RESOURCE CENTER

Improve Engagement and Fill Jobs Faster with Automation, AI, and Real-time Data

Lower costs, be more productive, and rally your recruiters around a single, shared view of every candidate, role, and client.

Date: June 7, 2023

Time to read: 5 minutes

Brian LeBlond
Director, Solution Engineering, Staffing and Recruiting, Salesforce

It’s time for staffing and recruiting to get more efficient as the labor market continues to change, with 9.6 million unfilled jobs at the end of March 2023, 1.6 million lower than in December, and an unemployment rate that changed little at 3.4%. In some sectors, the full out “war for talent” has turned into discrete skirmishes as some employers ease up on aggressive growth — and even start laying off people.

Recruiters have a critical role to play in helping employers staff jobs strategically with the best candidates possible as a new phase of hiring competition gets underway. The secret to success? Automate the routine and grab insights from a centralized data source so recruiters can focus on what they do best: relationship building.

Across industries, recently surveyed firms report using automation, AI, and a single, shared source of real-time data to reduce costs and increase customer retention by nearly a third.

Maximizing data so you can do more with less.

Many enterprise staffing and recruiting firms are well along the digitization path but small to mid-size agencies are often mired in legacy products, solutions, and ways of working. Large, publicly traded firms are hiring Chief Digital Officers and Chief Transformation Officers to lead strategic shifts to new ways of working. However, the majority of firms are on the smaller end and still need to focus on automation and candidate experience.

To compete, these staffing and recruiting firms need to improve data visibility and integrate existing systems to get a full view of the employment journey for both the candidate and employer. Companies that have rallied around a single, shared view of customer data have benefitted materially. They get insights 29% faster, reduce IT costs by 25%, and increase employee productivity by 26%.

Driving efficient revenue through automation and artificial intelligence.

Once you have consolidated the data so you have a single source of truth, you can apply artificial intelligence (AI) to gain insights. This may require upgrades to legacy systems as well. But AI is an important part of crafting a marketing journey that makes sense for the target. This kind of personalization helps sales use their time more effectively. Plus, it can be automated.

AI also contributes to more accurate forecasting and measurement of success by giving you a better line of sight into upcoming roles and available talent. The 5th State of Sales survey of nearly 8,000 sales professionals shows that high performing sales organizations are nearly twice as likely to use AI in their toolkit as low-performing ones. In fact, 41% of sales pros at companies that use AI say their use of time has improved in a big way.

Eliminating routine recruiter tasks and connect with candidates when it matters.

Time is the most precious resource of all. You don’t want your staff wasting it on routine tasks that take away from the things only a skilled recruiter can do. At the moment, a recruiter spends 23 hours on average screening resumes for a single hire. This is an industry where many recruiters are relying on smiling and dialing. They have phones and email, and that’s their go-to.

“In the pre-digital era, we would throw people at a job,” says April Kociolek, platform architect, Allegis Group. For candidates — and recruiters — that’s not a great experience. Just one cruise through Glassdoor will show how often candidates are frustrated with their recruiting experiences.

Allegis set out to find out what would work better. They interviewed stakeholders in the process to re-think the product and user experience. The result? A complete flip of the process. When Allegis re-designed its recruiting system to put its digital-savvy candidates at the center of the process, it saw candidate engagement rise and the time to fill roles drop by 75%.

Now the candidates begin by logging in with social credentials, which immediately provides recruiters with key first-party information. The candidate walks through a series of questions that lets them define the role they want and how they prefer to work (in-person or part-time, for example). Then, much like on Amazon or Netflix, the candidate gets served “what they might like.” If something appeals to the candidate, they can schedule an interview through the online system. The recruiter doesn’t step in until that match has been made.

Using technology to boost engagement, scale, and improve the job search experience.

Keeping strong candidates warm, optimistic, and patient through the hiring process is a critical task — and if you can’t do that, it hurts your relationships with candidates and employers. To inspire candidate trust and confidence, recruiters should keep them continuously updated with information that’s accurate, consistent, and personalized for each candidate’s application life cycle. Two thirds of job seekers say that’s exactly the kind of recruiting experience that impresses them.

But how do you scale all this engagement and personalization in an era of global talent shortages and volume hires? The answer: Combine AI with automation to create a virtual buddy (bot) that offers responsive help and sends reminders without involving a recruiter. Or, targeted videos can give candidates advice on how to prepare for an interview. A candidate dashboard can also help them manage their own information and keep tabs on next steps.

Updating staffing and recruiting to meet evolving client and candidate expectations.

If there’s an upside to an economic lull, it’s this: You now have an opportunity to be intentional about what you’re building out instead of trying to make foundational changes when your resources are overtaxed and you’re focused on GROW GROW GROW. It’s a great time to be thinking about building a business based on better customer experiences.

So pause and think about where you see your company going. Smiling and dialing just doesn’t cut it anymore. Even the concept of applicant tracking needs updating — it’s not a thing unto itself. It’s part of an overall workflow.

Staffing organizations that aspire to differentiate themselves and grow revenue will be digitizing legacy systems to bring together their data into a single source of truth. That will give them the power to automate routine tasks and scale while keeping in step with rising client and candidate expectations. It will also help you make your recruiters feel that you have set them up for success, even when markets shift and demand becomes more complicated.