4 tips on how technology can improve your recruitment business

Sonar IT is a technology provider with its employees coming from a background supporting Manufacturing SME's. Before founding Sonar we worked for Microsoft supporting manufacturing companies with their business questions.

We found that although working for a vendor is great, we saw that companies were missing that personal touch or on-site support at an affordable rate.

Also, the complexity of the entire supply chain needs a partner that really understands your processes.

Now that a new reality has set in the way we work has changed as well with more businesses working remotely. We constantly have to adapt to new circumstances. In this whitepaper, we will focus on recruitment technology.

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Recruitment agency processes and hiring methods have evolved enormously with the advent and application of recruitment technology. There’s no going back now automation is in place to directly assist the efficiency,productivity, and effectiveness of agencies everywhere. It’s not a case of whether agencies apply recruitmenttechnology, it’s how well it’s applied.

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1. How is technology used in the recruitment industry?

Recruitment technology is used at every step of today’s recruiting process across the industry. Online connectivity means candidates and hiring managers are easier to reach, and recruitment professionals – consultants - can be discussing a job role in a matter of seconds. Dedicated recruitment websites complement job board activity with their strong SEO methodology, Google for Jobs alignment, and ability to attract job seekers and potential clients. Arguably, a recruitment agency’s core technology platform is its recruitment CRM – a customer relationship management tool.

This links your recruitment website and other back-office software, including payment software, pre-employment recruitment screening, and more. This is vitally important as recruiting in today’s environment is fast- paced and having easy-to-use recruitment technology can provide a competitive advantage. Also embedded within the recruitment CRM is the ability to send questions to candidates for a role you are advertising for.

Compliance is a critical element in recruitment and screening software that allows you to inspect a job seeker's proof to work, quickly and effortlessly and ensures your agency is 100% compliant with legislation and industry demands. Meanwhile, pay and bill software – linked to your CRM – enables you to pay contractors or temp workers, and clients with all the correct information at your fingertips.

2. How has technology used in the recruitment industry changed?

The days of candidates sending in a paper-based CV have ended. Online applications and software help reduced administrative burden, accelerates the recruitment and placement process, and remove human errors.

With the advent of automation, consultants can focus on building relationships with job seekers and hiring managers, and so technology can undertake the manual processes which stymied productivity and agency profitability.

3.  Why is recruitment technology so important?

Implementing recruitment technology provides resilience and dependability to your business. With your back-office systems – website, recruitment CRM, screening, for example - all talking to one another human error is removed, providing peace of mind and reportable data for effective management decisions to be made.

Increasingly, mobile apps are also used to manage contractors to ascertain availability and place them in temporary roles for example construction, warehousing or hospitality.

Another example of technology being applied effectively in the recruitment agency landscape is performance and productivity tools. Using the data it produces, helps identify professional development opportunities enabling consultants to demonstrate enhanced effectiveness when placing candidates with clients.

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Additionally, today’s recruitment technology encourages you to maximise your talent pool in your CRM and then accelerates the hiring process utilising the latest online recruitment software to connect with candidates and store the required information – ensuring you are compliant.

4.How can technology help with recruitment?

Today’s recruitment technology shouldn’t be feared as it helps improve your recruitment business’ abilities to work with more clients, engage more candidates and realise your long-held growth aspirations.

• Working in harness with your processes and your people

Recruitment technology should allow your consultants to thrive by allowing them to focus on building relationships with candidates and clients. Meanwhile, your technology should work with your processes that ultimately place candidates quicker, bringing smiles to your clients’ faces.

• See the bigger picture

Your embedded tech will offer you new data streams in which you can make better, more informed decisions rather than deliver them based on gut instinct. ROI of job boards can quickly be determined; speed of placement can be assessed and you can view available candidates (and much more) all at your fingertips.

• Safe and secure

Today most effective recruitment technology is SaaS-based. Software as a Service means all your information, software platforms, and data are securely hosted in the Cloud. This means outages, thefts, or fires at your offices mean your business goes with you rather than you being stuck in one location. More peace of mind!

Additionally, the dynamism offered by tech means you won’t need to retain notes on post-its or write your candidate's availability on a whiteboard. This is the time to embrace automation!

• Ability to scale and grow

Technology facilitates better business choices enabling your business to scale and grow. Your technology will give you the flexibility to develop (and contract if required) based on market needs and the demands on your business. Technology builds confidence within your business enabling personal and professional growth allowing more informed decisions leading to actions that beneficial for all involved. It’s win-win!

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