Successfully recruiting top candidates for a small business involves knowing the right strategies and tactics to employ in your search. It also involves identifying the right tools to assist with your efforts.
Having a platform in which you can perform recruiting tasks makes your job of finding and placing the right candidates in the right positions so much easier. But what are the specific reasons why you should use recruiting software for your small business? How can you convince your company’s leadership that it’s not just a worthwhile investment, but necessary if you want to compete with larger companies and other competitors?
Let’s take a closer look at seven tips for building a business case while evaluating recruiting software for small businesses. The reasons below will help convince the decision maker at your company that recruiting software is a major benefit for your bottom line.
Saves Your Team Time
Whether you’re a startup recruiting top tech talent or a more traditional business, there are a multitude of tasks involved with recruiting, and there’s also information you need to store for later use. Performing tasks and managing data requires your staff’s time.
Recruiting software cuts down on the amount of time your team spends sorting candidate contact information or overseeing the recruiting process. You can use it to store your overarching recruiting plan for easy access by multiple team members. Depending on the type of software you use, you may (and should) be able to manage every component of full life cycle recruiting in one place. That convenience will make your recruiting tasks and processes more efficient.
Shortens the Hiring Process
Saving time is great from an administrative standpoint, as it frees up your team to focus on the work that’s most important to them. They won’t have to spend as much time on operations. But beyond being good for your team’s workload, it’s also better for the hiring process.
Increased efficiency should allow you to move candidates through the recruiting process much more quickly. Greater efficiency is better for your staff and for the candidates. You can make hiring decisions faster without leaving your candidates waiting for a response.
Makes it Easier to Organize Candidates
Once you’ve connected with your candidates, you’ll want to keep a record of that candidate’s profile as well as their strengths, weaknesses, and contact information. With recruiting software, you can keep your candidates organized with multiple fields painting a comprehensive picture of that candidate for you. Rather than rely on a notepad and paper or hastily thrown together Excel spreadsheets, you can maintain a record of your candidates in one easy to access, centralized location.
Simplifies Scheduling
When you’re contacting multiple candidates to set up interviews, remember that you have to coordinate scheduling for them and for your hiring managers as well. Having to do this over email can be tricky and can also lead to missed appointments.
With the right recruiting software, you’ll have scheduling capabilities that enable your hiring managers and candidates to alert you to their availability. They’ll then receive invitations with reminders that allow you to make scheduling easier for all parties.
Helps You Build Your Talent Pipeline
Sourcing top talent is one of the biggest challenges facing organizations today. According to Statista, it’s what many recruiting firms define as their greatest obstacle. Without the ability to identify, contact, and hire talented candidates, you’ll have no chance to grow as an organization.
Recruiting software can assist with your sourcing needs, specifically externally. It can help you effectively engage external (and internal) candidates, interfacing with job boards and other sources of external candidates. This increased engagement ability lets you tap into candidates with the right skill sets and backgrounds, maximizing the potential for finding the right fit in each role.
Improves Company-Candidate Communication
Think about the last time you hired a candidate. How did you reach out to them initially? How frequently did you communicate with them throughout the process? As an organization, did you make decisions in a timely manner? If not, did you keep them informed of their status while hiring progressed?
The answers to these questions matter to your candidates. They’re evaluating your company throughout the recruiting process. It’s been said that you’ll never be treated better by an organization than when they recruit you. That might not always be true, but candidates definitely respond more favorably to companies that communicate comprehensively during the recruiting and hiring process.
To do this, you’ll need a record of each interaction with the candidate so you can follow up with status updates and next steps. With the right recruiting software, you’ll be able to know when you last followed up. You can track the entire candidate journey with a complete record of communication. You may not always have positive updates for your candidates, but you can at least maintain a connection with them by letting them know where they stand.
Creates a Better Candidate Experience
There are many benefits of recruiting software for your staff, but don’t forget to remind your leadership of what a great candidate experience it can create.
It’s a competitive job market for both employees and employers. If you want to recruit the best talent, you have to create the best atmosphere for success. That includes the benefits package, salary, and culture. It also includes the candidate experience during the recruiting process.
Let’s say you interview a candidate and decide that, while they’re talented, another candidate is a better fit. If you’re transparent, polite, and professional with them, they’ll likely still look at you in a favorable light. If you have a role for them in the future that’s a better fit, they’re more likely to be receptive to working for you if you approach them at a later date. A recruiting software helps you create that winning employee experience before the candidate is even hired with every candidate you speak with.
The bottom line is that recruiting software, creates a much better hiring environment for your team and your future employees. The key is to pick the right strategic recruiting partners. At Comeet, we offer full service recruiting software for small businesses. For more on how Comeet can help you cultivate your recruiting pipeline, contact us today.