But, how does this change impact recruitment? It’s no secret that plenty of tools are being produced that claim to make recruiting easier, faster, and more efficient. But do they work? Can recruitment be fully automated? And, if so, are there benefits to automating your recruitment process?
We investigate these questions, what recruitment automation tools exist, and much more in our article below!
Can recruitment be automated?
Firstly, are these claims true? Can recruitment be automated?!
In short, not completely. But, there are recruitment automation tools out there that can simplify the process and even help companies that don’t yet have an HR department recruit!
Of course, as Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) and other recruitment automation systems become more advanced, the further the recruitment process can be automated. The recruitment tools currently available are constantly evolving to automate more and more features. So, will recruitment be fully automated in the future? Only time will tell.
Which parts of the recruitment process can be automated currently?
As mentioned above, currently, recruitment automation tools aren’t advanced enough to automate the whole recruitment process. But, some parts can certainly be automated already:
An ATS tool can currently take care of the following tasks:
- Suggesting job boards
- Sorting candidates into qualified and unqualified buckets
- Responding to candidate applications (with automated emails)
- Sorting candidates based on other criteria, such as location
- Forwarding candidate applications to relevant hiring managers
- Notifying hiring managers if a candidate completes a certain action, for example, a task
- Providing candidates with interview slots
What are the benefits of recruitment automation?
Recruitment automation can save your business both time and money. Certainly, in small to medium-sized businesses, where the HR department consists of a couple of people (or less), time is an invaluable resource. Automation can help here, by cutting down admin work. It can also improve accuracy when choosing job boards, writing job ads, and more.
Here are five ways in which automation can help:
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Time to focus on other HR aspects
Rather than your team spending hours manually posting roles to relevant job boards, sorting candidates into ‘qualified’ and ‘unqualified’ buckets, crafting personalised rejection emails, and sorting through calendars to find suitable interview time slots, an ATS (like JOIN!) could do this for you.
This then frees up time for your team to spend on crafting great recruitment strategies, creating onboarding plans, and other important HR aspects.
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Faster responses to candidates
Having fast, efficient reply times is becoming an essential part of recruitment. With companies constantly competing to hire top talent, especially in times of the Great Resignation, time is of the essence when it comes to communicating with your candidates.
This is where recruitment automation really comes in handy. Having an ATS in place means that you can preset communication such as rejection emails and invitations to interview, which can then quickly be sent at the touch of a button. Not only does this mean you are less likely to let talent slip through your fingers, but you’re also less likely to ghost candidates, which will result in improved employer branding.
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Better recruitment analytics
Like most things, recruitment processes tend to get better with practice. However, this is only true if you’re paying attention to what you’re doing wrong and what you’re doing right.
Recruitment automation tools make it so much easier to analyse how your job ad is performing, how fast your reply rates are, and more. So, no more guessing which job boards your advertisement is performing best on, what day to post your ads, and which keywords to use. Now, you can check your analytics and find out!
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More accurate job ad targeting
Even the best recruiter in the world will have limited knowledge.
There are a huge number of niche job boards out there, with specialist boards focused on certain locations, industries, and job roles. If your recruitment expert hasn’t heard of these boards, and isn’t posting to them, you’re missing out on some excellent talent attraction opportunities.
Luckily, a great recruitment automation tool can help with this. JOIN, for example, recommends job boards to you based on your location, job opening, and business type. If you’re a Berlin start-up, you’ll be recommended Berlin Startup Jobs! Hiring a designer? We might recommend Dribbble to you. In short, there’ll be no missed opportunities.
Want to write a great job advertisement?
Get started with tips and tricks from our helpful guide.
Read our guide
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Help with recruitment budgeting
If you’re recruiting for the first time, it is far too easy to make rookie recruitment mistakes. A number of these can, unfortunately, be budget related. Whether it’s spending too much on a single job posting, or not spending enough on promoting an important open position.
Luckily, with help from the right tool, this will no longer be a problem. With an ATS like JOIN, you can set a budget and choose from packages, job ad slots, and more, based on your budget.
Make managing your candidates easy with JOIN's free ATS
Is it worth automating my recruitment process?
So sure, there are benefits to recruitment automation. But, if you’re currently getting by without a recruitment automation tool, you could be wondering… is it worth it?
The effort of acquiring and setting up a tool might seem to outweigh the (many) benefits to you. But, as plenty of businesses have already found, it’s something which is well worth the effort.
Alongside speeding up your current processes, recruitment automation actually has some serious long term benefits. Using an automated system makes your recruitment process much simpler to track, meaning you can be more consistent with your hiring in the future. The result? Stronger employer branding.
An easily tracked and documented hiring process also means that onboarding any new HR members is easier in the future, which is great if you plan to expand one day.
Don’t just take our word for it, though. Before automating their recruitment process, smart-water tracking company Shayp were doing a lot of their recruitment work manually, with multiple log-ins and no real solid system in place. They had this to say about automating their recruitment process:
“Before JOIN, our recruitment was not very well-structured and an extremely long process. JOIN is helping us to be more concrete and structured in our talent attraction process”
Simona Marano
HR Officer
Shayp
And they’re not the only ones to enjoy a more efficient, long-term hiring strategy thanks to recruitment automation. You can read more case studies of similar recruitment automation success in our Customer Success Stories.
How do I automate my recruitment process?
So, if the above points sound like they’d be useful for your company, and you might want to give recruitment automation a try, then it’s time to get started on automating your own recruitment process.
You’ll be pleased to know you can get started right away with barely any set up required.
Plenty of recruitment tools require very little sign up, and with a tool like JOIN you can get started for free in less than 5 minutes.
One of the best places to start automating your recruitment process is when it comes to posting your job ads. This is a task that can usually get tedious, and require a lot of different logins and clicking around.
But not anymore. Now you can start automating your recruitment process in five easy steps:
- Sign up to JOIN.com
- Write a great job advertisement, covering all the basics of your role (tip: try our job description templates for inspiration!)
- View a selection of the best job boards to post your advertisement to
- Select and multipost your advertisement to these boards, in just one click!
- Collect and review applications to your ads in one easy-to-use dashboard
Further recruitment automation tips
Once you start seeing the benefits of recruitment automation, you can easily get carried away. But, some good advice is to pace yourself, and document your changes. This way you’ll have a complete record of your current recruitment process at all times, should you need it.
And if you find you make a change that doesn’t work for you, it will be easy to go back a step and try a different automation approach!
Alongside this, remember your ATS works best when you’ve got a solid plan set out for it. For example, while an ATS can certainly help increase diversity within your team, you need to understand your current team and what you can add to it culturally.
If you’re reading this and now realise your hiring process could use a little more work, you’re in luck. We’ve got a bunch of advice in our hiring process articles.
