Technology: a recruitment game changer in 2016 and beyond

Peter Linas

That technology can save recruiters time and help them become more efficient is widely acknowledged across the industry. In fact, if you ask the average recruiter about the role of technology, they’ll likely accept that it’s useful, and that their lives are generally easier because of it. However, they’re also likely to express its worth in logistical terms – how it factors into data storage and consistent record keeping, for example. This is a misstep.

If you work in recruitment, you’ll know better than anyone that at the end of the day, it’s a people business. Recruiters must forge strong ties with clients in order to ensure a steady supply of vacancies – and in order to fill these vacancies, they need to forge strong ties with candidates.

This will never change and as you can’t automate relationships – unlike a host of other professions – recruitment professionals won’t end up being replaced by technology. However, they can be enhanced by it. And it’s those agencies that recognise and take advantage of technology’s ability to manage and build on these relationships that will triumph in 2016 and beyond. Here’s why:

Humanising technology

Clients and candidates have come to expect more from recruiters. Clients demand you know their business inside out from day one. And with a whole plethora of information available online including their blog, social media profiles, the company website and even a simple Google search, why wouldn’t they? And both clients and candidates expect an instant response. Everything else is done quickly and effectively, so they demand the same of recruiters; though they might be one of several thousand contacts, they expect to be treated like your top priority. If they ring up and find you ill-equipped to deal with their query – or if you don’t respond to them quickly enough – it’s likely the relationship will sour.

Currently, most software doesn’t facilitate this quality of service – but as applications become less one-dimensional, it will inch closer and closer. While databases are important, solid relationship management tools are the future.

At their very best, they can provide key insights into your most important relationships and enhance key business activities across the organisation and all of its staff as a result. People skills will remain essential, and technology should still be based firmly in the background (the idea certainly isn’t to make it clear that your consultants are receiving assistance from software), but by focusing on the following areas, it can be implemented in a way that significantly enhances the client and candidate experience.

Ease of use

One of the fundamental principles of modern technology is ease of use; if it requires arcane knowledge to work properly, then it has failed utterly.

As mentioned earlier, candidates and clients demand fast responses, regardless of your consultants’ location and other priorities. Recruiters need real time access to information wherever and whenever, and that means you need to find software that is intuitive, usable, and accessible via all mobile devices including laptops, tablets, and phones.

Because recruiters must multitask as part of their daily activities, it’s also necessary that tasks can be resumed quickly and that data capture is automated. This means there is no need to trawl through emails looking for information or manually entering data into the system.

Relationship insights

Big data may be a big deal, but on its own, it’s not actually that useful. In fact, having more information to parse can be a hindrance, and manually trying to identify those correlations that actually mean something is usually about as effective as reading tea leaves.

Being able to retrieve the most useful – and current – data should be a priority. Certain analytical tools will pull relevant information about, for example, engagement, to determine from the up-to-date information who has been most actively involved with your company – and who has been cagier – within your client and customer base. This data will be stored and analysed over time, giving your consultants an idea of both the history of the relationship and its overall trajectory.

Proactive intelligence

Of course, simply understanding the needs of clients and candidates won’t be enough. They expect you to anticipate them. The recruitment company that can do this has a distinct advantage over its competitors, because it takes much of the guesswork out of the process.

Currently, there are analytical tools available that can not only continuously store all relevant information (and pull it at a moment’s notice), but provide insight into which “triggers” will provoke further action – as well as intelligent recommendations for future interactions. Any software that can take the guesswork out of the equation will be invaluable to recruiters going forward.

2016 and beyond

The above offers a brief glimpse into the shape technology is currently taking, and the shape it will take in future. But it’s far from exhaustive, and if the next decade follows the pattern laid out by the preceding one, there’ll be more tools available than anyone can reasonably anticipate.

It’s likely to be a veritable buffet; already it’s hard to know where to begin. My advice? Focus on technology that can positively redefine your client and candidate relationships.

Peter Linas is international managing director at Bullhorn.