Recruiters are always busy—especially in today’s market. Talent is short, but demand is high, which means that recruiters have to work double time to meet their clients’ needs.
In the past, such talent shortages have left many recruiters in bind. However, with the technologies available now, recruiters have powerful tools to make their work more efficient, and effective without sacrificing quality of life.
Plus, letting technology handle mundane and monotonous tasks leaves your recruiters free to invest more time in candidate and client relationships—which are the lynchpin of their success.
But new recruitment technologies are popping up almost every day. It’s almost impossible to keep track of everything, and difficult to answer the question: which tools are the most important for recruiters to be productive?
In this article, we’ll walk through seven of the most important tools to help your agency remain effective.
DISCLAIMER: Apart from Great Recruiters, we’re not endorsing every tool listed in this article. Our goal is simply to provide examples of technology that you should include in your stack—you’ll need to find the one that works best for your agency’s needs.
1. Applicant tracking system
Applicant tracking systems (or ATS), as the name implies, help you track your applicants as they progress through your pipeline. Ideally, your platform should be mobile friendly, integrate with your other solutions, and feature built-in analytics so you have fingertip access to critical insights.
Examples of applicant tracking systems include:
- Bullhorn (also recruitment marketing platform)
- Jobvite
- Greenhouse
- Workable
- Recruitee
2. Recruitment marketing & sourcing
Every recruiter needs a consistent inflow of candidates to do their job. Recruitment marketing tools help do just that, enabling candidates to advertise job openings, engage with candidates, and nurture interest. In some cases, your ATS will double as your recruitment marketing platform.
One of the biggest advantages of a recruitment marketing system is the ability to passively nurture relationships through automated emails—whether triggered by change in status, specific dates, or other events.
Some examples of recruitment marketing tools include:
- Bullhorn (also ATS)
- Jibe
- Smashfly
- Beamery
- Phenom People
- ClickIQ
- VONQ
- Joveo
- CareerArc
- Recruitment Edge
- HiringSolved
- TalentBin
3. Referral platform
Candidate referrals do more than just fill your pipeline. They’re a measure of the quality of the candidate experience, and help demonstrate that you’ve got a high-performing team. Plus, it results in lower hiring costs, faster time to hire, and higher value employees.
Many recruitment marketing softwares will have built-in employee referral programs, while other platforms integrate with stand-alone referral platforms. Regardless of which solution you use, you’ll need this technology to make it easy for candidates to refer recruiters, companies, and job openings to their colleagues.
Referral platforms will usually be able to integrate with your payroll system, automating the payment of referral fees.
Here are some examples of referral platforms:
- Staffing Referrals
- EmployeeReferrals
- ERIN
- Teamable
- RolePoint
- Boon
4. Reference checking
Checking references manually is time consuming and monotonous, and can result in errors if not done properly. With reference checking software, you can automate that process to create more efficiency and accuracy.
References receive a link to a survey on the skills and conduct of the candidate in questions, a similar format to employee reviews. Recruiters can then review the results, and only reach out to the references when there’s an especially good or bad response they want to follow up on.
Some popular reference checking platforms include:
- Xref
- SkillSurvey Reference
- Hireology
- Harver
- Crosschq
5. Candidate screening
It goes without saying that many of your applicants—if not most of them—won’t be a good fit for the role you’re hiring for. Unfortunately, candidate screening is one of the most time-consuming parts of the hiring process, especially when you have to do it manually.
No recruiter wants to waste their time talking to people who will never be a good fit. Thankfully, there are plenty of automated candidate screening tools that help make that process easier.
Candidate screening platforms can scrape resumes and CVs for important keywords and skill sets, and even enable video interviews to screen candidates digitally before an in-person interview. Note that even the best filters require a human to verify the results, so it doesn’t entirely remove the human touch from the process. However, automation can definitely help move things along faster and help recruiters better prioritize their time.
These are some popular candidate screening platforms:
- Adaface
- Aspiring Minds
- Codility
- The English Quiz
- HR Avatar
- McQuaig
- Saberr
6. Candidate assessment
At first glance, candidate screening and candidate assessment look like they overlap a lot. But here’s a helpful way to think of the difference: candidate screening helps you weed out the bad, while candidate assessment takes what’s left and brings out the good.
So just like there’s candidate screening technology to help recruiters be more efficient, there’s also candidate assessment technology. These tools can help you test candidates on technical skills, communication skills, cognitive ability, and situational judgment. Some culture-specific questions can help you figure out whether candidates are a good organizational fit.
Keep in mind that candidate assessment platforms are only as effective as the questions you feed into them. So using one isn’t a “set it and forget it” operation. You need to continually return and reevaluate your practices to make sure it’s helping you make better placements faster.
Examples of candidate assessment tools include:
- Harver
- Hundred5
- Pymetrics
7. Experience management & brand promotion platform
Experience management & brand promotion — it’s important to manage and elevate your recruiters’ reputations for referrals, inbound leads, etc. (“good people know good people”)
If you want to be competitive, a positive reputation is foundational. It’s not optional, it’s not a “nice to have.” It’s an investment that, over the long haul, will empower you to attract and retain more quality candidates.
When looking for a new recruiter, the first stop for modern candidates will be online validation. That includes looking at online reviews, your website, and evaluating your brand overall. If you don’t invest in your online brand presence and reputation, those candidates will simply go somewhere else—before you even get a chance to talk with them.
Great Recruiters is your best option for this kind of platform—and we’re leading the charge as the only one in the space.
Final thoughts: How to evaluate the best tech for your agency
When evaluating recruitment technology, it’s not just about having the best and most powerful tools on the market. It’s about having the tools that your team will actually use, and will empower you to be more productive.
After all, buying technology is like buying a gym membership. If you aren’t using it, then you won’t see any results. And for many recruiters, they find themselves armed with solutions that aren’t a good fit.
So be sure to involve your team in this process, asking them what would empower them to do their jobs easier. This helps build buy-in, which will make the adoption process that much smoother.
Remember: don’t fall in love with the technology. Fall in love with what it does for you and your team.
