Automation in HR/Recruitment Sector
The COVID pandemic has greatly affected the business world, crashing down economies with people getting laid off left and right by companies. We are slowly recovering from its devastating impacts. Getting back to our routines with companies opening back up and employees returning to their workspace. There has been a growing trend of automation-assisted recruitment by HR departments to simplify the process and bring back employee strength and performance to pre-COVID levels. Here are a few insights on how automation can influence recruitment
Introduction
Automation has been an essential part of our work process since its inception and has diverse applications in various steps of our work. It has helped simplify work by handling repetitive, mundane work allowing employees to focus on more critical tasks that require dedicated focus and time, thus improving the overall performance and results of the company. HR is no exception to the growing applications of automation and has discovered great effectiveness in the incorporation of automation in HR. 45% of company representatives and HR leaders feel that automation makes their job processes better helping them save time. Polls suggest that HR employees spend nearly 14 hours per week on routine work that can be automated to save their time signifying how automation can simplify the recruitment of new employees.
Applications of Automation in Recruitment
Robotic process automation involves the use of chatbots and digital software to communicate with new applicants and analyze various parameters required for recruitment of suitable candidates such as communication skills, personality assessment, etc providing HR and management with a holistic picture of their abilities. Polls suggest that only 26% of companies think HR utilizes data analytics efficiently and 61% of companies are modifying their jobs and recruitment tactics to better employ AI and automation in their work processes. Here are a few applications of automation in recruitment:
Sourcing of Candidates
There are millions of candidates applying for job opportunities for different positions at companies and enterprises making it a humongous task for HR teams to go through their applications and assess them efficiently. Automated software helps weed out applications by intelligently weeding out unsuitable candidates and retaining only appropriate candidates for the interview process. Intelligent coding and properly planned out criteria establishment helps companies identify ideal candidates using techniques such as keyword tracking, applicant experience evaluation, etc.
Communication
Proper communication with applicants is essential to maintain company credentials and reliability to new applicants. Polls suggest 95% of the applicants would apply for a company again if they had a positive experience the first time and 80% of the applicants would not apply at a company again if they didn’t receive any form of communication from them. Applicants also report their bad experiences with such companies at social media platforms like Glassdoor affecting the overall reputation of the company. It is impossible for HR teams to directly engage with every applicant and that is where automation comes in to save the day, with efficient chatbots conversing with the clients and responding to them using bulk email systems. Proper analysis of their applicants is done using the software systems and appropriate feedback is generated by the systems to provide them suitable feedback about their application. Potential employees suggest that 69% of potential applicants prefer a reduced time of response from the companies.
Enhanced Marketing Strategy
Automation can help you plan out the email and social media campaigns meticulously with the software handling the major bulk of implementation of the strategy. Drip emails to active and passive candidates create a higher level of engagement with potential employees and improve correspondence with them. They help improve the reach of information and campaigns to people contributing to building robust talent pipelines and improving a company’s reputation.
Interview Scheduling
Automation also can assist HR teams in scheduling interviews with clients online easily after selecting suitable candidates from the initial pool of applicants. They interact with applicants and provide real-time access to the calendar of HR teams allowing them to select appropriate slots for their interviews making it easy for both parties. Chatbots can also answer frequently asked questions from applicants while leveraging computational linguistics and sentiment analysis to interpret communication and provide suitable responses. Companies with strong on-boarding processes after interviews increase employee retention by 82%.
How to Efficiently Tap in Automation Resources
Automation has a wide range of features to offer and as with all good things available; they come at a high price. HR teams should analyze and understand their requirements properly to employ automation efficiently in a cost-efficient manner. They need to train their teams to get them familiarized with the end-to-end automation of their recruitment processes. It helps them identify any inconsistencies in their software at the earliest to correct them as soon as possible.
Compliance risks should be analyzed before initiating recruit processes to protect the company from potential risks and recruitment strategy should be discussed with stakeholders and partners thoroughly to ensure transparency in work processes.
Conclusion
Hiring suitable employees in companies is a tedious process with great responsibility ingrained in it. Companies need to recruit the right applicants for their job openings and retain them in their companies as it would cost them nearly 33% of their employee’s salaries in hiring a new one to replace their positions. Automated recruitment processes help build a diverse and robust network of talented employees improving the office culture and work environment. Understand automation processes and customize them to best suit your requirements to better enable your HR teams to empower your entire company.
