Automation is getting more and more attention in the recruitment industry. Though let’s face it, while it’s a total game changer for those willing to harness its power, others can have a more tentative approach – and it’s easy to understand why.
Questions loom around its impact, benefits, functionality and whether it’s more of a hindrance than a help.
To start, let’s get one misconception off the table – automation will not remove the need for people. No robots taking over the world here, well not just yet anyway! It actually exists to enhance the human element by automating the repetitive, manual tasks that take a lot of time. Instead, we can focus on the more important, high-value activities like having real conversations, driving engagement with candidates and clients and nurturing relationships at scale.
What is recruitment automation?
For staffing and recruiting professionals who are looking to work smarter and faster, automation helps to streamline and optimize existing workflows. It’s particularly adept at handling the repetitive and high-volume tasks that we’d rather not do such as data input, CRM duplicate checks and activity checking. Wave goodbye to the days of incorrect, out of date information and lost conversations.
Automated outreach and follow-ups mean you stay on top of those candidate and client prospects that don’t reply. It also improves their experience as you have the ability to communicate at a time that suits them whilst using their preferred channel, whether that be email, InMail, SMS or over the phone.
Eight recruitment automation myths busted!
The interplay between technology and work continues to be a hot topic. You may be wondering what’s wrong with traditional methods that have served us well in the past? Why should you invest in automation when you work primarily with people? How can automation tools understand the nuances that hiring managers and consultants pick up on when dealing with candidates and clients?
We’ve compiled a list of the top eight automation myths and disproved them to help demystify automation in recruitment and provide insight into how it can be used successfully to drive results. Let’s get busting.
“Automation is hard to use”
Luckily most automation tools have been seamlessly integrated into a wide range of recruitment platforms that you probably already use. So actually it will help to streamline, enhance and accelerate your existing workflow, rather than disrupt it.
“It’s only for larger businesses”
Automated recruitment processes can help large companies hire on mass, but it’s just as useful for small to medium-sized businesses. Why? Because it can accelerate your hiring, reduce talent costs and boost productivity in your teams.
In turn, this can help you focus on more important matters like growing your business and managing headcount. With the power to scale your approach, you can start competing with larger organizations and accelerate your business development.
“It requires zero manual input”
False. Some manual input is required to ensure you get the most out of your automation tools. Particularly when combined with hyper-personalization, as you will need to edit custom variables, adapt the frequency of messages and hand-pick the appropriate channels so that your candidates and clients still feel like they are getting an experience unique to them.
“It’s impersonal and just annoys people”
It can actually be the opposite. When hyper-personalization is combined with automated outreach it helps to improve the candidate and client experience. Never forget to follow-up, set your message to deliver at a time that suits them and track activity and conversations so you never miss a beat.
“It won’t increase response rates because if a prospect doesn’t reply first time they never will”
Often automated messages get associated with mass marketing. People get hundreds of emails and sales outreach every day and have a fairly low threshold for businesses trying to cut through the noise in whatever way they can.
But hyper-personalized automation gives you the ability to never miss that follow-up and track candidate and client behavior. Providing actionable insights and real-time data, you can make more informed decisions and refine your outreach strategy so that you give yourself the best chance of getting a response the first time, second time or third.
“It’s spammy”
Automation doesn’t necessarily mean En masse. Quality over quantity is a value that can still be maintained when incorporating automation into your recruitment process. If anything, hyper-personalizing your automated messages means you are less likely to end up in spam and harm your email domain. Particularly when using an integrated tool that works seamlessly with your Gmail/Outlook.
“It removes the human element”
Automating other manual, administrative tasks frees up your time to spend on growing connections and nurturing relationships. You’ll have more time to focus on injecting that human element into your recruitment process and nailing that extra level of personalization with candidates and clients.
“It isn’t helpful to us because we focus on calling people”
You will actually find you have more time to spend on the phone if you’re automating manual, daily tasks. You can also set yourself automatic call reminders so that you stay on top of your candidate and client conversations and even incorporate call steps into your hyper-personalized, automated messaging sequences.
