5 Ways Automation Empowers Recruiters

When recruiters are empowered with technology and process, they are free to pursue higher impact, more strategic activities. That said, while automation and AI free up a large amount of time, those systems still need management.

Automated screening and sourcing technologies need recruiters to run them and review their recommendations. They’re also a rich source of data that provides insight into a recruiting department’s effectiveness.

When recruiters are empowered with technology and process, they have time to use these systems to:

1) Fast Track Top Candidates

AI-driven recruiting software has the ability to recommend great candidates to recruiting teams. Recruiters, then, have the opportunity to fast-track candidates with the highest likelihood of success.

Rather than putting candidates through a series of time-consuming screening steps, one single screening step can give recruiters all the information they need to forward candidates to hiring managers.

Depending on the type of role, this also offers an opportunity for recruiters to provide candidates with a higher touch experience. Providing quick recommendations to hiring managers shortens the feedback loop and greatly expedites the hiring process.

2) Attract Candidates with Recruitment Marketing

Recruitment marketing is a great opportunity for most recruiting teams. Unfortunately, tasks like screening and manually moving candidates through workflows prevent teams from giving recruitment marketing the attention it deserves.

Empowered recruiting teams can manage and operate critical recruitment marketing initiatives like:

• Develop Candidate Personas. Candidate personas provide a framework to create more personalized content and outreach for candidates. In-depth candidate persona research is a time-intensive process, incorporating data from different sources. Examples include: new hire interviews, candidate exit interviews, candidate surveys, and job market data.
• Build Out Email/Text Nurture Programs. Once candidate personas are developed, you can create more personalized recruitment marketing campaigns. Many recruiting teams are sitting on a massive database of previous applicants. More personalized outreach to former candidates increases the likelihood that they reengage with your opportunities.
• Test New Platforms for Job Ads. Most recruiting teams are aware of Glassdoor or LinkedIn job ads. Candidate personas also provide insight into how candidates hear about your opportunities. You can take leverage this information to test job ads on more niche platforms that are less competitive and more relevant to ideal candidates.

3) Analyze Metrics to Demonstrate Value

Metrics reporting is a significant blind spot for many TA teams. While nearly every organization tracks time to fill, this is where the similarities end.

Building out a robust metrics dashboard is crucial to data-driven recruiting. Without robust metrics, new initiatives are a shot in the dark. Empowered recruiters can dig deep into recruiting metrics and demonstrate the value talent acquisition teams add to the business.

Empowered recruiters do more than uncover and standardize new metrics. They look into the implications of each metric to reveal quantifiable cost savings and ROI.

For example, reducing time to fill also has implications on time savings for hiring managers (which can be converted into cost savings in dollars), time savings for recruiting teams (also convertible to quantifiable cost savings), and cost of vacancy (eg, the time a sales role stays vacant directly impacts the organization’s ability to generate revenue).

Learn more about how to “translate” metrics into hard cost savings and revenue.

4) Research New Technologies

Closely related to demonstrating value is researching new technologies. Once you understand the ROI of different components of your tech stack, you gain insight into other opportunities for technology. Empowered recruiters can:

• Conduct Vendor Research. Empowered recruiters have the time and resources to conduct vendor research and make informed recommendations to leadership.
• Assist with Business Case Building. Leveraging the data they’ve already collected, they play a key role in building the business case for new technology.
• Champion New Technologies. Once a buying decision is reached, they can champion the new technology and evangelize it among hiring managers and other recruiters.
• Report Successes and Opportunities. The journey with a new technology doesn’t end at purchase. Empowered recruiters have the time and resources to continually report on the performance of new tech and identify new use cases.

5) Cultivate Talent Benches

Empowered TA teams can even use the data from their HR technology stack to predict turnover and pro-actively source for roles that don’t yet need filling. Rather than fill roles reactively - and lose months of productivity 1 - they secure top talent for their organization exactly when they need it.

“Talent benches” are pools of engaged candidates that can be fast-tracked through the hiring process on an as-needed basis.

You can cultivate talent benches through a number of channels, including:

• Email & text (usually done via CRM)
• Social media groups, like those provided by Facebook and LinkedIn
• Social media conversations and Q&As, which can be done with Twitter hashtags or on sites like Reddit
• Slack groups dedicated to specific disciplines
• Industry groups and forums, like Stackoverflow and Github

For example, if you are hiring for a high volume, high turnover role, you likely have the data to view and predict turnover month-over-month. Rather than waiting for employees to turnover before opening a requisition, you can proactively attract and screen candidates. Time to fill for these roles can be under 24 hours.

Conclusion: The Empowered Recruiter

This concludes our five blog series on The Empowered Recruiter: how recruiting teams can be empowered and augmented through process and technology. If you’d like to read the other blogs in the series, check them out below:

1. 6 Ways Empowered Recruiters Consult with Hiring Managers
2. How to Empower Recruiters to Make Hiring Decisions for Hiring Managers
3. 4 Ways the Empowered Recruiter Can Be a Concierge for Candidates
4. 4 Ways Empowered Recruiters Manage Organizational Recruiting Initiatives

Or download the full Empowered Recruiter eBook to learn how empowered recruiting teams ditch tactical, repetitive tasks for high-impact strategic activities.

Get the Empowered Recruiter eBook