15 Reasons Why You Must Automate Your Company’s Recruitment Process

2020 has been a year of changes and unexpected ones at that. While it has forced us to adapt to new ways of dealing with certain things, it has also fostered our belief in artificial intelligence and its importance. The world of HR and recruitment is no exception to those changes. While some changes have been difficult to adapt to, one good change in the workplace has been the need to automate the recruitment process.

If your company hires multiple candidates at the same time, it is obvious that your firm is receiving loads of applications, both online and offline for the same. Dealing with all these applications and responding to each one of them can seem practically impossible for any company.

Also, due to the lockdown policies and social distancing measures, you cannot possibly invite every applicant to come down to the office for a personal interview. There needs to be a certain system in place, that actually filters the candidates out and selects them on the basis of set preferences. This system will provide recruitment automation, making it really important for large-scale companies to have this in place.

What is an automated recruitment process?

It is the process for recruitment automation — a system that is in place to streamline the candidates that have applied for the different jobs. While the automated recruitment process might not take into consideration the qualitative aspects or skills of the candidate applying, there are other benefits that an automated recruitment process has to offer, making it a favourable model to introduce in your workplace.

It is mythical to think that recruitment automation is just a filter that is applied to filter out the applicants that do not have the intended educational qualification or experience. Rather, it encompasses many other areas and aspects related to recruitment. Let us take a look at various things that get included under recruitment automation.

What does HR automation do?

1. Advertises the opening

Through this automated process, a job is advertised on various job portals and platforms simultaneously. It also compiles a list of all the company’s openings for the benefit of the people looking for jobs.

2. Tracks applicants on parameters of location and education

This application tracks the candidates making use of job portals, where the job is initially listed. It conducts a background check depending on the requirement. These job portals or applicant tracking systems shortlist only those candidates whose location and educational qualification match.

3. Recruits candidates for the first round of group interviews

At the start of a group recruitment activity, it becomes difficult to filter out the applicants when they have not even had a direct conversation with the recruiters or employers. Hence, at that point, candidates are recruited in large pools on the basis of different parameters set to eliminate some candidate applications without human intervention. Further, these candidates will go through a series of tasks and activities, which will decide how their recruitment process continues.

4. Pre-screening

These requirements could be related to the location of the job, the experience needed, health parameters, etc. that could hinder the performance of the candidates if they are selected.

5. Assessments before employment begins

There is a set of assessments that every employee who wishes to work for a company would have to go through. These assessments could be objective or subjective or both. Many competitive exams and bank exams follow this assessment system. Such assessments give insight into the type of candidate, providing proof if he or she is a fit for the job and company.

6. Schedules the interview

The interview schedule is drawn up on the basis of the time availability and convenience on the part of the candidate and interviewer.

7. Runs a thorough background check

When the employment of a candidate is final, a background check is run to make sure that the candidate is good to be employed and does not have a history of engaging in unfair means or fraudulent behaviour.

8. Ranks candidates

Based on the performance in the objective and subjective assessments as well as the interview and/or group discussion, all the points accumulated are calculated and ranked to identify the most fitting candidate.

What are the benefits of recruitment automation?

When a company automates the recruitment process, they experience an array of benefits. Here are some of the advantages you witness when you automate HR processes:

1. Increases productivity of the recruitment team

When you automate the recruitment process, the productivity of the HR department of the company is increased. Having the system in place does not reduce HR’s work. It, however, streamlines and manages schedules, making it error- and hassle-free. HR will still need to be involved in the process. But the automation makes the entire process easier and more feasible for everyone involved.

2. Increases the quality of the workforce hired

When you automate HR processes, there is an increase in the quality of the workforce hired. Since this process filters candidates on multiple aspects, only the best candidates are retained for the interview process and, finally, from that pool, candidates are selected for further rounds. This artificial intelligence resource ensures a higher quality of experience in the candidates recruited in the company. But because of the increased quality of their work, the productivity of the company and its various departments also increase.

3. Makes finding well-qualified candidates easy

Different candidates are qualified for different kinds of jobs. But because of the inability to find them in authentic ways, employees end up doing jobs they are either overqualified or underqualified for. Automating the recruitment process creates a pool of candidates rightly qualified for certain kinds of jobs. This becomes beneficial for both the applicants as well as the company that is hiring these candidates. Since these jobs also specify their expectations in terms of qualification, experience and location, it is easier for the candidates to find the best match for them and apply for only the openings that are a fit.

4. Increases diversity

With automated recruitment, it is possible to have a diverse workforce in the company. Because of the job listing and pool of potential candidates for the company, the reach of the job opening is a lot wider, inviting applications from a variety of people. This increases the diversity in the company, which is extremely important in today’s day and time.

A more diverse workforce brings about diverse experience, which should be taken into account to deliver the best your company can. When an organization is taking into account the suggestions and opinions of a candidate coming from a minority background or culturally diverse background, it delivers products and services that are suitable for a varied set of consumers, increasing the market’s trust in the company.

5. Is time-efficient

Automated recruitment is time-efficient. It considers the applications of thousands of candidates for the jobs. The software analyses every application carefully against the information provided and parameters set, churning out results within minutes. If one were to do this activity manually, it would amount to an entire day of work for the individual.

6. Enables recruitment from any geography

HR automation has made it possible to recruit the candidates for the company from anywhere in the world. Due to the pandemic, practically everything is now online. Recruitment and work have also taken on this format. This kind of benefit must be extensively used as it is possible to now recruit candidates from anywhere in the world for companies that are in remote areas too.

7. Enhances candidate relationship management

One unique feature of HR automation is candidate relationship management. This management feature can be embedded in the automated software or website to enhance the experience of the candidates applying to your company. Some of them are, after all, your future employees. The rest of them are your publicity managers, in the sense that what they say about you will make or break your brand. It is only, therefore, wise to work on candidate relationships.

The post-covid era is going to be all about technology that is going to save human efforts. It is time that you got on the bandwagon yourself.