Honing your recruitment strategy for future success

Whether you are looking to replace your current recruitment software or implement technology for the first time, choosing the right recruitment system for your business needs careful consideration.

How to choose the right recruitment technology for your business

With such a wealth of functionality now available, understanding what features are vital for your recruitment process and what aren’t can have a significant impact on the associated costs and time to implement your solution. 

Here are 5 key questions that will help you make the right decision.

1. What are your key objectives?

If you are a seasoned software user or a first-time purchaser there will be a number of reasons why you are looking to engage new recruitment software.

It might be because there is something lacking in your current system or you feel like recruitment software could increase your HR department’s efficiency.

Pinpointing these reasons will help you stay targeted in your search for new recruitment software.

Most if not all objectives will fall under the following categories: Time, Efficiency, Cost, Control, and Quality.

Do you need to speed up the recruitment process to secure top talent?

Do you want to reduce your reliance on agencies and build your own talent pool?

Do you need to be able to control what information Line Managers have access to?

Are you delivering the best possible candidate experience?

2. Do you need to review your recruitment process?

Understanding your recruitment process and how this can be improved is key to finding the right recruitment software provider.

If you are changing providers, this is the perfect opportunity to review what you have been doing, which features are used regularly, and more importantly what you don’t use and are currently paying for.

It’s the perfect opportunity to evaluate how the use of recruitment software has affected your recruitment process both negatively and positively.

For those new to recruitment software, outlining exactly what functionality you need can prove difficult, but outlining your current process, identifying what you want to change, and understanding how technology can support these changes will help provide the perfect foundations for discussions about choosing the right recruitment technology to take place.

3. What are your essentials and desirables?

Once you’ve assessed your current process and the reason you’re looking for a new recruitment system, it’s time to assess your priorities.

What do you want your recruitment software to do, who will be using the software and what will they be looking for? 

These should be at the forefront of your mind when assessing potential software providers. 

Ask providers to outline the functionality they can offer and map out which ones you actually need, and those you believe may benefit you, whilst disregarding features you don’t need. 

Essential features:  what features are required to create the recruitment process you need?

Non-essential features: what features could potentially improve the hiring process, however, are not vital.

Publishing vacancies on your website

Do you need a careers page that simply lists your vacancies or do you need to provide candidates with the ability to search? Or would it be more beneficial to control the look and feel of your own careers page using an XML feed?

Advertising your vacancies

Do you simply want to advertise your vacancies on your website or do you need the option to advertise on your Intranet too? Do you require multi-posting tools to support existing contracts with Job Boards or do you have a PSL of agencies that you need to manage?

Candidate Interview & Selection 

Do you need the basic tools to support telephone or face-to-face interviews or would self-selection or video interviews help to achieve some of your key objectives? Or perhaps you need to integrate with online testing providers?

Dividing requirements into two categories will ensure you’re not overloading your system with what might be unnecessary features.  New recruitment software is a big investment for your company, so you want to ensure you have a solution that does everything you need and does it well. 

Whatever you are looking for, the right recruitment software will introduce you to the tools you need to manage your recruitment activity effectively.

4. Who else does the provider work with?

There is no such thing as a bad testimonial and every recruitment software provider will advertise they work with big brands to try and showcase their strength in the market.

But who do they work with within your industry? 

Or who do they work with who adopts a similar recruitment process? Can you speak with these people and gain an understanding of what functionality really works for them that could work for you too?

It is also beneficial to visit the client's careers page and apply for a vacancy. How does their careers page look, how simple is the application process? What about if you use a mobile device?

If delivering the best possible candidate experience is one of your key objectives, then you need to put yourself in the candidate's shoes.

5. How secure is your software?

With the introduction of GDPR and increased rights over the use of personal data, ensuring your software offers the level of security you require to adhere to legislation and keep candidate data safe is more important than ever before. 

When it comes to recruitment and the storing and processing of personal data security needs to be a primary consideration. It’s not just about where your data is held and how you protect it against potential threats, but also about ensuring complete data compliance. 

For example;

How do candidates agree to the processing of their data? 

How can candidates update or remove their data? 

How do you manage SARs requests? 

How do you control who has access to data? 

What accreditations does your provider offer?

ISO27001, Cyber Essentials or industry specific such as FSQS are essential marks of security assurance.

Check out IRIS networx for further support in choosing the right recruitment technology.