Few industries will remain untouched by the new move to boost productivity through automation and human resources (HR) is no exception. Modern technology is reshaping the way HR departments operate, driving efficiency and improving the overall recruitment experience for applicants and managers alike. Advancements in HR technology enable substantial time and cost savings and facilitate data-driven hiring decisions. 

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Let’s explore the latest HR automation trends and the significant benefits of automating the recruitment process. 

Time and Cost Savings

Automation can easily manage the time-consuming tasks of basic filtering, and scheduling, and free up the human recruitment team to devote their time and attention to carefully assessing and comparing qualified candidates.

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On average, the recruiting team receives around 250 resumes for every posted job opening. Popular positions or well-known company brands can easily receive double this number or more. Of the hundreds of resumes received by the average HR team, roughly 4 - 6 candidates will be deemed to be a good fit for the role and offered an interview. That is a fairly significant expenditure of time and capital for a relatively small yield. If those 4 - 6 interviews don’t surface a solid candidate with an interest in the position, then it is back to square one. 

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Recruitment automation tools have been around since the late 1970s but didn’t develop many of the functions of the modern versions until the 2010s. The systems have continued to evolve, growing more sophisticated and effective every year. Today's recruitment automation tools are powered by the latest technology, making them capable of managing everything from resume filtering, applicant outreach, interview scheduling, and even new hire onboarding. 

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Automation tools can be programmed with any criteria you choose and it will sort all incoming resumes, moving forward only those that match all your requirements. That means your recruitment team will now need to review and select a short list of candidates from 20 or 30 resumes that meet the essential qualifications for the position rather than 200+ resumes that do not have the minimum desired skills. This represents substantial time, effort, and cost savings. Companies have reported an average 20% reduction in the cost of recruiting and hiring a new staff member after incorporating automated recruitment tools into the process. Considering the average cost to hire one new employee comes in at around $4000, the potential savings are substantial.

Enhanced Candidate Experience

Thanks to the features of Recruitement Automations Softwares such as generative AI’s natural language processing prowess, the latest automated recruitment tools can now handle most of the early-stage communication with candidates. This may be one of the most underrated features of most candidate recruitment systems. When human hiring teams are in charge of the hiring process, slogging through hundreds of resumes and searching for that needle-in-a-haystack candidate often means ghosting all the other candidates. This is a bad policy and it reflects poorly on your brand. What’s more, conventional hiring practices often keep the most promising early applicants who have made your shortlist waiting in limbo while you sort through the candidates still coming in. Hiring managers often find their best candidates are long gone by the time they are ready to move on to the interview stage. 

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Competition for the top talent has been growing fiercer every year and businesses who want to hire the best in their industry need to communicate their interest from day one when they find a top-quality candidate. 

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AI chatbots can easily manage the initial outreach messaging and while the automation sets up a suitable time for an interview that works for both the recruiter and the candidate. AI can also buy you some extra time to explore all your options by sending out regular communication to your early candidate picks to keep them engaged while you finalize your selection. Top recruiters are embracing automation and AI to conduct pre-screening questionnaires, run background checks, and guide candidates through each phase of the process via email, SMS, and live chat. 

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Chatbots can also be programmed with answers to the most common candidate questions, and send out follow-up information to the candidates who were not selected for the role. Candidates have overwhelmingly voiced their sincere appreciation for businesses who make the bare minimum effort to confirm that their resume was received and processed, and the outcome of the submission, even when it is a rejection. 

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Ideally, you should be responding to all applicants to confirm receipt of their information immediately after they complete the application process. From there you should be keeping candidates informed of their application status. This could take the form of a brief notification if you decide not to go forward, or communication about the next steps if you will be pursuing an interview.  Automation and  AI can handle all of these communication tasks for you. 

Data-Driven Decision Making

Learning how to leverage data and analytics is the key to truly effective recruitment and hiring. The latest generation of automation tools can unlock valuable insights hidden within candidate data and often overlooked by human recruiters. 

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Recruitment Automation Softwares collect data across several key metrics throughout the application and interview process. The software then employ powerful algorithms to analyze candidate data to provide an informed prediction of the candidate’s potential success in performing the core tasks required for the role, their experience, language skills and any red flags noted during the process. 

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Recruitment automation tools can be employed to analyze the company’s performance as well. By tracking key metrics like time-to-hire, and applicant drop-out rate, the HR teams can get a better idea of the areas where they may be losing the top candidates and tackle steps to improve their hiring process. This data-driven approach to HR recruitment saves time and money while attracting and holding the interest of top talent.  

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Data and analytics allow you to take the guesswork out of the hiring process and start making strategic hires with the potential to move the company forward instead of merely filling a role.

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Increased Productivity and Efficiency

HR professionals are the backbone of any organization, but they're often bogged down by repetitive administrative tasks. 65% of recruiters reported that their job is more stressful today than this time last year.

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It doesn’t have to be this way. Recruitment automation with built-in AI can eliminate the lion’s share of the repetitive tasks that keep HR professionals constantly feeling like they can’t catch up. By handing off tasks like resume screening, follow-up communication, answering basic candidate questions, and scheduling interviews, the HR team will immediately find themselves with the time they need to take care of the vital relationship-building work that they imagined themselves doing when they pursued a role in HR. 

