It’s challenging now for employers and recruiters in the labor market. With nearly two jobs open for every job seeker, companies face fierce competition for talent, while also trying to retain recruiters. In fact, almost 1/3 of recruiters are looking for a new job and nearly one in two recruiters would change jobs for a better tech stack at a different company.
Recruiting teams need intelligent and comprehensive technology that can handle the complexities of modern recruiting. And the most forward-thinking companies are moving away from disconnected and frustrating point solutions, adopting a unified platform that can easily connect with quality candidates and improve hiring outcomes.
This blog gives you a sneak peek into the Ultimate How-To Guide for Centralizing TA Technology, which highlights how talent teams can adopt a unified tech stack and identifies how to avoid common roadblocks along the way. Download the full guide for more information and dig deeper into each section.
What is Centralized TA Technology?
Centralized talent acquisition technology is a unified set of integrated solutions that empower recruiting teams to better attract and convert candidates across the entire candidate lifecycle. It brings teams together to improve communication and collaboration, which results in a world-class candidate, recruiter, and employee experience.
The best centralized tech manages the complexity of talent acquisition and delivers improved hiring outcomes in challenging markets. It should include capabilities for:
- Career Sites
- Job Broadcasting
- DEI Solutions
- Candidate Relationship Management (CRM)
- Intelligent Messaging
- Applicant Tracking System (ATS) and Onboarding
- Video Screening
- Internal Mobility
- Employee Referral Tools
- Analytics
Manage and automate time-consuming tasks
Talent teams spend hours per week on tedious manual tasks that could easily be automated. Automation and AI are pillars of a centralized talent acquisition solution and enable recruiters to save time and effort on tedious daily tasks. They can support these key areas of a recruiter’s role:
Sourcing
Recruiters often spend hours per week trying to find the right candidate for each open requisition. While sourcing does require a recruiter’s judgment and expertise, many tasks can be automated to help teams find quality candidates in less time. Sourcing with automation and AI can save talent teams hours and give them an insight into which candidates would make an ideal fit for open roles in the organization. Intelligent sourcing can take requirements for a role like skills, experience level, or certifications and find candidates that could be a potential fit.
Interviewing
With interviews today taking place both in person and online, it can be challenging for recruiters to coordinate the entire process, especially with multiple candidates and hiring team members. In today’s competitive talent market, it’s important that there’s minimal wait time for candidates during the interviewing stage so they aren’t swiped up by a competitor. Smart interview scheduling tools allow candidates to pick preferred interview times based on hiring team availability and self-schedule their meetings.
Communicating with hiring teams and engaging candidates
Recruiters are the center of communication between candidates and your company. Candidate engagement has become increasingly important in today’s competitive market, and the most strategic talent teams prioritize engaging and nurturing candidates throughout their talent journey. Tools like texting and chatbots enable talent teams to reach candidates who are more mobile than ever, streamlining and making communication more effective.
Hiring
Once a hiring team has decided on a candidate, it’s usually up to the recruiter to communicate the offer and help facilitate negotiations, if necessary. During the hiring stage, companies can lose strong candidates if the internal decision process takes too long. A strong centralized platform that can shorten the feedback loop for hiring teams is essential to hire top talent in today’s market. Candidates want transparency and highly responsive recruiters, so it’s essential that the offer stage is well managed and moves quickly to ensure a smooth hire.
Onboarding
The onboarding process is a pivotal point for talent teams to retain the newly hired employees and set them up for success in their new role. Ensure that the new employees are happy, engaged, and feel supported by creating a world-class onboarding program that can be completed from anywhere. Incorporate smart technology and provide a thorough orientation with videos about company culture, training, and surveys to collect feedback on their experience.
Analytics and reporting
Mature talent teams are leveraging advanced analytics and reporting capabilities to round out their programs. Data collected on relevant recruiting metrics, overall recruiting performance, candidate conversion and engagement rates, and other hiring data can all be used to identify areas for improvement in the hiring process. Automated tools can create custom reports on key recruiting metrics and send them to company stakeholders on a regular basis.
Why Adopt a Unified Recruiting Solution?
Whether your team is looking to solve today’s problems or plan for future hiring, centralizing your talent acquisition technology will help deliver better recruiting results. A unified recruiting suite addresses the entire candidate lifecycle and helps improve the experience at every touchpoint. One integrated platform supports recruiting teams to win top talent quickly. Centralizing your recruitment technology can help:
- Improve ROI
- Save time and effort on manual tasks
- Improve key recruiting metrics
- Improve communication and collaboration
- Enhance DEI initiatives
Avoid Roadblocks to Success
Adopting and implementing a new talent acquisition suite can present new challenges, but roadblocks can be avoided with preparation and planning. Include these initiatives in your change management plan to drive user adoption and successfully launch a centralized platform.
Adoption incentives
Incentivizing adoption could include offering bonuses to recruiters or providing extra time off. It might also look like professional development opportunities or gift cards. If you have the budget, incentives like these help you get everyone using (and loving) your new suite. From there, it’s only a matter of time before they realize for themselves how it benefits their workflows.
Training support
Rather than expecting recruiting teams to adopt new software on their own, proactively offer training options to encourage learning and exploration. In the short term, training should focus on getting everyone to a standardized baseline of using the software. This includes teaching them how to securely login and how to navigate the platform.
Once introduced, ongoing user training will help talent teams optimize their use of the recruiting software. This includes giving them access to training materials so they can troubleshoot and understand best practices that streamline and speed up recruiting processes.
Leadership communication
Getting executive leaders to buy in and promote centralized recruiting software is a critical component of greater user adoption. Set expectations with these key stakeholders before software adoption. Discuss things like timelines, day-to-day disruptions, and ROI expected with leadership to provide a clear vision of what to expect when switching software.
Have these leaders list their goals for hiring and recruiting as well as their expectations for the new software. Without this communication early on, there could be challenges getting buy in from leadership for any type of new technology. Keep communication open during the entire search and implementation process with key stakeholders by having frequent check-ins.
Start Your Journey to a Holistic Talent Acquisition Suite
Ready to unify your talent acquisition technology and realize the benefits of what a holistic solution can do for your talent acquisition function? Learn more about adopting holistic TA solutions with Centralizing Your Talent Acquisition Technology: The Ultimate How-To Guide. Or subscribe to the blog and resource library to stay up to date on the latest in TA tech.
