dynamics.microsoft.comHR OUTSOURCING TRENDS
Recruiting can be a precarious balancing act, and making sure you’re able to deftly juggle the dozens of different deliverables you’re on the hook for (without dropping the ball) is a challenge every talent pro knows only too well.
From the thousands of new resumes pouring in for review every day to the constant voice mails and frantic follow ups from candidates further along in process, from the disparate demands of desperate hiring managers to the myriad services and software vendors out there blowing up your phone and clogging your inbox, being a recruiting professional is anything but easy.
Getting ahead of the work – much less the competition – remains one of the most persistent and pervasive problems facing recruiting professionals today. And with the myriad advances in recruiting tools and HR technology, the proliferation of new platforms for attracting and engaging with candidates and the increasingly cutthroat competition for top talent, it’s clear that for recruiters, the balancing act isn’t getting any easier any time soon.
Requisition Management and Approval
Companies need recruiting software to allow recruiters and hiring managers to create and store an unlimited number of requisitions, both for internal and external audiences. All of these requisitions should be accessed with status and origin date of original submission with the ability to create duplicates with revisions for newer postings or different locations. Job templates with skill sets and competencies should be easily accessible in a database for effortless new requisition creation. Once the requisitions are created, the workflow should simplify the approval process with pre-defined routing lists and a customizable approval process—enabling the recruiting process to move along more quickly and efficiently.
Advanced Job Posting Capabilities
Anyone who has a lot of time can post job requisitions manually to a variety of external sites. But, who has that kind of time? With recruiting software, the process becomes integrated with internal career sites, using additional functionality of posting to unlimited commercial job boards and external sites with the ability for employee referrals or “forward to a friend”. This improves the quality of hires by casting the net further to find the best possible candidates for the job. Utilizing these types of advanced recruiting software capabilities allows your business leaders to create strategic recruiting plans instead of simply filling open job requisitions as quickly as possible.
Pre-Screening and Assessments
Spend your valuable time where it is absolutely essential—interviewing highly qualified candidates. Your hiring managers will save significant time using a library of pre-screening questions based upon pre-determined job requirements. A recruiting software solution that provides customizable pre-qualifying questions along with weighted scoring systems that allow you to rank your candidates based upon their responses will decrease the time necessary to evaluate your applicant pool and focus on the most qualified candidates.
Work-flow Automation, Communication and Interview Management
With built-in workflow automation, you can automatically create alerts, follow-ups, actions and notes as you are moving a candidate through the hiring process and share the candidates’ information with your colleagues at a click of the mouse. Additionally, recruiting software can enhance internal and external communication and greatly reduce the time involved in the process by allowing you to manage the entire recruiting and interview process online—using a library of correspondence templates, sending status updates to multiple candidates, coordinating and scheduling interviews on managers’ calendars with important interview documents attached, storing interviewer comments in a central location for team review and using customizable final offer letter templates.
Reporting and Analytics
Be proactive rather than reactive. Recruiting software with comprehensive reporting and analytics allows management to run “what-if” scenarios and strong data analysis to create hiring projections instead of simply filling job openings throughout the year. Also, you’ll want to run reports certifying that your hiring managers are complying with all Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) and Office of Federal Contractor Compliance Programs (OFCCP) requirements.
Talent Acquisition Study by Bersin & Associates
Bersin & Associates is a research and advisory consulting firm with more than 25 years of experience focused on research in enterprise learning, technology and HR business processes. They provide actionable, research-based services to help executives and HR managers improve operational effectiveness and business impact.
One of the key issues recently highlighted in an executive summary on 2010 Talent Acquisition systems was the need for integration:
Integration is a critical component of any talent acquisition system and, surprisingly, one aspect that is often overlooked during implementation. More often than not, organizations feel pressure to select and implement a system in a short period of time. In doing so, they fail to think about any long-term implications, such as integration with their existing HRMSs and third-party recruitment providers.
Based upon this issue, B&A recommended that organizations consider their current HRMSs, talent management providers, third-party recruiting providers and social media when implementing their talent acquisition systems in order to have a more strategic plan in their recruiting software and talent acquisition.
Beyond the basic applications of the system, executives were also cautioned about the need to research the financial viability of the provider and reach out to other customers for product and support references—because at the end of the day, you are looking for a solution provider dedicated to your business success.
Recruiting software should be easy-to-use with simple, intuitive navigation to allow for company-wide recruiting collaboration across recruiters, hiring managers, interviewing teams and C-level management and include essentials such as requisition management, job posting, pre-screening, interviewing scheduling coordination and offer letter management to increase productivity.
Additionally, a great recruiting software program isn’t used simply for gaining quality new hires. It is also a valuable resource for identifying, developing and promoting high performing talent within your organization. The best recruiting software is invaluable for companies going through any organizational change to be able to analyze current staffing profiles for transitioning employees into appropriate new job roles. Management can also use recruiting software to create targeted job requisitions based upon high performing employee profiles that hold uniquely valued company or industry competencies and rank potential candidates based upon these skills and attributes. Creating this new job structure fosters greater productivity, engagement and employee development.
Finally, tightly integrating this functionality with other software applications creates a unified arsenal of people performance and business alignment tools to drive true operational success. SuccessFactors Recruiting Management software is available as a stand-alone product, but you will increase its significance exponentially by using it within the Business Execution suite of products. Used in tandem, these solutions align your strategic recruiting plan with a more productive workforce to drive true business success.
