Saturday, November 6, 2010

ATS plays an indispensable role for staffing firms

There is an increasing need for recruitment and placement agencies to automate their processes so as to be able to close positions faster and bag more deals with clients. A lot of them have chosen to do this by implementing an ATS or recruitment management software to help them stay ahead of competition.

A lot of recruitment business owners and their recruiters admit that ATS has now become indispensable for them and has helped them in ways more than one. What earlier required them to spend hours together carrying out mundane tasks, now is just a matter of a few clicks here and there. They understand the importance of the role that an ATS plays in assisting them as stakeholders in the recruitment process.

So, how exactly does a recruitment software can help you as a staffing firm owner?

  • You can easily build a database of your own and enable recruiters to retrieve resumes faster. Candidate CVs can be located quickly using simple keywords like name, skills, current location or date of birth. Resumes sourced by one recruiter are made available to all other recruiters to ensure larger number of closures.
  • It is also possible for managers and supervisors to get a clear picture of their recruitment activities even during bulk processing of candidates. Analyze your key hiring metrics like sourcing effectiveness, recruiter productivity and time to hire is made possible with auto-generated reports.
  • A recruitment software will enable you to generate and track bills for every candidate till you receive payment against the placement. You can also setup your own formulae for calculating incentives to be paid to recruiters.
  • Your recruiters can get over with their routine work faster by using productivity tools such as resume parser, automated to-do list, shared calendar, mass mail and many more provided by online recruitment software.
  • Your recruiters can submit candidates to more than one client and you can track the progress of the candidate with each and every client with the help of multiple workflows. Therefore candidate tracking software is required for any organisation.
  • Coordination with clients and candidates is another important task that takes up a lot of the recruiters’ time. An ATS makes this a simple task as recruiters can track previous interactions with clients as well as candidates.
  • An ATS will help you maintain a pool of quality candidates and the database can be accessed from anywhere at anytime.

While the ATS is an indispensable par of recruitment for placement agencies, those still contemplating to invest in one need to understand the importance of choosing the right software. The software should be able to map to their processes, suit their recruitment needs well and be able to deliver a high ROI.

Also, recruiters should be able to leverage the application to its maximum so that they’re mundane tasks are simplified and they work on increasing their overall productivity. Only then will an ATS be able to help recruitment business owners earn considerable profits and stability. You will also be able to see the results of investing in recruitment software within a month of the investment.

 

Pros and Cons for Recruitment Software

Recruitment Software is an indispensable tool for HR teams who want to survive the competition. The large scale recruitment conducted by most companies and the need to close positions quickly compels us to think above manual processes. To face the various challenges of recruitment, automation of the entire hiring process is necessary.
Automation not only streamlines your recruitment process but also helps lower hiring costs and time to hire.

Pros of recruitment Software

Streamline the Hiring Process

  • Manage the entire recruitment cycle from requisitions to screening, selection, offer acceptance and finally, joining, with a single software.
  • Introduce best practices and set up well-defined processes to prepare for the next level of growth.
  • Define hiring process and let the recruitment management software generates a to-do lists for all the responsible users. All they need to do is complete tasks they are accountable for.

Get a Centralized Database

  • Create an easily searchable centralized database to leverage it to your business advantage.
  • Eliminate spreadsheets, files and folders to store and retrieve vital candidate information.
  • Import resources from various sources such as your Inbox, Desktop, web pages or job portals.

Increase Recruiter Productivity

  • Free up your recruiters' time so that they can focus on newer ways to attract top talent, faster.
  • Most of the applicant tracking system come up with productivity tools such as mass mail, resume parser, automated to-do list, shared calendar, feedback reminders, candidate rejection mail, report scheduler and many more.
Gain Complete Visibility and Control
  • Analyze what's working and what's not in your recruitment process with the help of instant reports. Generate reports on a daily, weekly or monthly basis to know the status of each position with respect to each and every recruiter.
  • Get a clear picture of the recruitment pipeline at all points of time. Candidate Tracking software applications provide you a real time view of open positions, vacancies, pending approvals for requisitions, candidates in processed and pending offers.
Reduce Cost

Automating your recruitment process also decreases dependence on job portals and vendors which reduces costs considerably. And therefore Candidate Tracking Software

Can help an organization to reduce cost.
Collaborate Easily

Work cooperatively on single platform. Your recruiters no longer need to follow-up with managers and approvers. Your recruitment management software makes it easier for all the stakeholders to complete their tasks faster.

