How Leveraging Tech Can Humanize The Recruiting Experience

Many people believe automation spells redundancy across a broad spectrum of industries. In fact, the opposite is true, especially when it comes to human resources and recruiting. When businesses employ emerging technologies, they actually enable their recruiting professionals to work on higher-order strategies that can transform the modern workforce. Recruiters are increasing their use of digital tools, and automation is at the forefront.

What is recruiting automation?

Recruiting automation refers to a classification of technology tools that automates certain lower-level and administrative tasks associated with recruiting. Automation tools are built into large-scale human capital management (HCM) solutions and provide insights into the overall talent profile of an organization beyond simply recruitment. From sourcing to onboarding, all aspects of recruiting can benefit from automation.

The recruiting process is the front line of any business’s competitive growth strategy. Strategies that incorporate emerging technology inherently position a brand to succeed. If a business fails to innovate its talent-acquisition strategy, it will likely be bested by competitors who are willing to do so. Automation is improving recruiting for HR professionals and candidates alike, providing speed and efficiency without sacrificing the quality of the experience. Perhaps counterintuitively, automation can actually humanize the recruiting experience.

Ways automation can impact and humanize the recruiting experience

Keeps candidates engaged

Recruiters who actively work on improving communication with candidates help move them through the hiring pipeline much faster. Job candidates expect more from the experience than just a basic acknowledgment of their application for a job or a predictable, templated notification when the position has been filled. In fact, nearly 40 per cent of candidates expect to be notified on a recurring basis. Automation helps facilitate more rapid and streamlined communication between candidates and recruiters throughout the entire application process. To improve communication, HR professionals use tools like chatbots and email marketing software to augment modern recruiting.

The best candidates may not even be in the applicant market. Top candidates often already have jobs. Thoughtful, consistent communication helps source even the most desirable but reluctant of candidates. In many cases, it’s also the first impression someone has of a brand. Businesses need to make these interactions positive.

Enables data-driven hiring strategy

HR teams can make smarter, strategic decisions with access to a wealth of hiring data. However, in order to analyze data more efficiently, they must first collect it. Many recruiters deploy talent management solutions that streamline the hiring and onboarding processes. Dynamic data points like candidate experience, time-to-fill, and cost-per-hire can be collected to inform future hiring strategy.

Data allow recruiters to more accurately optimize salary, benefits, and other aspects that attract candidates, but those aren’t its only applications. Recruiters can use historical and demographical data to” futurecast,” or predict skills gaps due to organizational and market changes. This enables recruiters to quickly respond to the evolving job market.

Promotes role specialization

As mentioned, the use of automation and AI-powered recruiting tools permits recruiters to focus on high-level strategy and professional development. Recruiters who are able to focus on soft skills like collaboration, critical thinking, and problem-solving will emerge as well-rounded managers driving value to their organization.

Increased time and resources are also shining a light on emerging “hard skills” that are shaping the future of recruiting. Technical skills like data science, IT, and AI are becoming ingrained into recruiting and HR roles. This significantly transforms the way recruiters understand and approach the candidate experience.

The verdict on recruiting automation

Automation is intended to augment existing skillsets of HR and recruiting professionals, not directly replace these business-critical roles. The future of recruiting will remain in human hands, supported by the proliferation of software and tools. Automation provides the data, while humans provide iterative innovation. It’s up to the HR team to continue to derive new insights from the data, create new processes, and ask new questions about how technology can augment their efforts.