Written by Alfie Gibbs

With most businesses having to furlough large parts of their workforce during the lockdown and unfortunately many having to make redundancies, most companies have needed to review their processes and find ways to do “more with less”.

 

 

Technology has proven to be the saviour for a lot of businesses during this time, helping employees to work from home, hold virtual meetings, and automate some historically manual time-consuming tasks.

So, does automation have a role to play in the new normal for recruitment?

Fortunately, there are now readily available technological solutions that automate the highest-volume and most repetitive tasks in the recruitment process, enabling better management of workflows and, as a result, more placements.

On average there are more than 30 tasks and communication points for recruitment staff interacting with prospective candidates. The majority of companies are now having to operate with a much smaller workforce, this means that improving productivity and effectiveness of recruitment and HR teams is vital.

A recent study showed 80% of the staff time during the recruitment process is normally dedicated to repetitive communication which can be reduced to a mere 31% through effective use of technology.

It’s more important than ever for recruitment teams to stand out from the crowd and using automation can keep candidates thoroughly updated on their application, resulting in better engagement and faster turnaround times for interview invites and ultimately a much better candidate experience. In turn these things can also speed up the hire time, allowing recruiters to spend more time searching and engaging with top talent.

So automation will have its part to play in the future, helping create a better candidate and client experience, and although meeting in person may not always be possible for now, it’s more important than ever for recruiters to prioritise their time on building these relationships on the telephone or via video call and letting technology pick up the more time consuming and less personal elements of the job.