The 5 best tools for recruiters to use right now
Technology in recruiting has come a long way since the heavy-handed ATS systems of old. Today, you can find recruitment platforms instilled with artificial intelligence, machine learning, and many other types of cutting-edge tech that will make your job easier.
There’s a huge range of hiring platforms out there, from all-encompassing recruitment management systems to standalone tools that tackle niche challenges. You’ll even find recruiting software built specifically for agencies and external staffing consultants.
But first, why use these newfangled tools? What’s wrong with a good old job board? Well, we don’t need to tell you that time kills deals. That’s why the best recruitment software is all about making the processes faster and smoother for you and the candidate.
A lengthy or convoluted application process is a colossal roadblock to finding the best talent: according to Appcast, 92% of applicants that start an online application never complete it.
Anything that automates time-consuming manual admin, eliminates the need for back-and-forth communication, or surfaces the information you need more quickly is a must-have. Plus, these hiring tools can elevate the candidate experience, giving them a better impression of you and the client.
With so many options out there, we thought we’d round up some of the best bits of digital kit that you can start using today. Let’s take a look at some of the best recruitment platforms and tools you can use right now.
Video interviewing
Thanks to the pandemic and subsequent fallout, the world and their grandma are pretty well-acquainted with video calling software. But if you’re using video calls as part of your recruiting process—and with remote work on the rise, why wouldn’t you be?—then it’s time to upgrade.
The best video interviewing platforms for recruiters go way beyond your standard Zoom call. They’re enriched with smart features like highly customizable one-way interviews, where a candidate gives answers to pre-set questions on video. These platforms give you the chance to review footage at another time and screen large numbers of applicants in a more efficient manner (especially when you have applicants in multiple time zones).
Other functionality to look out for includes time controls for tests and assessments, templates for different question formats, whiteboards and shared digital workspaces, and rating systems so you can record instant feedback on a candidate’s answers.
One of the latest video interviewing platforms to hit the market is Indeed Interview. The creators of one of the world’s biggest job boards have developed an accessible yet feature-rich tool that lets recruiters do things like send reminders to candidates, customize welcome messages, communicate with your virtual lobby, preview resumes, and make notes in real-time.
Artificial Intelligence
AI is everywhere. It’s making playlists for you, it’s beating you at video games, it’s deciding what content you see on social media—it’s even driving cars.
There’s no shortage of uses for AI in the recruitment industry either, and it’s rapidly becoming a more accessible and popular tool for recruiters. Research by IndustryARC estimates that use of AI in staffing will increase at a compound annual growth rate of 7% in the next few years.
Recruitment software infused with AI can help size-up candidates’ resumes, match them to job roles, write job descriptions, and communicate with applicants throughout their journey.
As well as reducing your workload by handling manual tasks and its ability to parse unfathomable amounts of data at speed, AI also has the potential to eliminate inherent biases that can creep into the hiring process.
So what kind of thing can AI take off your hands? AI recruitment platform Skillate, for example, helps you write better job ads by suggesting more relevant keywords and skills. The tool bases its advice on insights it’s gleaned from 20 million candidate profiles. It also speeds up the screening stage using a handy chatbot that automatically gathers information like notice periods and salary expectations to give you a fuller picture of applicants, without the legwork.
Recruitment CRM
As a recruiter, you’re probably switching between tons of apps, software, and communication methods all day long. Meeting clients and candidate wherever they are, and whatever type of contact they prefer, is key to delivering a great customer experience—but it can get messy.
Having one centralized place to store information about a job, a candidate, or a client, log your communications, and track the hiring progress is essential. That’s where a CRM comes in.
A CRM is more than a digital address book. It’s a record of every interaction and every vital piece of data that crops up during the recruitment lifecycle. This information is available across your team so that everyone has the most up-to-date view on how a placement, or even a relationship with a prospective client, is going. These platforms offer a single source of truth for recruiters, and form the bedrock of any organized staffing agency.
There are countless CRM systems out there to choose from, with many purpose-built for staffing professionals. Bullhorn, for instance, offers a CRM designed specifically for recruiting, and features mobile-friendly functionality to help you keep up with fast-moving hiring cycles. Helping you tackle job orders, reduce time-to-fill, and make more placements, it even sprinkles in a little automation to save you time.
Applicant Tracking System
Applicant Tracking Systems are one of the most enduring recruitment software types, having been around since the late 1990s. Starting as a simple, secure storage system for companies to house applicant resumes, the humble ATS has evolved massively over the years.
Modern ATS platforms do more than just scan for keywords and weed out poorly optimized resumes, which is good news considering that almost 99% of Fortune 500 companies use one for their internal hiring.
What makes the ATS an even better tool for you is that there are now platforms built specifically for agencies and independent recruiters. Smart platforms like recruiterflow not only parse resumes and organize your talent pool, but they also offer features like client portals to make submitting and reviewing candidates to potential employers faster.
Many are harnessing the incredible power of data analytics to help recruiters make more informed decisions faster. One example of recruiting software that’s putting data to work is Greenhouse. The platform’s robust reporting functionality allows recruiters to constantly optimize and improve their process, cutting time-to-hire.
Greenhouse even goes one step further with its Greenhouse Predicts feature, which uses predictive analytics to calculate your chance of hiring a candidate on time—meaning you can work to speed up the process and get candidates locked down before they move on to new opportunities.
Relevant bonus tip: whichever ATS you decide to take advantage of, make sure that candidates can access them on mobile devices. Since 2020, more job applications have been made on mobile devices than on desktops and that disparity is only growing.
Automated Scheduling
Are you free Tuesday? How about Thursday? Oh you’re in a different time zone? I could maybe do 11am. No? Okay, I’ll check my diary and get back to you…
That kind of exchange probably sounds very familiar—although often it can take place over days, with emails pinging back and forth and lots of waiting around for responses.
Scheduling interviews is one of the most time-consuming stages of the hiring process, and one of the most crucial. You’ve found a top candidate who’s actively job-hunting, but you’re struggling to find a suitable time for an interview. By the time you’ve got something arranged, they might’ve had several other interviews already, sending your role to the bottom of the pile.
Using automated scheduling, you can have an interview done and dusted in the time it usually takes just to book it in. This smart, hands-off method of scheduling saves time, improves the candidate experience (reducing drop-outs), and gets top candidates in front of clients faster.
A tool like Cronofy Scheduler can speed up your hiring process by 59%. This handy app updates available slots in real-time, adjusts to reflect time-zone differences, and completely cuts out the need to yo-yo between the candidate and the client to find out availability. It integrates with all the most widely used email platforms too, so you can schedule interviews from anywhere, on any device.
Want to learn more about how the Scheduler can help you recruit the best talent for your clients faster than ever? Book a demo today and chat to our expert team!