Recruitment takes up a lot of time, and because of this there can be a tendency to rush some aspects of the process. But with the right automation, much of the labour-intensive side of things (like sifting through applications) can be significantly reduced.
Many businesses are still doing things the ‘old way’ – worried that automation can put people off, a good candidate might be missed, or they just aren’t sure about how it actually works. However, if you think about all the things we currently let technology take care of for us, why would a little assistance with recruitment – to gain more efficient outputs – be put in the too-hard basket?
There are plenty of tools available to help with automation when recruiting, and one of the simplest is to set up rules in your inbox for when applications come through. This will push the email straight through to a selected folder, and have a automatic reply to say thank you for applying, what the process will be from here, and expected time-frames around the next step. This means you can set aside time at either end of the day to focus solely on applications – rather than being interrupted every time a new one comes in.
To step-up your filtering process, you can add a quiz or questionnaire to your job advert that contains specific questions relating to the criteria/experience needed to fulfil your job. For example, software from Workable.com allows you to customise candidate screening so you can save time evaluating them later on.
This then enables you to get clear information on a person’s skills that they might not have elaborated on in their CV, and means if they don’t have what you need, you can remove them from the process (with a polite email of course).
This initial first step will also assist with setting clear guidelines around what it is you are specifically looking for – keeping you on track and not compromising just because of ‘gut-feel’.
The next offering in automation is to have a specific sale assessment tool set up so that those who do have the right experience can be further analysed on their capabilities. We will go into what one of these looks like in step five, but the thing to remember is there are plenty of underlying traits and weaknesses that need to be identified before moving on to the interview stage (which can waste everyone’s time if the candidate isn’t right). One thing we will say though is – don’t let automation rule the entire process. There needs to be some human/personalised elements in recruitment, in order to make sure people feel appreciated and respected. Your business brand should be important to you, and this means making sure candidates walk away still feeling positive about their experience with you, even if they aren’t successful with their application.
You never know – in five or ten years time, those people could have been coached and trained into superstars and you’ll want them to still be open to an opportunity within your organisation.
