Hiring new talent continues to be critical to organizational success across every industry. And while the Digital Age has made it possible for job seekers and employers to connect more easily, it’s also introduced new complexities in the hiring process. For every job listing, many organizations are inundated with resumes and applications. The number increases when you open the talent pool to include remote applicants.
Sifting through such a significant volume of candidates can be overwhelming for even the most well-staffed HR departments, especially during a time when HR’s role continues to evolve. Recently, many organizations have increasingly begun to task their HR teams with human capital management (HCM) responsibilities, which may include training and development, career advancement oversight, and performance-related activities. With more strategic initiatives to focus on, HR has less time for routine tasks, like sorting through resumes.
Fortunately, hiring automation makes the recruitment process simpler and easier to manage. Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) tools help businesses intelligently manage the processes involved with sourcing talent. These solutions don’t replace your existing HR departments, but they do make your team’s recruiting tasks easier. Here’s a closer look at what these tools entail, and how they can help your organization.
Examples of hiring automation
To better understand how automated hiring works, it’s helpful to have some examples of what it can do. Here are some ways hiring automation is already helping hiring teams across the globe.
Engaging the talent pool
Automated technologies can identify and engage with passive candidates on your behalf, encouraging viable candidates to look at your company’s openings. They can collect and interpret information about candidates’ skills, experience, and other qualities to match them with openings in your organization and make them more visible in the system as priority contacts. This can save a tremendous amount of time that recruiting teams would otherwise spend browsing profiles on a job board to find an ideal match. Instead, you can focus on those higher quality potential matches for personal outreach.
Screening applicants
When it comes to recruiting new talent, the goal is to look for quality and not necessarily quantity. Unfortunately, quantity is often what recruiters encounter—and weeding out the candidates who aren’t the right fit tends to be tedious and time-consuming.
Instead of you reading resumes or browsing profiles online, automated technologies can provide you with a list of pre-qualified candidates based on the most important qualifications you’ve identified for open roles. Doing so can prevent you from onboarding a hire who’s a bad fit—a mistake that can be costly to correct.
Scheduling interviews
Interview scheduling is an important step of the hiring process, but it can take a great deal of time when there are several candidates to consider. Fortunately, this routine task is perfect for automation. AI-based tools can coordinate calendars to find the best time slots on the calendar for HR teams, hiring managers, or other employees. Candidates can select from a list of open slots and receive reminders about upcoming interviews.
Performing assessments and background checks
Many roles require the completion of simple assessments, forms, and background checks. When you’re ready to start onboarding a new hire, intelligent hiring tools can help automate the distribution and collection of these assessments. The completed documents can be added to the new employee’s file so your records are as up to date as possible.
Applicant tracking system oversight
Tools known as applicant tracking systems (ATS) are used to manage applicants as they move through the hiring pipeline. Automated hiring tools leverage capabilities like AI and ML to prioritize potential job candidates and keep track of applicants’ statuses for you, reducing the amount of manual oversight you need to perform. The ATS parameters can be adjusted to meet your company’s needs, especially if you’re looking to hire inclusively and attract non-traditional candidates.
Adopting an automated hiring process
If your HR team is having trouble filling openings, or other strategic initiatives are falling to the wayside, it’s likely time to consider incorporating hiring automation into your recruitment process. To promote a seamless transition, start by considering your organization’s most pressing challenges. For example, you may be struggling to screen candidates due to the sheer volume of applicants you encounter. Or, you may be having difficulty filling highly technical roles and want to expand your talent pool by seeking remote workers.
As you consider possible tools, you may want to set up a list of questions. Here are some ideas to get you started:
- What are our pain points, and how can this tool help solve them?
- Which hiring tasks tend to take up the most time, and is it possible to automate them?
- What will the steps in our ideal hiring pipeline look like? For example, will we need to perform video interviews, and if so, who will be involved?
- Which data points will be most useful for our candidate assessments and future hiring decisions?
No matter which option you choose, start with your core goals in mind and continue to refine or expand them as needed. Oftentimes, hiring automation is scalable and can grow as your needs evolve. Additionally, keep in mind that AI and ML will “learn” your organization’s needs over time, and will become increasingly effective at finding the best talent matches.
If you’re looking to upgrade your organization with global hiring automation, turn to Oyster. With intuitive tools, our platform streamlines the global hiring process by automating routine tasks, making global hiring fast and easy. See our tool in action by scheduling a demo.
About Oyster
Oyster is a global employment platform designed to enable visionary HR leaders to find, engage, pay, manage, develop, and take care of a thriving distributed workforce. Oyster lets growing companies give valued international team members the experience they deserve, without the usual headaches and expense.
Oyster enables hiring anywhere in the world—with reliable, compliant payroll, and great local benefits and perks.
