How to automate recruitment easily and effectively

What is recruitment automation?

Recruitment automation is all about using technology to streamline and automate repetitive hiring tasks, reducing admin and freeing up time for HR and management. Automating the recruitment process or specific stages of the journey supports more efficient hiring and enhances the candidate experience. It also enables hirers to make more consistent, data-driven hiring decisions and can reduce time to hire. 

How recruitment automation works

Hiring automation uses software, such as AI and applicant tracking systems, to streamline repetitive, time-consuming tasks in the recruitment process, like job ad posting, CV screening, and shortlisting candidates. Recruitment automation can be used to:

• Publish job adverts across multiple job sites and social media channels
• Automate candidate comms throughout the recruitment process
• Screen CVs against predefined criteria
• Shortlist candidates
• Schedule interview invites and reminders
• Share status updates to prevent candidates feeling ghosted
• View real-time data on key hiring metrics

Automating recruitment process steps is not about replacing human judgement from the hiring process; instead, it helps to free up hirers’ time for the conversations and assessments that matter most. 

4 key benefits of automating the hiring process

The benefits of automating recruitment process steps, or indeed the entire process, include: 

1. Reduce admin 

Hiring process automation is designed to streamline manual, time-consuming recruitment steps, such as contacting candidates individually at every stage, coordinating calendars to schedule interviews, and screening applicants one by one. Embracing the opportunity to automate recruitment therefore reduces hirers’ workloads, meaning HR and hiring managers can spend more time making strategic hiring decisions.

2. Find top talent faster

Recruitment automation also helps to speed up the hiring process by automating the early stages of the journey. As a result, candidates can progress to the interview stage much faster, reducing overall time to fill, providing your business with a competitive advantage.

3. Remove bias from hiring decisions

An automated hiring process will apply the same predefined screening criteria to every candidate, eliminating unconscious bias from hiring decisions. Recruitment automation helps to make candidate assessments fairer, and also reduces the risk of human error.

4. Improve candidate experience

When a hiring process is intuitive, straightforward and fast, this significantly enhances the candidate experience. This means applicants are more likely to stay engaged with the process, and it benefits your employer brand and overall reputation. This can also help you to create a talent pool of engaged candidates to consider for future roles, supporting faster hiring decisions further down the line.

8 ways to automate recruitment processes

The key to automating recruitment is to embrace the latest tools and processes in the industry. Here are five ways in which employers can streamline hiring for an efficient and cost-effective experience.

1. Utilise hiring software for recruitment automation

Recruitment software has developed to new levels in recent years, allowing for greater automation in all aspects of hiring. Some key time-saving features include AI-powered features, workflow management, advertising/job-posting suites, and digital application processes.

• Workflow management – Strong organisation is key to a successful hiring process. Workflow management software allows your team to oversee recruitment more efficiently. Simply put, these platforms enable HR employees to organise their workload – processing candidates, applications, and new-starters in a clear, well-planned manner. This software is particularly useful for companies managing large-scale recruitment campaigns, giving hiring managers control and visibility over each stage of the process.
• Advertising/job-posting suites – Successful advertising strategy is crucial for attracting strong candidates. Job-posting and advertising suites allow employers to plan, post, and review their hiring campaigns for maximum engagement. This not only saves time, enabling posting to multiple platforms at once, but also aids in maintaining cost-effective recruitment campaigns. 
• Digital application processes – Digitalised applications promote a fast, engaging experience for candidates, as well as ease and automation for your team. Applicant data can be automatically streamed to your database directly from application forms. This saves valuable time by eliminating the need for manual data input, and helps to create well-informed candidate profiles for quick and effective screening.

2. Embrace video screening/interviewing 

Virtual communication tech is a powerful tool for automating and streamlining recruitment. By embracing video screening and interviewing, you are able to engage applicants more quickly, and promote a more accessible hiring journey. 

Pre-recording interviews and screening sessions not only saves time, but allows you to rank and compare candidates more effectively. This means you can involve more key decision-makers in the selection process, without the need for them to be present at interviews. 

3. Create on-demand talent pools for easier future hiring

Recruitment campaigns tend to attract a lot of talented candidates. While not all of these can be successful in their application, they are a valuable asset to your future hiring campaigns.

Tim Clifford, Talent Insights Specialist at Talos360, explained: “By building talent pools of previously engaged applicants, you can develop a community of suitable candidates for future job opportunities. This brings further automation to your hiring process, reducing the time and expense of candidate discovery.”

