets) coordinate hiring tasks and streamline recruitment.

Activity-wise, recruitment software tools make it easier for employers to advertise job openings and fill vacant positions by automating and simplifying the search for candidates, managing, scanning, shortlisting applications, and communicating with all applicants. 

Streamlining the menial, manual aspects of hiring – e.g., opening, reading, and sorting resumes, leaves recruitment teams with more time to focus on added value tasks such as getting to know candidates better, communicating with potential candidates, and networking.

To make the digital leap, here are 10 features and solutions that will help you to get more bang for your recruitment bucks. 

1. Job boards

Job boards like Indeed, Glassdoor or LinkedIn, or job search engines connect businesses with applicants. To that end, recruitment solutions like Manatal are capable of automating the posting of external job advertisements to these popular sites. It offers the ability to prescreen applicants coming through these job boards, assesses and ranks candidates based on the resumes in their database. In terms of information, job boards allow recruiters to include salary ranges, job descriptions, and company profiles – they also enable candidates to ask for more information about advertised positions.

2. Pre-made assessments

To filter candidates, pre-hire assessments are used in recruitment tools to evaluate a candidate’s ability – beyond the qualifications and achievements listed in CVs – before being considered for a position. These can be customized according to the role to further gauge the applicant’s proficiency levels for key skills in specialist industries such as engineering, computing, and other technical fields. They can also be adapted to test language skills, problem-solving, and critical thinking. 

3. Mass emailing

Candidates demand more engagement from companies when they apply for jobs these days.  

But in the case of mass hiring where hundreds or thousands of applications are received for advertised roles, it is impossible for hiring managers and their teams to chat or reply to questions promptly. 

Bridging the communication gap is the role of mass emailing, which allows recruiters to notify candidates on the outcome of their application quickly, and efficiently. This leaves the candidate with a favorable tone, one that shows that the company or agency has looked into their application, and has made a decision. No matter the outcome, using a mass emailing feature in recruiting software gives companies and agencies the opportunity to end on a promising note, and leave the door open for possible opportunities in the future. 

It goes without saying that keeping candidates informed in a timely manner enhances the level of trust between them and the recruiter - who is likely the first, and perhaps only point of contact for those who do not make the cut. 

4. Internal team chats 

Speed, convenience, and affordability are some of the key benefits offered by this function that comes with recruitment tech.   

Oftentimes, team members and stakeholders in the hiring process struggle with keeping each other updated on a timely and consistent basis. There are of course plenty of factors that influence missed messages, such as lengthy periods away from work, missing emails, and delayed responses. Recruitment technologies that come with an internal team chat function provide the opportunity for tremendous improvement, particularly in terms of speed, for teams that have to communicate across multiple layers within and outside an organization. This is also an especially useful function for recruitment agencies that must manage candidates, clients as well as third party vendors. 

5. Mobile applications

With close to 90% of jobseekers using a smartphone to search for a job now, it’s essential that your recruiting platforms and tools are mobile-compatible.

Quite simply, interested applicants who click through to a recruiting interface that’s not optimized for mobile will very probably decline to go any further. Updating platforms is easy and convenient now however with affordable mobile integration software tools designed to guide applicants through the hiring process in a simple, efficient manner. Manatal for instance, makes it easy to access our cloud-based applicant tracking system from anywhere, at any time on your mobile device. 

6. Templates

If you don’t nail your job ad or job description, there’s a high chance that applicants – who demand clear, concise, compelling job information content – will dismiss your position and move on to others.

But finding the right words, tone and style don’t come easy to everyone. If you are on that boat, job description templates can come to your aid. It’s software that serves as a virtual writing coach or editor to help you write better, more compelling job descriptions. 

While it is a baseline to begin from, it is up to the recruiter to build on pre-made templates in order to seek more specific niche skills, diverse candidates or remove gender bias. 

7. Social Networks

In addition to attracting candidates to your recruitment sites and pages, you can also proactively headhunt new talent via social media where many people spend a lot of their online time. 

Using social media for recruitment makes sense because people share a lot of their personal and professional insights and experiences on channels such as LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. How? Social recruiting software lets you track applicants across various networks to identify those with the “right fit” skills, experience, and attitude for your company.

8. New hire progress tracking

So, you’ve found an outstanding candidate, and they have agreed to join you. On the surface, it looks like all the recruiting hard work has been done, but you shouldn’t underestimate the importance of the onboarding process. 

A good, comprehensive look into how new hires make a strong start from day one, and progress towards permanency, is a great data point for recruiters. Manatal’s Employee Management System allows recruiters to keep track of hired/placed candidates with important information such as start dates, probation periods and end of employment dates logged onto profiles of candidates.

9. Applicant tracking systems (ATS)

ATS platforms collect and group applications in a shared database. They also streamline the hiring process by scanning, pulling out key information, and ranking applicants according to the job specs. This is achieved by automating resume screening to search for relevant keywords, skills, and experiences. ATS platforms also promote accessibility – specifically, the ability for hiring teams to know which candidates have been processed, and the status of shortlisted applicants to enhance company-wide communication and collaboration to accelerate the hiring process. 

10. Customer relationship management (CRM)

As a recruitment agency, a CRM works best with an ATS software to enable a constant and close dialogue with your clients. While ATS systems process recruiting and hiring tasks, a CRM enables recruitment agencies to stay on top of client deliverables and ensures that progress is made for all key accounts. 

Additionally, all prospective clients can also be added into the pipeline to give agencies a look into where they stand as a business and modify or change their strategies where necessary, based on performance.

ATS is the industry standard

These 10 recruitment software features and benefits will be at the forefront of transformation plans for companies that have yet to digitize and modernize their hiring platforms and processes. 

However, with 95% of Fortune 500 companies and 68% of small companies using applicant tracking platforms, the ATS has become the most popular hiring software in the U.S. and around the world.

Filtering out unsuitable applications, and scanning resumes and cover letters to quickly find “the best of the rest” is one of the most profound ways that ATS solutions help businesses of all sizes to improve and speed up their hiring processes. 

Optimization benefits offered by Manatal

Automating the most time and resource-consuming recruitment tasks enables HR staff to optimize their resources, time and talent to ensure they find the best talent available more consistently. Especially in the area of building candidate relationships in the near, medium, and longer-term – a critical factor as the chase for talent in certain sectors intensifies.  

As a SOC 2 Type II certified software, Manatal is the preferred software option for many companies and recruitment agencies around the world. Our AI-powered parsing and candidate scoring features allow your teams to enjoy the many and varied benefits that come with the software.

So, if you have been quiet on the hiring front over the past two years, and would like to modernize your processes and systems immediately, we invite you to start a 14-day Free Trial today (no credit card required) to discover how Manatal will ramp up your efforts to find the best and brightest job seekers.