Tech Tools Recruiters Need to Land the Best Candidates, Part 1

176622316Recruiting has long been a paper-based industry. Certainly, the advent of online job posting and search sites introduced an element of technology, but the reality is that these merely duplicated the help wanted ads in the newspaper and paper-based resumes in a digital form.

Today’s recruiting environment is far too competitive for these so-called technologies to suffice. With exceptional talent at a premium, shifting candidate motivations, diminished employee engagement and employees’ willingness to leave a job at any time for a better opportunity, recruiters need fast-paced, truly high-tech tools that can keep pace with the velocity of today’s hiring market.

The silver lining to all of this is the fact that we do have the advantage of far more data at our disposal than ever before. Not just in online resumes, professional profiles and job boards, but also in social media, blogs and other contextual sources that can give us a more accurate and holistic picture of a candidate before we even make initial contact.

In fact, it’s a deluge of data. And, the explosion of sources is only going to increase. How can you both keep your head above water and capitalize on this tremendous opportunity? Landing the best candidates in the Era of Big Data requires hi-tech tools that can match the speed and scale of the opportunity. Here’s are five to get you started:

1. ATS+CRM. Combining applicant tracking software (ATS) with customer relationship management (CRM) software provides a centralized hub for all of your recruiting activities to help you find, engage and hire the best candidates with maximum efficiency. By using the two together, recruiting and placement teams can easily keep track of candidates and their status at all points in the hiring lifecycle. It also helps eliminate duplicate data, redundant data entry and other inefficiencies to streamline the process and save time and money.

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2. LinkedIn Cross-System Awareness. You’re probably already using LinkedIn to find and recruit talent. But, adding Cross-System Awareness to your Recruiter account automatically integrates candidates’ LinkedIn profile data with your ATS application. That means you can see which LinkedIn prospects already exist in your system, keep candidate information up-to-date in real-time and reach out directly through InMail, all within your ATS.

3. Email. OK, so email isn’t exactly groundbreaking technology. However, the ability to integrate your email system into your ATS is a must-have. This gives you the ability to track candidate communication seamlessly across multiple platforms, rather than keeping it siloed among disjointed systems. Email integration prevents duplication of efforts, miscommunication and the unprofessional appearance of the right hand not knowing what the left is doing.

4. Social lead targeting. Identifying new client prospects is one of the biggest business development challenges for recruiting firms. Tapping into the social web to find new business is just as lucrative as using it to find talent—and it works much the same way. Social lead targeting solutions like Leadspace can help you identify your ideal buyer—the person inside targeted companies to whom you should be marketing your services—based on his or her social profiles and other contextual data. It’s far more accurate than lead lists, and it allows you to create relevant, meaningful conversations with prospects based on their online social activities.

5. Intelligent Web scraping and data validation. Maintaining up-to-date contact information is an issue for both recruiting prospects and new business leads. Web scraping tools like RingLead Profiler and Broadlook Profiler allow you to search for companies by technology, SIC code and more. You can compile fresh contact data for key personnel — including job titles, social media accounts, and more — in real-time. This allows you to find the right people at the right organizations, to reach out to and initiate a conversation.

The recruiting industry has changed dramatically over just the past five years alone, as a wobbly job market, the Baby Boomer exodus and the arrival of Millennials are creating a perfect storm that is forcing recruiters to upgrade their strategies. Fortunately, there are a lot of great tools available, and most are extremely affordable thanks to the low cost and efficiencies of cloud-based solutions.

Next week, I’ll list another five tools recruiters need.

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Ted Elliott

Ted Elliott
Ted Elliott is CEO of Jobscience.

Ted Elliott

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