In certain industries and verticals, there’s always been some discomfort when it comes to automation. It used to be that people frowned at the idea because there was this sense of losing the “human” in the recruiting process. However, this is quickly changing given the realities of the new world. Now, recruitment automation is all but a necessity to be as efficient as possible with acquiring the talent that your company needs to excel, and automating some of the mundane tasks so you can do the more human ones.
Pre-automation Recruitment
In the olden days, recruiters would have to look through paperwork on potential recruits by hand. They would have to pick up their rotary phones and spin out numbers to call any and all people that might be interested at all. Or, they would have to go through exhaustive phone interviews with people who called in just to start to whittle down the list.
The recruitment process was a tiring grind. For one thing, it was hard to tell when files you had were completely obsolete. Maybe half the people you were digging out of your filing cabinet were dead. Maybe they were oil tycoons now or living in a completely different area on the other side of the world. At the least, they may have lost all interest in the jobs you are offering. It was also harder to verify that they had the background you want.
How Automation Software Changed Recruiting
Recruitment automation software is having a dramatic effect on the industry. It’s now possible to automate much of the process, especially the early steps, in order to make sure that you are only interacting with interested candidates that are qualified.
Gone are the days of calling people who want nothing to do with you. Recruitment automation software makes this possible through methods such as having the ability to send automated emails on your behalf or control chatbots that can handle the initial interactions and questions with potential hires, helping to qualify or weed out bad fits.
This means that the software can aid in resume screening, other pre-qualification processes through chatbots, and even automated interviews if you like. You now need less manpower to help screen out candidates, and this is significantly different from what came before.
A Significant Advantage
This isn’t to say that everyone is getting it right though. According to some studies, 74% of companies aren’t updating their recruitment practices to something truly digital and automated. The transformation has happened, but it’s those that embrace it with the right software that is benefiting the most, while many others get left behind.
The Substantial Value Added by Recruitment Automation
One of the primary ways that automation aids in recruitment is by helping recruiters manage the giant pile of potential hires that they have to deal with daily. In some cases, no human would have a chance of going through the number of resumes and emails a recruiter receives on a daily basis, not in an entire lifetime. Fortunately, humans don’t have to whittle down the pile. Email automation makes it so that human recruiters only have to deal with the most relevant information. This way, the workload is reduced. The software allows you to use more intelligent recruitment strategies, ensures that data is collected neatly, and improves productivity.
One of the reasons why automating email is so important is because more than 73% of job seekers are only looking for a job passively. Therefore, if you reach out to people who have added their name to some job seeker website through email, you’re much more likely to get results than if you just try to wait for them to come to you.
Active Recruitment Without Extra Effort
As a result of this passiveness in most job seekers, there’s the problem of the need for you to make the first move. Trying to email every job seeker interested in the field your firm is in would require a stupefying amount of effort. Many recruiters know that if they had to read and respond to every email or resume they got over the course of just a few months they would be doing that and nothing else for the next 500 years.
This is where automation comes in. The right software company, such as Interseller can aid in finding emails easily and organizing them, as well as providing data on the potential hires. Emails can be sent automatically without taking a recruiter away from making final decisions about worthy candidates.
Why is There Reluctance to Use Automation?
There’s this sense from some people that they have to do everything themselves in order to have full control of recruitment. It’s understandable to be worried about having things get out of control, but that is the exact opposite of what tends to happen with this kind of software. It actually gives you full control and just keeps doing the same thing, time after time, that you told it to do.
In large part, the reluctance is all about the misconception of losing the human touch. Instead, automation can help take care of a lot of activities so you can increase the human touch on things like valuable phone conversations and in-person connection. However, again, this is just the opposite. Automations creates more time for phone calls with candidates by eliminating time spent sending emails over and over.
Getting Started
Software like Interseller makes recruiting process automation easy to use and effective, becoming a “must have” tool for any recruiter. It makes it so that you can have the important conversations with people to get a good read on who would be the best fit for the job, something that’s only possible when you don’t have to spend all of your time sending the same email asking for interest or information over and over.
When it comes to growth-minded companies, it’s essential that they protect their time for that last step of the process that’s all important and that requires that personal touch.
For more information on how we can help free up your time and make you feel less intimidated by being buried in enough resumes to blot out the sun, please don’t hesitate to go ahead and contact us today.