How to automate the recruitment process

Doing things faster, better and cheaper – and with clearer communication – makes fundamental business sense as a recruitment agency. Using AI-driven technology to automate the recruitment process makes all this possible.

However, to enjoy a clear competitive edge, this must be achieved without compromising your client or candidate relationships. You need to find ways to pinpoint the best applicants for roles as quickly as possible without losing your agency’s ‘personal touch’. So, what steps can you use to ensure that recruitment process automation ticks all the right boxes, to build your agency’s performance, profitability and reputation?

In this article, we explore successful methods for automation in recruitment process tasks. This includes insights on how to avoid current inefficiencies, and information gaps, overlaps and bottlenecks. If you thought that automating your recruitment workflow simply involved one-touch sharing of job postings or pre-loaded email responses, read on. You can also see how recruitment process automation complements your applicant tracking system.

Table of Contents:

1. Automated (and AI powered) pre-screening questions and ranking
2. Swift shortlisting and rejection
3. One-way video interviewing
4. Video interview profiling
5. Seamless interview scheduling 
6. Automated communication (and AI chatbots!) 
7. Smart job posting
8. Automated follow-ups
9. Predictive recruitment analytics 
10. ATS & CRM that streamlines overall recruitment operations

The recruitment automation process helps save your agency lots of time! Improving and speeding up your initial candidate contact and handling could be where this advantage is most obvious – and important.

The whole point of automation in recruitment is reducing the amount of mundane, repetitive tasks that need to be done by your team. Improving your effectiveness and efficiency starts from using AI-driven recruitment software to automate the pre-screening of candidates.

Not only does this represent a superb way to speed up this mass candidate ranking stage as a recruiter, but automation at this stage also gives you more assured, consistent and controllable ways to find the best candidates for jobs.

This recruitment automation technique is a logical progression from the pre-screening of candidates using AI. With the best recruitment automation software in place, you can also automate the way that candidates are categorised, accelerating shortlisting. Then, recruitment automation can seamlessly message successful candidates, and those not appropriate for the role.

Being strategic in building successful recruitment shortlists can be complex and demanding if you get bogged down in detail. Automation based on consistent and clear criteria brings the right calibre of candidate to the top, to create a strong pool of talent.

Reducing the amount of time taken to hire doesn’t end there. You’ll also have the ability to reduce your workload by using automation to arrange and collate initial screening videos from candidates.

Optimising one-way interview options can save recruitment agencies a lot of time, and also enhances your consistent and error-free system to find the ideal applicants for posts. Inadvertent bias can also be more thoroughly avoided.

Recruitment process automation is configured to send active links to candidates to facilitate video interviews, the second they meet all the initial screening criteria.

The next step in the automation of recruitment process tasks is relying on AI-driven software to curate the video interviews and apply consistent qualifying criteria to each one. This involves using invaluable recruitment capabilities such as facial recognition technology, natural language processing (NLP) and speech analytics.

Using a versatile video interview template can make candidate appraisal more streamlined and efficient. It can also provide decision makers with material that they can play back and assess for subtle details such as non-verbal communication and confidence in delivery. 

Nothing is lost in terms of the candidate experience either, as this automation of recruitment process step provides them with an opportunity to personalise and strengthen their application.

Creating a compact and effective calendar of interviews for shortlisted job candidates can become a head-scratching jigsaw puzzle if you use traditional scheduling and communication methods.

Purpose-built recruitment process automation opens the door to blocking out time and slotting in candidates in a swifter and more assured way. Your agency-specific software solution will do all the adjustments needed to match your clients’ criteria and expectations and get the best candidates lined up for interviews.

With an automated recruitment process, not only will standard notifications and messages be personalised for each candidate, but important two-way communication can also become more efficient and effective.

This is because you can provide candidates (and existing and prospective clients) with options to raise questions via chatbot technology. 

Filtering frequently asked questions using AI chatbots frees up your personnel. It also generates data that you can use to evaluate your recruitment agency operations and communications.

When the query needs a human response, correctly configured automation technology ensures that the contact escalates to your team seamlessly, with no one ‘lost in the wilderness’.

Managing an ever-expanding talent pool can be tricky for recruitment agencies, especially if you are juggling diverse roles across more than one sector of industry.

Automated job posting software enables you to provide multiple candidates with access to information about vacancies at a keystroke. Then, you get data reports that chart responses for valuable insights, and to support continuous business development.

At the very least, automating this task in recruitment gives you an at-a-glance way to check that multiple job postings are up to date and getting a strong response.

All of this happens while your recruitment automation process is delivering customised application forms and detailed job specifications in a responsive, swift manner to the candidates who are best suited for the post.

Automation continues beyond the initial steps involved in candidate attraction and selection. It improves the candidate experience throughout, by keeping them informed of their application progress, which can also ensure that they stay engaged.

Automated follow-up systems also help recruitment agencies provide their clients with relevant tracking reports. With transparent and up-to-the-minute data on your client-candidate interaction comes greater control and accountability.

Recruitment process automation also gives you access to the most vital commodity for any business: information!

You can generate data from your AI-driven software for recruitment agencies that will drill down on a myriad of important key performance indicators. From this comes the potential for more confident business decision-making.

Your end-to-end business analytics will highlight areas for improvement, ways to build your profit centres and opportunities to cut costs. You can also use the predictive recruitment analytics generated to find both innovative and practical ways to solidify your reputation and client relationships.

From building a talent pool and sourcing the best candidates, to reporting back to clients on successful outcomes, recruitment process automation makes you more efficient and therefore profitable. You are also better able to respond quickly to changes and challenges.

The fundamental basis of this automation must be a well-integrated applicant tracking system (ATS) and candidate relationship management (CRM) solution. Information, documentation and communication are all centralised and transparent. This saves time and money, but also gives you the power to eradicate error and anything that threatens your compliance.

Also, throughout the automation of your recruitment process , your candidates and clients should feel nurtured, informed, guided and supported in a way that improves their experience. This is only possible with ATS and CRM software that is personalised and intuitive, and blended with your business goals.

Vincere delivers a unified platform for managing information and automating the recruitment process, which never loses sight of the value of data or the importance of human relationships. 

Our integrated recruitment CRM/ATS solution accelerates your growth, using the latest automation innovations for recruitment, including automated chatbots.

To book a demo of the ultimate recruitment agency software, contact us today.