Recruitment Technology – Taking Your Small-mid Sized Business to the Next Level
The rapid pace of technological change in the recruitment industry coupled with the resounding gong of the Fifth Industrial Revolution has many organizations scrambling to make quick decisions to keep up. But fast decisions are not always the best decisions, especially considering the time, costs and change management required to effectively launch a new technology and its adoption organizationally. Large Fortune 500 companies with hefty budgets can afford to make a poor recruitment technology decision/implementation here and there, but for small-mid sized companies, this can mean major financial impact.
To ensure a wise decision, it is critical to:
- Identify a qualified person to lead the recruitment technology initiative within your organization
- Task that person with a Needs Analysis of technology current state and desired future state
You don’t have to have the expert in-house on all the technology options out there, but you do need to have one person dedicated to understanding the vision for recruitment technology for your business. It is also critical to evaluate antiquated process that will have to change to accommodate new technology and develop a plan for ensuring that once a new technology is identified and procured, there is user adoption, measurement and evaluation.
What should you consider in the Needs Analysis phase:
- What are the current tools in the toolbox?
- ATS/CRM
- Job Board – Postings and Resume Sourcing
- Social Networks – LinkedIn license
- Email marketing
- Videos
- Costs associated with those tools
- What is the ROI?
- What is in scope – are their tools to remove and new tools to explore
- What is the desired state
- What new technology solution will move the organization from current state to desired state
- Set a timeline – what is the roadmap.
- What ROI or metrics do you expect to see from technology in your future desired state
I am a firm believer of not re-inventing the wheel and leveraging free resources wherever possible. I have always been a fan of the many templates that Smartsheet offers for free, one of them being the Software Gap Analysis Template. This document will help guide the discovery phase as you review your current recruitment technology stack.
Another critical piece is to survey your recruitment teams to better understand their pain points and where they see areas of opportunity as it relates to technology. Having sat in every seat myself, from Sourcer to Manager, it has always surprised how much time leadership spends in hammering out processes that are quickly shortened by those who are working fast and furious to fill positions. If you want to ensure you are making wise recruitment technology purchases, it just makes good sense to understand the true need of those in the trenches.
Once you have your completed Needs Analysis and compiled survey results in hand, it’s time to begin the technology sourcing process. Having sat through hundreds of demos in my career, don’t get sucked into the shiny object syndrome. Be sure to have multiple individuals on the demo for a well-rounded assessment. It helps to go into the demos with specific questions, even having each attendee within your organization responsible for asking questions about specific areas of the technology. Ask the same questions of every vendor to get a true side-by side comparison of the tools. Everyone claims that their tool is an “AI”, but they all have a different definition of what that means. Be sure you are very clear on what it is you want the tool to be able to accomplish and where the Recruiter fits into that.
There are some fantastic resources available to help you determine which tools you should demo based on your need.
The impact of the recruitment technology evolution is moving fast, but don’t be afraid to slow down long enough to make a wise decision in moving your recruiting organization to the next level.
Written by Angela Westfall
Angela is a Talent Acquisition leader, with an eye toward the future of Talent Acquisition technology and its impact on the industry. In her 17 year career, she has managed international recruitment teams and projects, configured and launched large scale recruitment technology solutions as well as designed and delivered a global e-learning curriculum on Advanced Candidate Sourcing techniques. In her current role, she is responsible for providing thought leadership and project management for endevis, an Inc. 500 company, regarding its talent acquisition technology strategy.