Automation has infiltrated almost every aspect of business today. From MarCom to Customer Service, Sales to IT support, automation has transformed traditional business processes. For both small business owners and big scale enterprises, recruitment automation is steadily becoming the go-to in all hiring processes.
Recruitment automation is a process that has streamlined the menial work of the talent acquisition process. This allows hiring managers and HR teams to focus on assessing what’s truly important, such as a candidate’s suitability and fit with the company culture. They can also concentrate on creating the perfect plan for hiring and onboarding future employees.
According to a 2020 report by Gartner, 38% of companies use AI for talent acquisition. With this figure expected to rise in the coming years, let’s take a look at some of the benefits of recruitment automation for business.
1. Hire Talent Faster
Recruitment automation helps a company hire talent faster. By automating certain parts of the hiring process including the initial screening of candidates, companies can significantly reduce their overall time to hire talent. Nowadays, more and more companies are using automated bots to answer frequently answered questions in a chat interface on their jobs portals.
Recruitment automation has also proven to boost candidate engagement and encourage job seekers to apply quicker. This naturally accelerates the hiring process from the application to interview stage much faster than traditional recruitment methods.
2. Provide Improved Candidate Experience
Recruitment automation is just as useful for hiring managers as it is for candidates applying for the job. Automating some standard steps in the recruitment process can speed up the overall hiring and create a positive interview experience for candidates. This also has a direct impact on your company’s brand value.
A negative interview experience can put off a candidate from applying again. In fact, an estimated 72% of applicants share their negative interview experiences online or with friends and colleagues. An automated communication service with prospective candidates improves their overall perception of and experience with your company and makes them more likely to apply again in future.
3. Create Unbiased Recruitment
One of the most significant benefits of recruitment automation is that it actively promotes a bias-free hiring process. Unconscious biases can often influence hiring decisions and prevent recruiters from hiring the best talent. Automated screening of candidates removes the risk of latent biases and results in a fairer recruitment procedure.
This in turn promotes greater diversity and inclusiveness in the workplace. Automation anywhere RPA guides show you how to streamline hiring and provide a seamless applicant experience. According to a recent study, companies that are diverse and inclusive are likely to increase their financial targets by a whopping 120%.
4. Remove Scheduling Errors
The manual process of scheduling interviews by email is both time-consuming and open to error. Such mistakes create confusion and make you look unprofessional – both undesirable outcomes for your company’s image. Automation of both email communications and scheduling of interviews can reduce the risk of such errors.
Moreover, automating these tasks allows the recruiter to engage in a more meaningful way with candidates. For example, if the candidate has any last-minute questions or wants to share some new documents or background information, the recruiter has more time to address these concerns. This naturally boosts the overall candidate experience with your company.
5. Fill Multiple Roles Simultaneously
Recruiters are often working against the clock trying to fill multiple vacancies at once. These are usually varied roles in different departments of a company. Recruitment automation increases a recruiter’s bandwidth by relieving them of menial tasks, thus boosting productivity. Recruiters can now effectively fill multiple roles at the same time.
The longer a role goes unfilled, the more it costs your company in terms of lost productivity. One study shows that 38% of businesses reported reduced productivity after leaving positions unfilled for up to six months. By reducing your time-to-hire, you can effectively reduce your cost-of-vacancy. This subsequently saves your company several thousand dollars, depending on the level and seniority of the role.
6. Save Time
One of the greatest benefits of recruitment automation is the amount of time it saves by removing a range of basic administrative tasks from a recruiter’s to-do list. Candidate sourcing and communication, writing job descriptions, and scheduling interviews are time-consuming tasks that can be automated. With the support of small business VoIP, the interview process is streamlined even further.
This allows recruiters to focus on the human aspect of the hiring process. They can collate material on recruitment and interview training, and scorecards that ultimately help hire the best talent as well as provide a better candidate experience.
7. Manage High Volumes of Applications
According to a recent report, 53% of candidates state that they do not hear back from companies until three months after applying for a job. Often, this is a result of recruiters having to deal with too many applicants in a short space of time.
Recruitment automation uses conversational AI in a chatbot interface on the company’s careers page to conduct basic communication with applicants and answer any FAQs. The chatbot can respond to high-volume queries almost instantly.
This facilitates companies in processing hundreds of applications seamlessly. This robotic process automation video shows how software bots emulate human operations to automate various transactions.
8. Enjoy Instant ROI after Implementing Recruitment Automation
It takes far less time to implement recruitment automation than traditional HR software for your business. Also, the biggest benefit of having a chatbot is an immediate ROI. Once installed, chatbots in your company’s careers portal can start engaging with candidates in a way that is not humanly possible for recruiters. This ROI can be gauged both in terms of time saved and money.
Summing Up
Automation is the future of business processes. It reduces basic and repetitive manual tasks and allows managers to use their expertise where it matters. Automation saves time and money for a business and boosts productivity by streamlining administrative work.
While detractors may say that recruitment automation lacks humanity, the reverse is actually true. By creating a more efficient recruitment process, recruiters have more time to spend face-to-face with candidates and can better assess whether the potential new employee is the perfect fit.
Author Bio:
Tammy Wood – Director of Global Technical SEO. Tammy Wood has been involved with SEO for two decades. Her current role is Director of Technical SEO, for Automation Anywhere, an automation company. While not chasing keywords Tammy enjoys reading, buying shoes and writing articles about both cloud RPA and SEO. Here is her LinkedIn.