Recruitment Software 101 What is Talent Acquisition? Once upon a time, personnel departments existed to simply find warm bodies to fill vacancies. Today, the best companies realize that success requires more than just hiring anyone. Talent acquisition is a strategic business function that helps businesses to grow by not only finding people to fill vacancies but specifically finding the best people to support the company s goal. While personnel departments simply focused on hiring, talent acquisition has a strategic focus on employment branding, recruitment marketing, sourcing, recruiting, and onboarding tactics to support a company s overarching strategic goals. What is a Talent Acquisition Suite? A Talent Acquisition Suite is a fully integrated set of software products that empowers talent acquisition teams with sourcing, applicant tracking, and onboarding capabilities. Of course, a Talent Acquisition Suite does not stop there. Beyond the basics, a Talent Acquisition Suite offers features that facilitate employment branding and consistent internal and external communications while streamlining overall talent acquisition processes. A bestof-breed Talent Acquisition Suite will also provide access to automated, tried-and-true talent acquisition methods, such as automated job board posting, as well as facilitate new and innovative recruitment approaches like mobile portals, video capabilities, career microsites, and social media recruitment. Why Does Talent Acquisition Deserve a Suite of its Own? Considering the importance of the talent acquisition team as a strategic business partner, members of the talent acquisition team need dedicated tools to succeed. Unlike post-hire employee data management solutions -- which live in the relatively controlled confines of a company s existing culture and operations truly effective pre-hire solutions need to leverage the latest social and mobile functionality to compete in what is an extremely vast, fast-paced, and uncontrollable external candidate landscape. And the technologies used in the external candidate world evolve at a rate that most ERP and full-suite providers simply can t keep up with. By comparison, a Talent Acquisition Suite focuses on the candidate and hiring manager experience, ensuring that customers have the right tools to attract, communicate with, engage, and retain the best talent.
Consider the following top 5 reasons companies decide to implement a Talent Acquisition Suite: Talent Acquisition is the Key to Meeting Strategic Business Goals Today, more and more businesses are beginning to realize that hiring the right talent is the single most important component in achieving strategic business goals. While this may seem like an exaggeration, statistics support the vital nature of this element of a company s business strategy. According to a study by Aberdeen, organizations that have a best-in-class approach to talent acquisition reap the following benefits as compared to organizations that do not have the same focus: Reach twice as many organizational goals over the course of a year Achieve five times the improvement in customer satisfaction Experience a 9% reduction in cost-per-hire Competition for the Best Candidates is Fierce There is a reason why it is called the war for talent. Increasing competition in the marketplace and the ever-growing skill gap has made it extremely challenging to find the right candidate at the right time. Acquiring the talent you need to reach business goals is much more complex than just posting a job vacancy to a job board and offering the position to whomever applies. In order to make your business goals a reality, you must identify candidates who have the right skills, the right experience, and are the right cultural fit. As challenging as that may seem, the benefits are clear. Best-in-class talent acquisition organizations benefit from: 95% of first-year employees are retained 82% of first-year employees meet their first performance milestones on time 16% year-over-year improvement in hiring manager satisfaction Talent Acquisition is Much More than Just Recruiting While the terms are sometimes used synonymously, talent acquisition goes far beyond recruiting and, because of that, cannot be supported by a basic resume database. Talent acquisition is strategic. It includes every activity required to fulfill an organization s need for human capital, such as recruitment marketing, sourcing, screening, interviewing, assessing, and onboarding. Consider the importance of employment branding, business networking, target audience segmentation, candidate relationship management, and the ability to monitor key performance indicators (KPIs), metrics, and analytics within your talent acquisition program.
Talent Acquisition is THE Most Dynamic Aspect of Human Capital Management Do you remember when employees would start their career at the same company from which they would retire in 30 years? Do you recall the days of advertising job openings in the newspaper on Sunday and receiving resumes in the mail? Well, those days have gone the way of the dinosaur! Now, we live in a fast-paced global economy where technological innovation has made nearly constant change inevitable. When we talk about talent acquisition today, we use words that didn t even exist just a few years ago: mobile, SEO, video interviewing, social media, gamification, and talent networks. Savvy, innovative organizations realize that they must keep up with evolving trends if they want to come out ahead in the war for top talent. Talent acquisition teams are wholly dependent on external, candidate facing technologies which are capable of evolving at a pace with which large ERP and HRIS solution providers just can t keep up. Only a dedicated Talent Acquisition Suite is able to keep your company's recruitment efforts ahead of the curve. Talent Acquisition Affects Your Customers Members of the talent acquisition team are brand ambassadors who are equally responsible for supporting and protecting the company s reputation as is the marketing department. Why is a company s employment brand equally important to the company s consumer brand? Because candidates are simply customers who want to work for you and, like with every other customer, word-of-mouth advertising can make or break a company. In order for the talent acquisition team to present your company in the most attractive light, members need access to the best possible tools for their job. This underscores the importance of having consistent and strong brand communication at all levels in the talent acquisition process: from branded career portals, to recruitment marketing materials, to day-to-day candidate communications. Only a wholly integrated Talent Acquisition Suite can guarantee this type of consistency. Furthermore, it is important to remember that your hiring managers are the talent acquisition team's customers. For the good of the business, hiring manager satisfaction is also paramount. The many features and benefits associated with a best-of-breed Talent Acquisition Suite help to streamline processes and improve hiring manager satisfaction.
