Recruitment Blog

How to invest in the right recruitment technology

Guest Author

Recruitment Expert

Wondering what’s the best recruitment technology for your agency and how you can start investing in the right tools? We spoke to three recruitment experts to get the answers.

Gone are the days when recruiters could get away with using just two tools: a phone and an email address to communicate with candidates.

While investment in technology should be part of any recruitment agency’s long-term plan, it’s worth asking yourself which technologies will:

Improve your candidate experience the most
Free-up recruiters to perform higher-value tasks
Yield the best return on investment

We were keen to delve a little deeper into what technology recruitment agencies leveraged, how they used tech and what benefits they experienced. So, smartAI and JobAdder invited three top recruitment agencies to give us the inside scoop in an exclusive webinar this year.

Lynne Johnston, Managing Director at MAYDAY Recruitment; Jacqui Russell, Managing Director at National Workforce; and Sinead Connolly, Director and Co-Founder at Lotus People shared how their agencies invested in recruitment technology and built their tech stacks. And Ez Kahn, Managing Director at Spencer Lane added valuable insights too, as he moderated the conversation.

While our webinar panel was diverse in terms of the industries and types of recruitment they represent, they were united by one thing: the impact of COVID-19 on their business was undeniable.

Recruitment technology to empower recruiters

All three agencies looked to technology to better navigate these challenges. For general agency operations, they used the basic business-as-usual tools like Zoom, Slack, WhatsApp and Google products. For efficient recruiting processes and improved candidate experience, they turned to HR tech.

Some of the tools and platforms they got value from include:

Referoo – for online references
JobAdder – for applicant tracking
Allsorter – for CV formatting
Mailchimp – for events and mail outs
SurveyMonkey – for research, client and candidate surveys
smartAI – for conversational hiring using chatbots and automation
Recruiter Insider – to track candidate experience
Sourcr – for feedback
Onboarded – for onboarding
Ento – for rostering, time and attendance

In times of crisis, they focus on people first

Another thing all three agencies had in common was the immediate extra emphasis they put on:

Their recruiters’ wellbeing
Their client relationships
Their candidate experience

MAYDAY, for example, launched a newsletter called “The Good News” to keep their team and clients’ spirits high.

Adding to the above, Sinead from Lotus People explained that the “candidate experience has been a core focus at Lotus and something we’ve been recognised for a lot. We absolutely prioritise it. We commit to getting back to every applicant with an outcome within 48 hours.”

They aim to achieve this by harnessing the likes of “the smartAI and JobAdder partnership to integrate AI into the application process to really shorten the time spent on screening applications whilst maintaining candidate experience.”

The focus here is on augmenting the recruiter workflow through the use of technology, enabling the recruiter to:

Screen more applicants faster
Communicate with all applicants and politely progress or reject them
Accelerate time-to-hire
Touch base with more candidates in their talent pool more regularly
Focus on the candidate – communicating with them on a channel of their choice at a time that’s convenient for the candidate (any time of the day or night – because it’s automated and personalised).

Tech tools need to be integrated to eliminate manual work

Our panellists agreed that to get the most from your recruitment software, it needs to work together like departments within a company (and not in silos). Consider it a relay in which information about the applicant is transferred from one step of the recruitment process to the next, much like a baton among runners on a track.

Jacqui from National Workforce had a great way to illustrate this point: “From job ad to booking an interview in three days, we were able to process 2,500+ applications by using integrated recruitment tools in the lead up to the 2020 Australian Formula 1 Grand Prix in Melbourne.”

“By relaying candidate data through the screening, shortlisting and scheduling process, we were able to reduce time-to-hire from 10 days to three, freeing up five recruiters to perform higher-value tasks.”

What was interesting was listening to these agencies talk about how, despite its significant challenges, 2020 actually helped shape their attitudes and approaches to using technology.

Not to mention a renewed focus on people and relationships, candidate experience and recruiter wellness – all enabled by their use of technology to help shape and optimise their recruitment workflow. If you would like to learn more from these recruitment experts and watch the full webinar, check it out here.