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They can also explore the other human-centric aspects of their position, working to develop the company brand and create onboarding and training guides for new hires. Where the HR team was once spending the majority of their time on just one aspect of the job, now they will be free to enjoy the full scope of the position, and the organization will reap the benefits of the increased productivity from a fully functioning department. 

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The benefits of increased efficiency extend beyond freeing up the HR team, recruitment automation tools excel at delta management. This is what they were made for, and let’s face it, data management is not generally at the top of most human’s top skills list. Human data entry is often slow, labor-intensive, and prone to errors. In contrast, Recruitment automation tools automatically collect and store candidate and employee data for later retrieval and analysis. Organizations will always have a waiting database of employee metrics that can be filtered and analyzed to provide insights on demand. 

Streamlining Recruitment Processes

A recent survey of talent acquisition managers reported the exorbitant amount of time it is taking to fill roles that require specialized skill sets. The average time to fill a vacant position has been on the rise from around 20 days to a month, and now recruiters are reporting an average of 42 days or more to find a suitable candidate. 

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As the time-to-hire is growing longer the talent pool is growing smaller and competition for the few qualified candidates is fierce. This means that those who are agile enough to locate talent first and move quickly to make an offer and get them locked into an offer will be the winners of the talent acquisition race.  

This means that automation may become a necessity if an organization wants to secure top talent. 

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Automated recruitment systems can integrate with popular job search platforms, automate job postings, and run continuous resume scanning, alerting you the moment an excellent match is found so you can swoop in to grab the best candidate. 

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Automation will save you time and frustration in the interview scheduling process as well. Simply provide the system with a range of dates and time blocks that work for you, and the Automation will communicate with the candidate to select the best time for the interview from the options you provided. No more phone tag or back-and-forth emails trying to schedule a time to meet. 

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Automation doesn’t just benefit your HR team, many candidates have reported their preference for automated hiring systems eliminating scheduling challenges and rushed interviews with overwhelmed hiring managers. 

Reducing Administrative Burden

The HR department is intended to manage so much more than recruitment and hiring. Unfortunately, these two tasks take up the bulk of the HR team's time. Delegating mundane clerical tasks to Automation and the basic communication to AI, the HR team can nurture the neglected portions of their position.

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This is more important than many realize. We have become so accustomed to HR being locked up in recruiting and hiring tasks that many organizations have learned to do without a well-developed onboarding program for new hires. Onboarding is a major component of the HR department’s responsibilities. However with only so much time, onboarding has consistently been put on the back burner, and the newest hires have definitely noticed.  

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Bringing on new employees with little or no formal instruction or onboarding is a recipe for disaster and increases the stress on everyone. In contrast, a thoughtful, well-designed onboarding process has been linked to a 50% increase in new hire retention rates. Automation and AI can assist with automating onboarding tasks but this is one area that will benefit from the unique human touch of the HR team. 

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It is important to remember that Recruitment Automation Softwares are not intended to replace your human HR team, they are intended to relieve them of the repetitive and mundane tasks so that they can flex their skills and use all of the human traits that drew them to a career in human resources in the first place. 

Cost Savings and ROI

Up to this point, we have focused on the many advantages of automating the recruitment process. Now it is time to answer the crucial question that we know everyone has been waiting to ask: the detail that everyone has been waiting for. How much money can automating the recruitment processs shave off your bottom line?

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Consider this, the average cost of a bad hire is roughly $15,000 or approximately 30% of the position’s annual pay. That is how much it costs your organization every time that you go through the hiring and onboarding process. Automation has been shown to reduce the new hire turnover rate by as much as 40%. So, if you have been experiencing a revolving door of candidates who don’t quite fit and wind up leaving in the first year, your business is hemorrhaging capital and you stand to shave a substantial amount off your bottom line by making the switch to automating the recruitment process.

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Lower turnover rates are just one part of the cost-savings equation. Automating the recruitment process also has a measurable impact on your overall operational costs stemming from the combined improvements in utilization of your HR team for high-level tasks, improved data collection and analysis driving more strategic decision-making, and the ability to attract and secure the top talent all creating a ripple effect that translates to significant savings and a boosted profitability. 

Conclusion

Where Recruitment Automation Softwares were once a luxury item, the current push to increased automation is making AI recruitment tools a necessity if organizations want to fill roles and remain competitive. The sooner that your HR team can fully incorporate Recruitment Automation into their normal workflow, the sooner your organization can gain a competitive edge over the many organizations that are still dragging their feet and putting off the inevitable transition. When you are ready, AppyHere will make the automation process smooth and painless for you and your team. There is no reason to fear automating the recruitment process, AppyHere is not designed to replace a human HR team. It is designed to optimize your team and let them shine at the human-centric tasks they perform best. Reach out to the team at AppyHere and we will be happy to show you how easy automation can blend into your existing system. Soon you will be wondering how you ever managed without it.