How HR Software Can Help With Your Recruitment Process

If you’re an HR professional charged with recruitment efforts during this busy time, you’re faced with the difficult challenge of ensuring you find the right employees for your vacancies quickly.

And since applicants drop out or drop out of inefficient hiring processes, it's important that they are kept informed and that applications continue smoothly. An HR system with recruiting and applicant tracking capabilities can help you eliminate inefficiencies in your processes and ensure candidates have a seamless experience - from the day they see your job posting to the day Welcome them as new employees - or tell them they were rejected, because it's important to your brand that all candidates leave a good impression.

1. Gets word out about vacancies quicker

When a position opens up, time is of the essence, especially when filling critical roles. But to get applications coming in and the hiring cycle started, first, people need to know about your vacancies! HR systems with a recruitment module, like IceHrm, can easily share job postings for you. Simply create your job ad and then set it to be automatically posted across free major job boards, like Indeed and Glassdoor, and even across your social media platforms, like LinkedIn.

Another way you can reach out to potential candidates is right from your website, so it’s important that you have a dedicated page showcasing current opportunities. Your career page gives candidates an insight into what working in your company is like, so you should create and design it in a way that is compelling, attractive and matches your company branding without the need for a complex setup. A good HR system would have multiple website integration options that make customizing your career page easier and fit in seamlessly with the rest of your company website and branding or marketing efforts.

2. Simplifies your multi-step processes

There’s a misconception that using an HR system to support your recruitment cycle involves scrapping your current processes and fitting them around what the system does. But in reality, good systems are there to support your existing processes. Manual processing of applications takes too much time: reading through and qualifying hundreds of applications, scheduling calls and meetings, forwarding shortlisted candidates to hiring managers, and sending rejection messages to unsuccessful applicants. And the more stages and people, the more complicated it becomes (not to mention if you’re hiring for more than one position at once!), making it a frustrating experience for everyone.

HR software can help automate all these admin tasks, so you and the hiring managers can focus on the goal: finding the right employee. With IceHrm, for example, you can create templates for different parts of the application process, such as application forms and aptitude tests or questionnaires in one place. You can then set up a workflow process that triggers an action, such as automated emails, as candidates move along the different stages. An internal task list also means that you can assign tasks to yourself and others involved in the assessment/interview process like hiring managers, ensuring important activities aren’t missed.

3. Keeps the conversations going

Without a central HR system with applicant tracking capabilities, it’s extremely hard to keep tabs on the numerous candidates at various stages when you’re hiring. And when a different urgent issue comes up for the HR team or hiring managers, it’s very easy for recruitment activities to fall by the wayside. This means that candidates can be left hanging without communication. Not only can this leave applicants feeling frustrated and ideal candidates dropping out, but this can have a huge impact on how they interact with your company or brand as a consumer in the future. Man power Group found that 54% of candidates were less likely to buy a company’s products or services if they’ve had a negative applicant experience with them.

Good HR systems offer the ability to contact applicants straight from the system, e.g. via email, and to record these communications. Hiring managers can also review applications, leave feedback online and easily view interview calendars, ensuring that continuous communication with candidates remains front of mind.

4. Makes the transition from candidate to employee easier

The advantage of using an HR system with an integrated ATS is that when you do find that perfect recruit, turning their profile from candidate to employee in your records is pretty simple. You would already have most of the key information stored as part of their recruitment profile, so there’s no need for double data entry.

And with various research stating that onboarding should start before day one, getting people set up with what they need once the contract is signed is very important. An HR system that handles both recruitment and onboarding is invaluable in facilitating the full process from job ad to the new hire being embedded in the organization.

5. Gives you insights to help you optimize your next hiring cycle

An HR system can also provide you with not just the conventional hiring metrics, like time to hire or time to fill, but also insights into which platforms your candidates are coming from, job ad to application bounce rate, and overall recruitment costs.

Such data can help you identify blockers (e.g. why are many people not completing the application form?) and understand your candidate pool better. This information can provide the starting point on where and how you can improve the next time you hire, to more effectively reach the right people.

If you’re interested in learning how IceHrm can support your recruitment process, please get in touch with us today.