From applicant to candidate to new hire, there are a myriad of ways to automate the recruiting process. As recruiters, you are already strapped for time, so streaming or automating mundane tasks in hiring can be a major win for the organization. Taking a thoughtful approach to recruiting process automation helps you maximize your ROI.
Let your recruiting software take care of communications, marketing and other tasks wherever possible to give your recruiters more time to do what’s important, namely building relationships with candidates and allowing them to source top talent.
Ultimately, recruiting automation assists recruiting teams to create a more structured and efficient candidate experience, while also freeing up time to enable more meaningful conversations. What follows below are simple, tactical ways to make recruiting automation work for you.
- Thank You for Applying Email
This is probably the most famous piece of automation in place with most employers. Sadly many companies fail to optimize its use. I recommend letting candidates know what to expect next and ask them to follow you on your social media channels. You’re trying to build a relationship, so start with basic courtesy and say thank you.
- The Rejection Email
Just about every ATS comes with an automated way to reject candidates en masse or individually. Employers need to get better about closing the loop on applicants they are never going to hire. One company I know of actually makes it part of every recruiters job to make sure they accept or reject every applicant assigned to the reqs they own.
- Interview Reminders
Candidate, hiring manager and recruiter should all automatically get an interview reminder email or text message about the upcoming interview. If in person, it should contain instructions on where to go and who they’ll be meeting with. A text interview reminder is the perfect use case because it can incorporate a link to Google Maps and other key details in a streamlined format. Good text recruiting software will integrate with your ATS and help you do it automatically.
- General Status Updates
As a general practice it would be great for candidates to get a notification each time their status in the ATS is changed to help them understand where they are in the process, either by email or SMS. Leaving them in the dark is part of the resume black hole that is all too prevalent in today’s hiring process. By being proactive like this you can also cut down on the number of inbound inquiries from candidates themselves.
- 1st Day on the Job
Send a text message to your new employee via your text recruiting platform the day before they start in order to welcome them and give any last minute instructions for where to go.
- Candidate Experience
Use recruiting process automation to regularly conduct feedback surveys among your candidates by asking them about how they perceived your application/recruiting process. Send candidates an email within a few days of their rejection email asking them what they thought about your process. You can gain valuable insight into what’s working and what’s not.
- Onboarding Information Requests
With most of us working remotely, digital onboarding has become more important than ever to get right as part of a comprehensive recruiting automation strategy. Many ATS providers have onboarding components that allow you to send the proper paperwork to be signed electronically. These docs can be sent as part of a change in status in your ATS for example. Vendors like Smart Recruiters let you extend an offer letter right from their ATS for example.
- Notify Recruiter When Candidate Clicks Link in Email
Wouldn’t it be great if you could be notified when one of your sought after candidates clicked something in an email you sent them? Some CRMs like Candidate ID offer this type of functionality already and I expect more ATS providers to incorporate this kind of alert in the near future.
- Ask for Referrals
Setup an email to ask your top candidates who they know that might fill another role at your organization. A players tend to know other A players so it won’t hurt to ask.
- Programmatic Job Advertising
Employers have been able to automate their recruiting spend by partnering with programmatic job vendors that take your job feed and automatically distribute those jobs to multiple job boards. Costs are incurred on a per click basis. Companies like Appcast, JobAdX and Joveo are some examples of these companies.
- Social Media Automation
If you have a feed of jobs and/or blog content you can automate the publishing of that content through a tool like Dlvr.it or Buffer. Each time you post a job or blog that item can automatically be shared across Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn thus eliminating the hassle of posting to each channel one by one.
- Pre-screening Candidates
Having candidates self assess can save you valuable time by automatically rejecting them before they apply. Recruiting chatbots are great for performing this task. The chatbot can sit on your website or work as a text chat with the candidate by asking them screening questions and either rejecting them or pushing them into the funnel. This is an easy way to tap the power of AI in your recruiting efforts.
- Interview Scheduling
A number of interview scheduling tools now exist and ATS providers like Smart Recruiters are also building in functionality to allow candidates to self schedule their interview based on your team’s calendar. You can also tap your text recruiting platform to trigger automated scheduling texts based on activity in your ATS if they have an integration.
- Candidate Nurturing
Maintaining relationships with candidates who indicate interest in your company is an important part of a modern hiring process. CRMs (aka Candidate Relationship Management) are adept at this type of functionality mainly through email automation. These emails can keep the candidate engaged throughout the pipeline so they don’t lose interest. Including texting at job fairs with them.
Learn more about how Emissary can automate your recruiting with features like our AI recruiting chatbot.
