This year, SHRM published some statistics that confirm what plenty of staffing companies have felt for some time: 92% of people never finish their online job applications. For a variety of reasons, these candidates are starting the process, but ending before they enter the talent pool. If recruiters don’t know who to engage, they can’t do the work of building relationships and filling requisitions.
Plus, heightened candidate falloff due to a surplus of opportunities makes it imperative for as many professionals to enter your system as quickly as possible. Optimizing your application and recruitment process can significantly reduce attrition and time-to-fill rates as well as maximize your recruiters’ efficiency.
Using a data-driven approach with the help of a streamlined front-to-back-office platform like Aqore’s Zenople can reduce recruiter roadblocks, allowing your team to make better placements faster. Here are the top four technical dilemmas we see within flawed staffing systems and workflows (and our recommendations for overcoming them).
Top 4 Technical Dilemmas Among Staffing Firms
1. Inefficient Sourcing Process
The people, processes, and tools that make up the sourcing stage have a massive impact on the outcome of a candidate search, which is no surprise since it’s the root of the recruitment relationship. The quality or quantity of candidates that recruiters can identify, select, and load into the staffing firm’s ATS depends on the workflows and systems in place.
In fact, some staffing companies sabotage their recruiters from the start by using outdated technology, causing a ripple effect through the entire organization due to a lack of candidates or underqualified professionals. Maybe your system is scooping up too many people indiscriminately or the sourcing tool might default to overly stringent parameters that keep your pool small. Regardless, your recruiters will waste time, and you’ll fail to build a valuable database for your firm.
When you provide your team with the latest in sourcing technology, you set them up for success. With organized and efficient processes, your talent acquisition team can reach new and expanded talent pools, quickly attracting the right candidates to fill even your most challenging positions.
Aqore’s Zenople streamlines all your sourcing activity, whether for a proactive search or for a specific requisition. By allowing recruiters to seamlessly and automatically mine for candidates, you can increase quality candidate flow while simultaneously freeing up recruiters’ time to focus on strategic, candidate-facing activities.
2. An Inconvenient Application Process
When candidates are applying to your jobs, the overall experience matters. An overly time-intensive or buggy application process may result in your firm losing out on an exceptional candidate whose time and talents are already highly sought after. When options are aplenty, people aren’t all that willing to jump through what they feel are needless hoops.
To simplify your application process, be sure to assess for common problem areas. Is it too long? Are there too many questions? Do you make candidates repeat steps (i.e., not allowing them to autofill responses by uploading their resume)? Is there a confusing sign-up process? The answers to these questions and others can help you to pinpoint the bottleneck areas that are the biggest contributors to falloff.
With Zenople, staffing firms can customize their application process to decrease drop off and keep candidates engaged throughout the process, whether it is completed via desktop or mobile. Plus, our dashboard allows your recruiter to track the applicant journey, providing them with data on people who didn’t complete their application so you can possibly rescue the loss before candidates fall completely off your radar.
3. Ineffective Use of Automation
Failing to establish a relationship with candidates—new and familiar, active and passive—means failing to establish trust in your services and company. Recruiters who can cultivate confidence in their services do so through clear, consistent, and timely communication. You can’t expect to build rapport with jobseekers by sending too few or too many impersonal messages to candidates.
In fact, silence is almost always deadly in the staffing world. A survey conducted by Robert Half revealed 62% of professionals lose interest in a job if they don’t hear back from the employer within 10 business days after the initial interview. That number rises to 77% if there is no status update within three weeks.
To engage talent and move them further along in their journeys, craft personalized, segmented nurture campaigns. This automated outreach will keep your company top-of-mind and increase interest in working with your team. Effective use of automation can show your company understands your audience’s pain points, aligns with their values, and is eager to connect with them.
Zenople was built by staffing industry leaders, for staffing firms. We understand the challenges that come with your typical business processes, so we built our platform to align perfectly with them. Recruiters can send and receive emails and texts to and from candidates, and all messages are saved within individual candidate profiles. Tasks that need a human touch are left to humans, and those that are best left to automation, are.
4. Unclear Decision-Making Path for Recruiters
Too often, not explicitly outlining steps for recruiters to take when assessing candidates not only creates less confident recruiters, but it also makes it difficult to build a diverse talent pool.
Not to mention, some staffing applicant tracking systems and task management tools only complete one step in your workflow, leaving your recruiters constantly bouncing between platforms and wasting valuable time.
A decision-making checklist can simplify this process. Better yet, Zenople’s decision-making path is completely automated and integrated. Recruiters are prompted at each stage of the candidate journey to enter relevant information about the applicant. Once completed, the platform automatically transitions the candidate profile forward.
How Zenople Reduces Recruiter Roadblocks
Instead of asking your recruiters to manage a myriad of different tools, consider streamlining each step of the recruitment process with a front to back-office software like Aqore’s Zenople. With Zenople, your team can import resumes, screen candidates, organize data, send emails and texts, and schedule interviews inside one software platform.
A clear, intuitive workflow takes time away from administrative tasks and puts your recruiters in front of more important candidate-facing responsibilities. The dashboard allows users to track the entire applicant journey, giving them the opportunity to better engage with candidates and decrease drop off.
While recruiting candidates is not something to rush through, consistently analyzing and removing setbacks can make your recruitment process much more efficient, allowing you to build a pipeline of high-quality candidates. The more organized and efficient your recruitment team, the more you can focus on making the right placements and driving revenue to your bottom line.
