Even prior to COVID-19, recruiting automation was something many organizations had on their priority list. With the influx of new job seekers in the market as a result of the pandemic, recruiting automation is more important than ever. In this post, we’re going to talk about why you need to think about automation in your recruitment process, particularly as market conditions continue to change.
What is Recruiting Automation?
Recruiting automation is using technology to remove manual components of hiring, screening, and other recruitment tasks to help gain efficiencies. It is a broad term that covers things like recruiting chatbots that use AI, candidate intake workflows, screening, and more.
The Benefits of Recruiting Automation
There are many, many benefits to introducing automation in your organization’s recruitment process. From cost reduction to volume handling and more, here are some key benefits that make a strong business case for investing in recruiting automation.
Handle High Volumes of Applications
With so many job seekers entering the market as a result of the pandemic, hiring teams are seeing a huge influx of applications. With so many candidates applying, it’s almost impossible to keep up.
Recruiting automation can help you better handle high volumes of applications by removing a lot of the manual tasks associated with screening the candidates. Automated screening, for example, can help you qualify candidates based on a set of criteria, eliminating the need to do so manually. Additionally, AI-powered chatbots can identify and qualify candidates directly from your corporate careers page, ensuring that your team is only interacting with the best people in the candidate pool.
Accelerate Time-To-Fill
Recruiting automation can also help hiring teams, recruiters, and HR teams fill positions faster. With something like an automated chatbot, for example, you are speeding up the beginning of the candidate journey by offering immediate engagement, managing FAQs, and helping candidates get to the point of conversion more quickly without manual back and forth. This in turn helps teams shortlist candidates faster and move the best ones into the interview stage more quickly than traditional methods.
Improve Recruiter Efficiency
Recruiting automation, like other forms of automation, aims at increasing efficiency by eliminating or reducing manual tasks that would traditionally require human effort. In the recruitment process, automation is helping to reduce time-intensive tasks like manual screening of candidates, fielding high volumes of (often repetitive) candidate questions, and more.
Additionally, automation can actually help improve the candidate experience. According to a study by PWC, almost 50% of candidates say they have turned down an offer because they had a poor candidate experience, often because they don’t hear back quickly enough.
Chatbots can field many of your most frequently asked questions, significantly reducing manual back and forth via email and offering candidates answers immediately. Adding a human element to supplement your automated recruiting chatbot, like Live Recruiter offers, can also ensure that candidates are given a great experience by being able to talk to a human representative if they need to.
Engage Candidates Immediately
The majority of potential candidates will leave your corporate careers page without submitting an application. Once these candidates leave, you’ve lost them. With recruiting automation, you can immediately engage candidates directly from your corporate careers page and begin to build a relationship with them.
Automated chatbots can help prompt conversations with job seekers on your site, capture information, and funnel them into your talent pipeline. This helps to reduce missed opportunities and build a high quality pipeline more quickly — all without manual intervention.