How Technology Improves Your Staffing Business Process
Technology has always driven change, the race to be faster, first, more efficient won’t ever stop. A lot has changed in the last decade but this year has seen a forced and complete drive for modern staffing website design that’s fit for purpose, integrated with staffing technology and helps solve some pressing business issues that have come under the microscope recently because of Corona virus and staffing agency remote working.
Thanks to staffing technology, rather than replacing the human element of interactions, technology is helping speed up transactions, personalize engagement, create opportunities and improve conversion rates. Whilst some aspects of the staffing process have been destroyed or replaced, some have grown, some have become obsolete and some have completely transformed staffing agencies.
Many thought that the rise in advanced technology services would spell doom for the staffing industry, but the advances have actually helped it grow from strength to strength. Let’s have a look at how our industry is transforming itself to accommodate change. The recruiting process typically involves these stages:
- Sourcing candidates and data
- Attracting candidates
- Assessing candidates
- Skills test
- Tracking candidates and on-boarding
From the recruiter’s side, before you can even begin to service your client and impress them with your hiring service, consultants and business leaders need to:
- Be visible in your sector and seen as an expert
- Win fresh leads, new business and service existing clients
- Harness advanced technology solutions
- Use data and analytics to understand your recruiting process at a granular level.
Finding new clients, even servicing existing clients and winning new mandates is more challenging than ever. Browse some of our great website design examples, and you could make significant progress and transform your staffing agency fast.
Technology Improves Time To Hire
Remember the “good old days” or running a print advert in a newspaper and waiting for the applications to trickle in? Before staffing technology, the internet and social media took over, job listings were posted in local or national newspapers. The reach of your adverts was limited but very targeted. Your ad copy needed to stand up and deliver. Hiring managers or recruiters had to settle for less qualified people (usually those not working for a competitor but having been laid off by them) to fill their open vacancies.
Technology and the internet has changed the face of recruiting. Social media has a huge role to play in the evolving dynamics of the recruitment process. Technology is even enabling and changing the interview process as well as the format, location and expectations of those job interviews. Hiring managers looking to expand their team have many platforms available to advertise, attract qualified candidates and fill their open roles. Job aggregators such as Indeed, Google For jobs, Talent.com, Adzuna has increased the reach of your adverts massively. Specialist job boards have strengths in their niches and are constantly evolving beyond a simple job listing, some providers offer CV search, help with arranging interviews, even on-boarding candidates into the hiring process. Social media platforms such as LinkedIn Groups, Twitter Lists, Instagram & Facebook groups, and beyond, it has now become easier than ever to access a pool of talent but harder than ever to sift out qualified candidates for your jobs. Throw instant messaging, chat bots and automation into the mix, and you can understand why staffing firms are turning to staffing technology experts to help them improve their business process. It’s not about finding a cool piece of technology and bolting it in to your process. It’s about breaking down your recruitment process, to a granular level, then designing your technology stack around your staffing business to drive productivity, ROI and business growth.
In some ways this might feel overwhelming. Recruiters are having to sort through more resumes, faster than ever before. Technology helps here too, with Boolean search, database tagging and effective data maintenance. It also greatly increases the chances of finding a professional who’s the perfect fit for your vacancy. If applications are not up to the mark, recruiters can target candidates from different cities, competitors, industries or different states until the ideal candidate is found.
Staffing Websites and Conversion
Mobile internet usage accounts for around 60% of internet traffic. For job seekers, that figure could be even higher. AMP pages, mobile first websites, responsive are the best website design requirements today. Technology has enabled and changed the way we access data, research and buy products as well as the way we look for jobs. Mobiles and tablets have changed the apply process and elements such as “Apply With” LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook etc are now common place (standard with our modern website design). After initial application, there is then a drip of candidate data acquisition sequencing either over form submissions or email sequences. This behavioral change improves conversion, reduces drop off, accelerates the hiring process and increases return on investment.
The mobile-savvy staffing businesses are discovering just how powerful mobile phones could be within their process. Whatsapp, Wechat and push notification technology is a perfect candidate or client acquisition tool when seamlessly embedded in your recruiting process. Recruiters today use this shift towards staffing technology to their advantage by incorporating progressive recruitment strategies to expand their reach, increase conversion, reduce workload, increase speed as well as improve reporting and business analytics to drive their return on investment.
ATS: Improved, Automated & Streamlined Hiring Process
Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) technology is now cloud-based recruiting software. There are plenty to chose from including Tracker RMS, Bullhorn, JobDiva or Job Adder to name a few, can automate, improve and streamline your recruiting process. ATS improves 3 major hiring metrics, time to hire, quality of hire and cost to hire. ATSs offer many features that help in achieving recruitment goals and overcoming challenges. Take a look at the features:
- Powerful sourcing tool
- Screening and parsing process is automated
- With just a click, jobs can be posted multiple platforms and job boards
- Easy to search data and reporting of candidates’ resumes and applications
- High-profile candidates’ profiles can be easily searched from the database
- Interview scheduling is easy and messaging automated
- Interview kits, scorecards and HR templates are embedded
- Broadcast emailing, text messages and push notifications
- Reporting and business analytics as well as consultant monitoring is built in
Online Interviews
Online interviews are a cost-effective and efficient way to have a “face-to-face” interview with the candidate, especially for candidates who would otherwise have to travel long distance for the interview. Zoom, Google Meet, Teams, Vidcruiter, Talview and other video interviewing tools allow the recruiter to see the candidates and observe how they handle and present themselves in the interview. You can record them, load them to their database, and share them with clients. With all the reporting benefits that brings into your process. It’s a great way to shortlist candidates submitted before any money or significant time is wasted on their travel to or from an interview.
Skills Assessment & Behavioral Testing
The internet has made available a lot of pre-employment assessments such as cognitive ability tests and job knowledge tests to analyze the skills and assess the knowledge of the candidates. These assessments can be administered quickly and easily, but the tools used should be a correct indicator of the candidate’s potential. Therefore, it is crucial to choose the right tools depending on the type of skills required in a candidate to fill the open role. Staffing technology has positively impacted our industry and a lot has improved since then, but clearly there’s still room for more.
Visibility and Awareness
Before you begin servicing your clients and looking candidates, you first need to win the business. Staffing firms can now use content generation and automation tools to help them with their visibility. Content distribution on social media, posting jobs onto your profiles and tagging other companies and users in your posts can help drive visibility in your marketplace. Recruiters can now be seen, be visible in your sector and you can position yourself as an expert within your niche.
Positioning To Win New Business
Now comes the positioning side and winning fresh, new business. There are tools that can support your engagement and posting on LinkedIn, increase the size of your network and quality of your network to increase your reach. To do that, you need to post regularly, at least once or twice a day during the working week. Posts, comments and likes are another way to increase your visibility. Social media automation tools such as Paiger specifically help recruiters stand out in their niche.
After you’ve been seen, and prospects are aware of your business and your services, you now need to convert them into a customer. For that, you need a modern website design that converts traffic effectively and is integrated seamlessly with your ATS. Use hidden fields in form submissions for data enrichment and use the advanced technology services to drive and iterate your staffing agency forward.
Use data and analytics to understand your recruiting process at a granular level. Apply the insights you get from your data and share that learning with your team in dashboards, regular team meetings and empower your staff to do the job you’re asking them to do. We consistently iterate and drive staffing businesses forward, if you’d like to learn more or get a new staffing website, please get in touch.