Candidates now place a lot of emphasis on the recruitment experience. In many ways, it’s seen as an extension of what working for a company would be like, so your experience must be top class if it’s going to attract the best candidates.

That’s where automation can really help, by taking over more time-consuming and manual tasks, freeing up your recruitment team to focus on relationship building. Here are 15 ways to automate your recruitment process to improve the candidate experience.

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1.   Targeting job postings

Finding the best candidates starts by knowing where to post your vacancies. Automation can strategically post jobs across multiple career boards, so your recruiters don’t spend hours manually searching for the right placements. There’s also software available that can review your job descriptions to check for spelling and grammar mistakes so you make the best first impression for candidates.  

2.   Flagging bias

Some phrases can introduce unconscious bias into your job descriptions and put off minority candidates. Automation can scan for wording like ‘powerful’ and ‘competitive’ and automatically flag these to recruiters for review.  

3.   Pre-screening

To really narrow down your shortlist, you can set specific questions at the start of your recruitment process that automatically rejects a candidate if they give the incorrect yes/no answer. These are dealbreakers for you or your clients, for example, if someone has the right to work in a location or if they hold a driving license (for a role that requires driving). This stops recruiters from wasting their time reviewing candidates who are unsuitable.  

4.   Resume parsing

Automation can scan resumes for keywords that indicate their suitability for a role (like their skills, experience, and any qualifications). It can then build a shortlist based on this information so recruiters only spend their time reviewing the most capable candidates.  

5.   Automatic blinding

Automation software can automatically remove any information that may introduce bias into the recruitment process. Studies have shown that minorities who ‘whiten’ their resumes by deleting references to their minority backgrounds are twice as likely to get an interview compared to candidates who reveal their background. Automation will make the process fairer by removing names, ages, locations, and more from resumes so recruiters can only base their assessments on someone’s ability to do a job.  

6.   Chatbots

Chatbots can help to improve the candidate experience by screening candidates with pre-defined questions, automatically asking someone for their contact information so recruiters can call them back, and answering simple questions like office opening hours.  

7.   Matching candidates to roles

Advanced algorithms can now use a candidate’s experience and skills to match them to available roles. This will potentially save days of searching for recruiters who can see suitable candidates at-a-glance. Time-to-fill will, therefore, be drastically reduced. It can also boost diversity as decisions are made based on skill and experience data.  

A further boost comes with candidate rediscovery. Candidates who aren’t suitable for a role can be kept on file for future opportunities. Matching algorithms will surface these candidates for suitable roles, making it easier for recruiters to fill positions as soon as they become available.  

8.   Automated shortlisting

Hand-in-hand with automatic matching, your recruiters can see a shortlist of the best candidates based on who most closely matches a job’s requirements. This ensures the top candidates are offered an interview immediately before they go to another role, and worst-fit candidates also get quick closure so they can move on to a new opportunity.  

9.   Updating applicant status

Updating your candidates from passive to active (and vice versa) is a commonly missed task that can have huge ramifications on your candidate relationship management. Automating this task is an easy way to improve the candidate experience and communications. Plus, candidates and recruiters will know exactly where they are in the hiring process, making it more transparent and efficient.  

10.   Notifications when stages change

When a candidate’s stage changes they can be sent an automatic notification using their preferred communication style (email or text message, for example). This keeps them updated and engaged throughout the recruitment process.

11.   Interview scheduling

Finding a suitable time for an interview can be one of the most time-consuming tasks for a recruiter. Instead of going back and forth with a candidate, with automated interview scheduling a recruiter simply has to fill in their availability and candidates can then self-book based on this information. It could even be integrated with a chatbot to improve the experience further.  

12.   First day messaging

The first day is busy for everyone involved and things could easily be overlooked. Automation can ensure that candidates start their first day with all the information needed. Their onboarding documentation can also be automatically sent to HR and other departments to make the process as efficient as possible.

13.   Tidying candidate lists

Automation is key when it comes to cleaning and maintaining data. Your candidate contact information can quickly change, but with automation, your team can keep on top of any changes. This ensures your recruiters don’t waste time emailing candidates with incorrect or ‘no email’ accounts.  

14.   Improving candidate relationship management

Every little helps when it comes to nurturing candidates for future roles and automation can help you keep on top of things like birthdays and work anniversaries when you can reach out to potential candidates. It can also be used to automatically send nurture emails, like company updates or industry news to keep candidates warm and up-to-date with your company. Automatic job alerts could encourage candidates to keep applying for future roles with your organization.  

15.   Diversifying your talent pool

With automation software automatically scanning candidate profiles, matching them to roles, and surfacing hidden talent, your potential talent pool will automatically widen. It also opens your recruitment process up to different ‘types’ of talent like existing employees, contractors and freelancers, alumni, or those in your wider network. Anyone potentially could be a suitable candidate and as long as you have the right data your automation tool can find them.  

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