The financial impact of record inflation and a looming recession are forcing many staffing firms to increase efficiency without sacrificing the quality of the client service and candidate experience. This requires evaluating key processes at every stage of the recruitment lifecycle — and streamlining them using technology.
At Bullhorn, we’re tackling this challenge through a strategy we’ve dubbed Connected Recruiting. Firms that leverage Connected Recruiting to better engage with talent throughout the recruitment lifecycle can lower the cost of talent acquisition, redeploy more of the workers they already have a relationship with, and provide a more satisfying experience for all candidates.
Here are three key ways recruitment automation can help cut costs in 2023.
Attracting a wider pool of quality candidates. Manual sourcing is expensive because it takes up a massive chunk of a recruiter’s time. However, it’s possible to build a stronger talent pipeline in a fraction of the time. And remember, time is money for recruiters.
You can start with something as simple as refining job descriptions to naturally attract a larger, more diverse pool of quality candidates by removing certain skills or qualifications that are just “nice-to-haves” as opposed to required. Use more inclusive and gender-neutral language, emphasizing the employee experience and the company’s work culture as well as the role itself.
Of course, technology should play a significant role in streamlining your candidate sourcing. Use automation to streamline your initial outreach to candidates that may have come through from job boards or similar sources. This will save on time manually reaching out to a multitude of candidates that may or may not be suitable.
Personalize all interactions, even if they’re automated, and you can quickly build a potential candidate pool. Remember that each candidate, whether they progress to the next stage or not, deserves the best talent experience possible — as you never know when you may re-engage with them.
Also, consider using chatbots and CV parsing to speed up the hiring experience. Like a website, chatbots are available 24/7 and can help capture initial candidate interactions to qualify suitable candidates for the next stage or screen out unsuitable candidates. A CV parsing tool integrated with your ATS makes it quick and easy to review and match qualified candidates to jobs at scale.
Engaging candidates to avoid application abandonment. Keeping candidates engaged throughout the entire recruitment process is vital, as it avoids “application abandonment” – typically triggered by slow, unresponsive interactions.
Automating regular candidate engagements is always worthwhile, but you can go a step further by offering candidates a self-service portal that gives them more control and visibility over the progress of their applications.
Self-service works particularly well for temporary and contract workers who need to be quickly redeployed into new assignments on a regular basis. The business will be able to engage a larger number of candidates at scale, while recruiters can step back from more routine tasks.
In addition, automate your data hygiene so that you can base all candidate engagements on updated, reliable data to simplify and speed up the hiring process. To save even more on cost and boost efficiency, consider further automation such as:
- Application confirmation via email and text messages;
- Instant new applicant follow-up, and
- Candidate re-engagement in the applicant tracking systems (ATS).
Providing a seamless digital onboarding experience. Retaining employees is much more cost-effective than employing new ones, yet around one-third of new employees leave their job within the first 90 days. To reduce the turnover rate for new hires, invest upfront in providing a seamless onboarding experience for all new starters.
This includes using automation to complete formal paperwork such as documentation and credentialing — a valuable option for firms that work across multiple industries or countries. Furthermore, set reminders to check in regularly with talent to help identify issues that may otherwise go unaddressed.
If you’re recruiting temp or contingent workers, consider how you will reengage or nurture them once they are ready to plan for their next assignment. Automated recruitment tools with artificial intelligence capabilities can instantly review and match a candidate’s details, which could streamline their placement or redeployment into a new assignment at a fraction of the cost and time.