In our digitalized world, plenty of professional routines rely on software tools, and recruiting is not an exception. Successful recruiters use a whole range of diverse tools and systems to optimize their search for ideal candidates, so actual professional recruiting is not just about googling a few contacts up and redirecting them to a potential employer. Here are the top examples of software recruiters need to satisfy both the employer’s and the candidate’s requirements — just in case you should consider a career in recruiting or have been wondering why good professionals are so hard to find and why recruiting agencies charge so much for their services.
Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS)
This is the key tool for working with applicants and ensuring every party involved is up to date on the hiring process. Since candidates go through different stages of the recruiting process, from application to hiring, and there is often more than just one recruiter or manager involved, it is important to have a system everyone can assess and see how things are going.
Some of the best ATS examples in today’s market include:
- Freshteam is the top recruiting choice, according to Forbes;
- JazzHR, ideal for for startups in different development stages;
- Workable, with its specific focus on computer software companies;
- and Rippling, a tool that combines ATS and payroll tracking functionality.
Contact database building tools
Often, recruiters do not wait for candidates’ applications and contact people themselves. But starting a search for potential candidates whenever a new opening arises would be too time-consuming and counter-productive. That is why it is important to have a database of professionals recruiters can reach out to whenever necessary. Professional tools like SignalHire are designed to simplify this search, allowing bulk and individual contact lookup by industry, job title, experience, and many other parameters. Before the introduction of these tools, recruiters had to rely on manual search, which seriously slowed down the whole recruiting process.
CV Parsing
Another time-consuming stage of recruiting that has been revolutionized with software is CV parsing. The resume parsing technology automatically analyzes CV data and shortlists candidates most suited for a specific opening. Besides, it can be very useful for structuring all available resumes into a single format to make them more easily scannable. After all, different candidates use different fonts and structural patterns, and skipping from one pattern to another takes both time and brain effort, which also slows down resume screening. The top resume parsers today are Bullhorn, HireAbility, hireEZ, and Sovren Resume Parser.
Social media sites
Who can imagine a life without social media today? So, obviously, job candidate search takes place there, too. LinkedIn is the obvious go-to place when looking for candidates, partners, or any other professional connections. And today’s recruiting software also adjusts to this development, offering new and effective ways of engaging with people. For example, recruiters can locate contacts on LinkedIn and extract their emails to their own contact databases. The search for a user’s email is not manual, of course. Contact databases like the above-mentioned SignalHire have plugins to extract this info in one click.
But why would recruiters need to contact candidates directly instead of just messaging them on LinkedIn? First, not everyone is active on social media every day, and often, a quick reply is necessary. Besides, considering that not all recruiters are equally attentive and responsible when contacting candidates, LinkedIn InMail response rates in some industries are growing alarmingly low. But a direct email into a candidate’s inbox will certainly get more attention and will indicate that a recruiter is actually interested in this candidate instead of just bombarding every contact on their Connections list with the same generic messages.
Here, it is important to add that LinkedIn is not the only platform to search for talent. There are dedicated platforms frequented by software developers, web designers, and other professionals. The trick is to know where your talent is ‘hanging’, and then, recruiters can go to a relevant social media site to pick them up.
Background Screening
Background checks are very important in some industries, especially in high-ranking positions. Special software, such as IntelliCorp, for example, can run all sorts of legal, financial, and even medical background checks on a candidate. But often, such a detailed CIA-level investigation is excessive, and recruiters limit themselves to scanning through a potential candidate’s social media — especially personal accounts.
A professional tool for finding emails, for example, can also pull other contact data, including address, phone number, links to social media accounts, and even personal websites, when available. After all, background screening stage is important not only to ensure the company’s safety. It also gives recruiters a chance to evaluate the candidate and see if this person could become a good fit for an already established corporate ethics. And that means a handful for employers who rely on teamwork and collaboration!
Analytics and Reporting
It is impossible to put any process on wheels without analyzing its weak spots and past failures. Another reason to use analytics software is to get a detailed picture of the company’s hiring needs — starting from simple things, like which vacancies are most common, to less transparent ones, like positions with the highest turnover. There is a whole range of recruiting analytics tools that can accommodate different purposes, and some of them are designed specifically to highlight problem areas in the hiring process as a whole.
Today, the top analytics and reporting for recruitment include:
- iMocha, with its job-specific assessment of candidates and powerful reporting capability, suitable for small and large enterprises alike;
- Yello, a tool that can integrate with an ATS and provide recruiters with the most vital insights into their hiring trends;
- Smart Recruiters, a system designed specifically for large recruiting agencies to optimize their operations and provide managers with the most data-driven insights and ensure that managers find the best human talent available.
- and Zoho, a service with a handy dashboard and the ability to analyze plenty of hiring trends – from how much time it takes to fill the most common vacancies to offer acceptance rates on different job openings.
Candidate Relationship Management (CRM)
Candidate relationship management systems are very similar to applicant tracking systems we have mentioned at the beginning of this article. CRMs, like ATSs, can track all communication with candidates. But CRM is not an alternative to an ATS — rather, it’s an improved, more complex version that can accomplish more goals. First, it tracks not only active candidates at different stages of the recruiting process. It also stores information on passive candidates who are not actively applying for a job but could still become valuable additions to your team later.
Some of the most popular CRM systems in the market are:
- Salesforce Sales Cloud, designed with mid-size companies and large enterprises in mind;
- HubSpot Sales Hub is a very versatile tool that offers a lot of useful features and can accommodate mid- and small-size companies;
- ClickUp, a service that positions itself as a productivity platform and is most favored by small companies;
- and Monday Sales CRM, a tool popular not only in recruiting but also in advertising and IT.
These are the recruiting essentials, but even those are not always enough to ensure a complete recruiting cycle. After all, in many companies, in-house recruiters are also human resources managers, so it is up to them to welcome new employees onboard. That literally includes onboarding tools for sending candidates all the information they will need — contracts, passwords, joint documents, contact info of colleagues they will need to contact, etc. So, as you can see, there is a pretty good reason why recruiting is such a high-paid job and in such steady demand. It takes way more effort and creativity than one might think at first!