Cons of Recruitment Software

Choose a recruitment software which will serve your purpose right to realize all its benefits. While you are buying a recruitment management software, do look at the following:
  • Model of deployment: SaaS or On-premise
  • Type of deployment: Web-based or Web-enabled
  • Total Cost of Ownership: License per server or cost per user
  • Return on Investment
  • Money-Back Guarantee

Beat Recruitment Blues with E-recruitment

E recruitment is the latest trend that is being adopted by HR teams to simplify all recruitment related tasks. E recruitment or online recruitment makes use of technology (internet) to carry out the various recruitment processes. It helps enhance and streamline workflow of the hiring process so as to enable easy and quick hiring of candidates.

E-recruitment eliminates most of the manual recruitment processes that are time consuming and hamper productivity of recruiters. There are various types of e-recruitment software and human resources software that can be implemented for the purpose of recruitment automation. The following are a few of them.

E-recruitment Software

E recruitment software is the latest method that can be used to automate recruitment. It  also ensures a reduction in the time and costs involved in the entire recruitment process and helps increase the productivity of the recruiters. Some of the advantages of e-recruitment and recruitment management software software are:

  • Automates recruitment process
  • Provides a centralized database of candidates
  • Decreases dependency on vendors for closure of positions
  • Gives a clear insight on the functioning of the recruitment processes
  • Reduces time to hire
  • Reduces recruitment costs involved
  • Eases communication

Online Recruitment through Social Networking

Recruitment through social networking is one of the most happening e-recruitment trends as of today. More and more recruiters are taking to this trend to recruit candidates for positions at every level, especially the senior level ones. It has helped leverage communication between candidates and recruiters that was otherwise limited to just interviews and formal discussions. MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. are some of the popular networking sites where recruiters can find a pool of prospective candidates, especially passive ones.

Job Boards/ Recruitment Communities

Recruitment through job boards and recruitment communities help source candidates of a specific skill set. Recruiters can make use of these communities to source candidates who are actively looking out for a change and would want to be a part of their organization. However you can also try Online Recruitment Software that can help HR to fast up their process.

Employer Corporate Website

The corporate website of a company plays an important role in attracting quality, prospective candidates. This is especially helpful for candidates who can be pulled in through employee referrals and those who display an interest in working with the company as a result of its brand image.

Recruiters should keep themselves updated with all the latest e-recruitment trends in order to be able to meet their hiring targets and reduce the overall time and cost to hire involved. This definitely would be an advantage for them in the long run.

 

 

Are your Recruiters Your Sales People?

When it comes to the recruitment process, recruiters are often compared to sales people. Recruiters often claim that recruiting is no different and no less difficult than selling is. Sales requires the right pitch and so does recruitment. So, are your recruiters really your sales people? How would you determine if your recruiters are efficient sales people?
Recruiters, actually, are quite similar to sales people. They carry out the difficult task of selling (literally) their company to recruit top, quality candidate and build a credible talentpool for their company. While approaching prospective candidates, a lot depends upon how your recruiters portray your company as they represent the company until the candidate finally joins the company. Their interaction with the candidate determines the experience that the candidate would have during the entire recruitment process. For this you can use human resources software.
Your recruiters are the face of your company for the prospective candidate. His/ her impression of you company and the way it functions would depend upon the way your recruiters deal with the candidate. Therefore, for your recruiters to be efficient sales people, it is essential that they follow the right procedures so that the candidate is not lost midway during the recruitment cycle.
More often than not, a candidate’s recruitment experience with companies turns out to be unpleasant due to the haphazard ways of functioning of the recruiters. This often happens when there is no system in place that can track candidate interaction with a particular recruiter. So, multiple recruiters end up approaching the same candidate for a particular position followed by confusion and lack of coordination when it comes to scheduling interviews.
This results in the candidate being contacted repeatedly over phone and spammed with emails. The candidate literally feels harassed and eventually drops out of the recruitment funnel. This candidate experience spreads as word of mouth and can then harm your image as a prospective employer. You can use Candidate Tracking Software to get rid of this problem.
Another area where your recruiters can fail to be effective sales people is while interacting with candidates regarding their expectations and providing them with information regarding the job opening that they have been approached for. Many a times the candidate realizes that he/she has been provided with no information or the wrong information only later in the recruitment cycle and then drops out of the recruitment funnel.
Now, you might be wondering how you could contribute in making your recruiters efficient sales people. You can start by investing in a recruitment software that will automate and streamline your recruitment process. Your recruiters will have a centralized database that they can leverage. They would also be able to track previous candidate interaction history which would help them approach the right candidates and deal with them better. This would also add to your employer branding and would enhance the candidate’s recruitment experience with your company. Recruiter efficiency will improve as the productivity tools provided by the software will enable them to focus on obtaining quality candidates, faster. Recruitment management software can help you to fast up the process and save money of an organization too. You, too, would gain a better insight into your recruitment activities so you know what’s working well and what’s not.