What You Should Consider When Evaluating a Recruiting Software Purchase As you research and demo with applicant tracking system (ATS) vendors, you may get bogged down with information that makes your purchase decision more difficult. To simplify the process, use this guide as a list of factors to consider when searching for the right ATS to meet all the needs of your organization. To determine the value of any ATS you evaluate, calculate a total score out of the 30 key features below. Vendor: Customer reference Name: Evaluation Date Ease of Use Confident that the software is both intuitive and easy to use The look and feel of the software is clean, organized, and easy to navigate I can track the entire recruiting process from one screen, helping me determine what my next steps should be I am confident that hiring managers will find the software easy-to-use, speeding up the recruitment process The administrative burden (paper, postage, filing, data entry) will be reduced if not completely eliminated The recruiting workflow can be configured to match our current workflow, resulting in little disruption of our operations /6 Ease of Use Score
The Candidate Experience Our Career Portal will be fully branded to match our company website The Career Portal can be optimized for jobseeker traffic from a mobile device Candidates will be able to apply to open positions quickly through their LinkedIn, Google +, or Facebook accounts It is easy for candidates to search open positions and apply /4 Candidate Experience Score Job Management Creating a job is easy I can configure the approval process for a new requisition I can associate screening questions to any job The software s job board posting capabilities allow me to automatically post to any job board My team, and even the company s employees, can take advantage of social media posting capabilities that will increase our passive candidate pool, brand awareness, and employee referrals A job s workflow lets me see the status of each candidates and where they are in the process I can communicate with candidates, hiring managers, and other recruiters through the software in order to schedule appointments, interviews, and communicate opportunities, rejections, and offers /7 Job Management Score
Searching and Reporting Every field within the software is searchable and reportable The software comes with a library of standard reports I can create custom reports I can quickly access important metrics that show me information that highlight efficiency and bottlenecks /4 Search and Reporting Score Integration The software will integrate with my HRIS/Payroll system The software will integrate with my other existing vendors, including background check providers, assessment providers, and payroll providers /2 Integration Score
Technology/Roadmap/Support The software is web-based and the company explained the benefits associated with web-based software I m confident that the vendor will continue to update an improve its software as recruiting and talent management trends evolve, keeping me ahead of my competitors I do not have to pay extra for customer service, regardless of my company s size The software will scale with my company s needs I will not have to pay for additional databases or modules to accommodate company growth Routine software upgrades are provided to me at no additional cost Multiple training options (webinar, manuals, etc.) are available at no cost to my company /6 Technology/Roadmap/Support Score /30 Total ATS Score
Questions You Should ask Customer References When Evaluating a Recruiting Software Purchase As you research applicant tracking system (ATS) providers, you may get bogged down with information that makes your purchase decision more difficult. To simplify the process, use this guide to help you remember the important questions you should ask a vendor s customer references. Vendor: Customer reference Name: Evaluation Date 1. Has the product met your expectations? Are you satisfied with this product/service? 2. What sold you on this product? Features? Anticipated ROI? Customer service? Ease of use? 3. Has this system met your applicant tracking and workflow requirements? Do you anticipate that the system will scale with your organization in the future? 4. Describe the configurability (unique workflows, specific fields, etc.) of the system. Is it easy to make changes? 5. Were you trained on how to use the system? Did the training meet your needs? 6. Have you made recommendations to enhance the system? If so, what enhancements did you recommend? 7. Are you confident in this vendor s product roadmap? That it will continue to innovate, develop, and provide regular updates to its software? 8. How long did implementation take from the time you committed to purchase the product to actual go-live and use of the product? 9. Did you experience any issues during implementation? After implementation? 10. Are you satisfied with the customer service you ve received before, during, and after implementation?