15 Recruitment Tools to Try asap (An Overview)
Recruiting new candidates is tough enough as it is. As an HR professional, you’ve got heaps of things to do on top of that eternal quest for the perfect applicant. All the more reason you to make your professional life as easy as possible, right? With the help of some nifty, digital recruitment tools for example.
Sure, there a ton of tools to choose from. Not to worry though, we’ll get you started. In this article, we’ll discuss 5 different types of recruitment tools for you to try asap. One type of tool for each part of your selection process to keep things clean and simple.
Here goes.
Content
1. Recruitment tools to source
2. Recruitment tools to optimize your job advert
3. Recruitment tools to chat with candidates (i.e. chatbots)
4. Recruitment tools to preselect applicants
5. Recruitment tools to onboard
6. Social recruiting
15 Recruitment Tools
1. Recruitment tools to source
Sourcing typically is one of those tedious, time-consuming tasks you’d rather skip. Luckily, manually searching, selecting and updating relevant job boards, platforms and social channels is no longer a necessary evil.
With the arrival of programmatic advertising in HR, came a new and automated way of targeting candidates. It enables recruiters to send the right message to the right candidate – via the right sourcing channel.
Programmatic advertising tools give recruiters and hiring managers also an opportunity to engage with relevant audiences and passive candidates (who are often difficult to reach).
A small sample of programmatic job advertising vendors:
Programmatic job advertising on Instagram.
2. Recruitment tools to optimize your job advert
Have you ever wondered why you seem to get a lot of similar candidates that respond to your job adverts? Sure, part of that is probably due to the industry you’re in. And yes, another part may be linked to your company culture.
But what about your job adverts?
You may not be aware of it, but certain words and the way things are phrased can have a (big) impact on potential candidates. So if you want to focus on diversity hiring – a big topic right now – you may need to have a thorough at your job advert writing.
The use of an AI-driven writing tool can help you with this. The software analyzes relevant language patterns that turn some job ads into a big success where others fail. The more documents the system analyzes, the more accurate its predictions will become.
Companies in the augmented writing space:
Text Analyzer
Gender decoder for job ads
Textio
Textio in action.
3. Recruitment tools to chat with candidates (i.e. chatbots)
As a candidate, few things are more frustrating than not knowing where you’re at in an application process. Or sending an email to a recruiter and then having to wait for days before he or she gets back to you.
But for an already busy HR department, answering these candidate FAQ’s can take up (too) much of their time.
The solution comes in the shape of…
a chatbot.
Chatbots never take a day – or an evening – off. They are on duty 24/7 which means candidates will get an answer to their questions no matter what (as long as the bot has learned the answer of course).
And that’s not all.
A chatbot can also – among many other things – keep candidates engaged and posted on the process, schedule interviews, send out confirmation emails, etc. A huge time saver on the recruiter’s side and a big improvement in terms of candidate experience for your potential new hires: win-win.
A few of the many chatbot vendors:
Mya chatting away with a candidate.
4. Recruitment tools to preselect candidates
Especially if you’re dealing with high volumes of candidates, the process of preselecting them can take up – a lot – of your time. Not to mention the inefficiencies and inevitable mistakes if the process is largely manual.
In other words: there is plenty of room for improvement in this part of the recruitment funnel.
The good news is, there is a wide variety of candidate preselection tools that can significantly improve recruitment metrics such as your time to hire and (perhaps more importantly) quality of hire.
Applicants go autonomously through an online assessment while the software gathers data about their actions and answers. The candidates are presented with real-life job scenarios, get a virtual office tour, watch employee testimonials and complete various assessments.
The more applicants flow through the system, the more data the software has to base future predictions on. As such, the technology is able to predict how likely it is for a candidate to succeed in the role he or she applies for.
Recruiters and hiring managers can use this data to support them in their hiring decisions and hence cut out – or at least reduce – the ‘gut-feeling-factor’ from the process.
Some of the vendors in the pre-employment assessment tools space:
HireVue builds custom assessments for its clients.
5. Tools to onboard
Once you’ve hired a candidate, your job is far from done. On the contrary, this is where the real challenge begins: trying to keep him or her on board – and engaged.
We’ve said this before, but many organizations still forget the importance of employee onboarding and, by extension, of the employee experience. Or perhaps they’re simply too busy with other things. We cannot stress this enough though: if you ‘forget’ about your new hires during their honeymoon period (i.e. the onboarding period) there is a big chance you’ll lose them soon after you’ve hired them.
So no short-cuts when it comes to your onboarding process!
And frankly, in today’s digital world there is no reason why you can’t have an onboarding process that’s both automated and great at the same time. There are tools to take care of everything. Literally from the moment a candidate signs his or her employment contract to the first few weeks into their new job.
New hires can download the onboarding software directly onto their phones and they’re ready to go. They’ll receive notifications about the necessary paperwork, team introductions and everything in-between.
A few (self-)onboarding software companies:
BambooHR
HROnboard
Click Boarding
The Click Boarding tool making sure new hires greet their team.
6. Social recruiting
Social recruiting – using social media platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter to advertise jobs, find talent and engage with potential candidates – has become an industry in itself.
A lot has been written about social media recruitment tools, too much to even scratch the surface of it in one paragraph. So in this article, we’ll just keep it short and concise.
A few things to keep in mind when it comes to social recruiting:
- In today’s world, it’s virtually impossible not to use social media recruitment tools.
- Keeping up with your followers and engaging with them via social media is important yet time-consuming;
- Therefore it’s essential to 1) have a clear social strategy and to 2) keep track of your recruitment metrics and results to know exactly which social media recruitment tools work for you and which don’t.
For an extensive guide on how to build a social media recruitment strategy go here.
Social media can be a powerful tool to recruit top talent.
Wrapping up
Voila, 15 recruitment tools for you to try asap. Whether it is the sourcing, chatting, onboarding or preselection part of the recruitment funnel you’re struggling with, there’s a useful tool to support you. Most of them (if not all) will have a free trial period during which you can test the technology and find out whether or not it’s the right solution for your organization. Have fun trying them out!
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