Recruitment is built on human relationships and connections but it is certainly a tech-enabled role. Talent functions are increasingly looking at software and recruiting tools to meet targets and overcome the challenges they face, particularly with technical hiring.
These days, talent professionals have a plethora of recruiting tools and solutions that work across the recruitment lifecycle. Many of these tools look to assist them in sourcing, engaging, and managing candidates while others look at recruitment process management, reporting and analytics, interviewing, project management and time management, and much more.
The variety of tools can be overwhelming so we wanted to simplify it by giving you a summary of the essential and emerging recruiting tools out there.
Let’s start with the basics:
- Candidate Databases
At the core of recruitment are the candidates and so it is essential that recruiters have access to candidate databases. LinkedIn is the leader in this space but there are niche solutions for certain roles and functions, particularly for roles that rely on showing your portfolio or require membership of certain bodies. The world has changed from companies having their own private databases but the fact remains, without access to the candidates and the ability to understand their experience and skills, effective recruitment is going to be a non-runner.
- Applicant Tracking System
Your applicant tracking system (ATS) is an essential tool for recruitment allowing recruiters to manage the recruitment process. There is a huge variety of these solutions with varying degrees of complexity and additional features. At the core though, you want your ATS to streamline the process of tracking job applications and interviews, resumes, and candidate information. An ATS should reduce the friction for recruiters and allow them to manage interviewees and calendars avoiding bottlenecks in their pipeline. Secondarily an ATS should capture candidate data so that candidates may be considered for future opportunities.
- Job Boards
While inbound recruitment is no longer a leading route to market for many roles and functions, particularly when it comes to technical hiring, it is still essential for companies to be able to give an insight into their company for potential candidates. Companies should host their own jobs board on their website but equally choose some others where prospective candidates may find them. When considering a jobs board the broader the reach the better. Additionally, companies should consider the search functionality and candidate experience through the platform.
- Candidate Relationship Management
Creating a great candidate experience is essential these days and having a tool that helps recruiters manage their touchpoints with candidates and talent communities is a must. These tools can help automate outreach, remind you of interview prep, recognize issues in candidate progress, and much more, ensuring candidates and prospects don’t slip through the cracks.
As technology advances, we are seeing a huge variety of new and exciting recruiting tools. These might not be needed and adopted by all but they could answer some of your challenges and give you back some time and energy. Below is a collection of emerging recruiter tool areas to consider:
- Sourcing/Candidate Profile Enhancement
We are seeing a number of emerging tools that are enhancing recruiters abilities to source candidates and the depth of information on candidate profiles. Some solutions aggregate data from a multitude of sources, some look to expand searches to look for similar profiles, and others analyze areas like candidate sentiment. This can lead to a bit of noise for recruiters and so these tools need to be leveraged correctly, making sure they add value rather than additional effort.
- Employer branding
Candidates are increasingly discerning about the companies they join and companies are having to market to candidates as much as to customers these days. We have seen a number of solutions emerge recently from enhanced jobs boards, content platforms, podcast services, and more. These tools allow candidates an inside view of your company but they can be double edged in that they require active management so that the content is up to date.
- Candidate feedback
Companies are constantly looking to improve their recruitment processes and with this, they are looking to get information directly from both successful and unsuccessful candidates. We have seen a variety of feedback tools emerge from simple survey solutions to interviewing scoring. This ability to close the feedback loop helps recruiters recognize issues early in their process and adjust accordingly.
- Screening and code assessment
Candidates and interviewers are often time-pressed and as such, we are seeing more and more screening and assessment tools. Some of these can be set up and sent to candidates while others help structure interviews and reduce the burden on interviewers. For recruiters, they can be really valuable in helping to quickly assess candidate capabilities before demanding time from the interviewers. (With the rise of generative AI technologies these solutions are being turned to instead of a take-home assignment).
- Virtual interviewing
COVID accelerated the growth of virtual interviewing massively but these solutions were growing in popularity prior to this as companies looked to cast their net far and wide for the best talent. These tools can range from pre-recorded sessions to live interviews with enhanced features. Video interviewing removes the travel barrier and reduces the time burden. It additionally creates interview content that can be shared internally and referenced as part of hiring decisions.
- Voice Solutions
An exciting solution to emerge recently centers on voice technology. Tools are looking to give companies the ability to record voice calls and transcribe candidate data, analyze call patterns and more. With the amount of time that recruiters spend talking to candidates and the information gathered and delivered, this is a very exciting space.
- Enablement and Intelligence Solutions
Similarly to sales, we are seeing the emergence of recruitment enablement and intelligence solutions. These tools help recruiters be more productive through access to the right knowledge, insights, and content they need in their flow of work. Recruitment enablement and intelligence solutions help streamline the recruitment process across talent teams and allow recruiters to make the right day to day decisions based on external market dynamics and events.
Across both the foundational and emerging recruiting tools we are seeing advances all the time. Currently, the biggest trend is the increasing use of artificial intelligence within these solutions. This will certainly add value and expose new capabilities but carries some risk too in overengineering solutions and exposing recruiters to AI biases and flaws. It will be interesting to see how this will play out 2023.
With budgets constrained in 2023 for many recruiting teams, they will have to identify those recruiter tools that will provide them with the most value and that align best with their hiring needs, employer brand, and market. It is important that the recruiters who will be using these tools are considered and included in the decision-making and procurement process.
The right combination of these tools can enable recruiters to approach their role confidently and with more time on their hands, knowing they count on the right infrastructure to have the required knowledge and insights, candidate access, and ability to manage external and internal relationships and processes seamlessly.
Recruitment in 2023 is set to be a challenge. However, the evolution and adoption of new technologies can ease this pain, improve the relationships at the heart of recruitment, and set recruiters and teams up for success.