These candidates will already be familiar with your employer brand, meaning you always have an engaged, diverse pool of talent to pursue when vacancies arise. 

4. Progress candidates automatically with applicant tracking software

Applicant tracking systems (ATS) enable employers to automate the progression of candidates throughout the hiring process. This allows your team to track each candidate’s position in their hiring journey, providing support, booking interviews, and assessing recruitment turnaround. 

As each candidate progresses through the recruitment process, their profile will be updated in the system to reflect this. This promotes efficiency in hiring management and helps employers to provide a smooth, enjoyable candidate journey.

Using an ATS enables you to automatically collect and store candidate information directly from application forms. This saves time for your HR team, eliminating the need to input data manually. This also promotes GDPR security of applicant data, ensuring your recruitment process remains legally compliant. Data is stored securely within your ATS, while promoting easy access for your hiring team.

5. Automate candidate SMS/Email engagement

With candidate engagement – contact is key. Automating SMS/email communication helps to keep applicants in the loop at every stage of the hiring process. While one-to-one communication is still essential at some points in the recruitment process, automating updates and responses where possible saves valuable time and effort.

Talos ATS allows for complete automation of SMS/email updates, providing candidates with a response at every stage of their hiring journey. This not only promotes an efficient recruitment process, but keeps talent engaged with your employer brand. 

6. Build a one-stop-shop careers site

Building a careers site/jobs page gives candidates a one-stop-shop for all of your brand’s opportunities. This makes it easier to advertise new vacancies, and reduces your reliance on paid job boards.

Using a job-posting tool in your applicant tracking system (ATS), you can automatically post new vacancies straight to your careers page. This ensures candidates are kept up-to-date with all the latest opportunities with your company. 

7. Use ATS-integrated application forms for automatic data streaming

Recruitment involves a lot of data. Make life easier for your team by using ATS-integrated application forms to automatically stream applicant data into your system. This not only saves time for your hiring team, but also ensures each and every applicant has their application followed up – protecting your employer brand reputation.

When combined with SMS/Email scheduling, this means every single applicant who engages with your brand will receive a response from your team. This is a great asset for your employer brand, helping you deliver a positive hiring experience for all candidates – whether successful or not.

Most applicant tracking systems allow you to create integrated application forms. These can often be embedded into your careers site, and linked to through your multi-platform job ads. This provides candidates with a fast and effective application experience, which is accessible from any device.

8. Build a new starter onboarding site 

The strength of your onboarding process has a huge impact on employees’ future success. It’s crucial to give new recruits the best start possible with your brand, laying the foundations for productivity and long-term staff retention.

Bring automation to your welcome process by building employer brand onboarding packs. These should contain all the essential information recruits will need for their first day, as well as FAQs, and contact information for your HR team. 

Distributing this information to new recruits will save bags of time for your HR team, removing the need to go over the same information with multiple candidates.

Talos ATS: The easiest way to automate recruitment

Talos is an all-in-one solution for in-house recruitment, giving you all the tools you need to achieve fast and effective hiring. 

The platform provides a range of easy-access automations to promote speed and efficiency in your recruitment process.

• Automatic progression of your strongest applicants – Talos automatically screens applications to pick out key skills and attributes, assigning individual scores to candidates. This enables the system to automatically progress your strongest applicants, making it easier to identify compatible talent.
• Automated SMS/email updates for candidates – With the in-built contact automation suite, your team can deliver personalised updates to applicants at each progression stage. These are automatically sent at different hiring stages – including in receipt of application, interview confirmation, and selection.
• Automatically stream applications into your ATS database – When a candidate applies for one of your roles within Talos, their data is automatically streamed into the next-generation applicant tracking system. This allows you to easily view and engage all of your candidates – without the need for manual data entry.
• Fully-branded careers page included – Included with Talos is a fully-branded, ATS-integrated careers page – giving candidates a one-stop-shop for all your brand’s opportunities. This increases engagement with your unique employer brand, while promoting an easier application experience. 

Talos ATS includes:

• Next-generation applicant tracking system
• Multi-platform job-poster 
• Automated progression of your strongest applicants
• Recruitment advertising suite
• Video screening and interview platform
• SMS/email update automation for candidates
• Remote onboarding tools

Discover an easier way to manage hiring – cut costs and save time with Talos ATS: