What Is Recruiting Automation?

Recruiting automation enables you to streamline repetitive workflows, processes, and communication throughout the entire recruiting cycle to ultimately improve bottom-line and top-line growth.

With recruiting automation, your team can:

Reduce Busywork

Automate repetitive, often-forgotten tasks and ensure the right processes happen at the right time.

Improve Data Accuracy

Identify inaccurate or incomplete records and automate various cleanup processes.

Engage Your Audiences

Create high-touch experiences with candidates, clients and contractors throughout the entire recruiting process.

Types of Recruiting Automation

Recruiting automation can assist your team in two distinct ways: via an automation platform or through products in your tech stack that automate key processes.

Platform

Platforms provide core functionality and provide an integration point for other applications. They ‘talk’ with complementary solutions and are foundational to a staffing firm’s technology stack. They also allow flexibility for staffing firms with different priorities or pain points.

Products

Products integrate with platforms to help mutual customers solve their business problems. Products have a specialized focus that can limit their scopes, such as VMS or onboarding automation, but they are valuable stand-alone or connected with a platform.

3.2

Did You Know?

Automating routine tasks like sending email, writing text messages, updating records, launching surveys, adding notes and tasks saves an average of 3.2 hours per day per employee.

16,560

Did You Know?

Recruiters and salespeople can automate 16,560 email, texts, surveys, field updates, notes and tasks saving a whopping 763 hours per year!

Who Benefits From Recruiting Automation?

Your entire business will benefit from recruiting automation, but a few key roles within the team will notice measurable gains in productivity.

Recruiters & Salespeople

Improved productivity, less busywork, more effective outreach to candidates or clients

Message automation
Send a welcome email to new applicants, a text message on a contractor’s first day, an interview email reminder, or anything else you can think of. Automate touchpoints throughout the recruiting process.

Process automation
Update records, add notes, create tasks, and notify record owners of key changes – all on autopilot. Improve productivity and ensure important tasks don’t slip through the cracks.

Intelligent job matching
With the aid of machine learning, match candidates with job openings from your ATS for use in any outbound communication or automation.

Operations

Enforce best practices at scale across an organization

Intelligent owner assignment
Automatically assign records to the applicable recruiters and salespeople so each team can understand who they’re working with.

Data cleanup
Declutter your ATS by finding outdated records, people with no contact information, or records without activity and speed up searches in your system.

Marketing

Better data quality and a consistent brand experience

Branded communications
Every email, text and outbound message is on-brand and consistent throughout the entire organization. This leads to a more cohesive experience for candidates and clients.

Webpage tracking
Track website activity from candidates or sales contacts and trigger automated actions. When a top candidate views a job, automatically send an email. If a sales lead downloads a whitepaper, set a task to call them right away.

How Recruiting Automation is Helping the Staffing Industry Today

How are staffing firms seeing the benefits of automation right now? The most common use cases for automation are to help businesses increase productivity, improve redeployment rates, and fill jobs faster.

1 %

Placements from existing candidates

Automation helps turn your inactive ATS candidates into an engaged talent pool through consistent, relevant communication.

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Increase in redeployment rate

Capture more value from vetted, hard-working candidates by automatically engaging throughout the entire assignment.

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Improvement in NPS

Keep a finger on the pulse of your business by automating frequent NPS surveys to contractors and clients and uncover issues before they spiral.

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Recruiting automation is a force multiplier

We analysed data from Bullhorn customers using automation and those that did not. The results? Automation helps firms create more competitive distance in job adds, submissions and placements vs. those firms that haven’t automated processes and communications.

We're going to have to keep automating processes. Everyone in the industry has had to improve their technology this year to support people working from home, so anything not making us efficient will slow us down. It's about automating, getting better integrations between our systems, and making the whole internal process as seamless as possible.
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Luke Howes CFO, Six Degrees Executive

What Can You Do with Recruiting Automation?

Whether you are an experienced recruiting automation user or are just getting started, here are recruitment-specific automations that you can implement now

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SIMPLE

Data Cleanup

Improve data accuracy and create a more actionable talent pool by automating simple data cleanup tasks like copying, clearing, and setting field values.

  • Example: update a candidate status to ‘Active’ the day their assignment ends or copy the Placement End Date to the Date Available.
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SIMPLE

Interview Reminders

Less friction and more interaction around interviews lead to faster placements and feedback.

  • Example: Send a text message reminder two days before and another the day of. You can also use this on the client-side to gather interview feedback after an interview ends.
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SIMPLE

Capture NPS

Net Promoter Scores (NPS) help track your reputation and overall satisfaction over time. NPS scores are helpful to assess the overall experience for candidates and clients.

  • Example: Send customer NPS surveys during a contract assignment at regular intervals.

ADVANCED

vms match and message

Match & message VMS jobs to candidates

Shorten the time it takes to post candidates to new VMS jobs by automatically matching candidates to new VMS jobs and then automating messaging to those candidates to assess interest.

ADVANCED

trigger tasks from website

Add task and message a visitor to key webpage

When a prospective customer or A-player visits certain pages, automation kicks in and alerts the assigned salesperson or recruiter, puts a task for them in Bullhorn, and can add a note to their record.

ADVANCED

prescreen candidates

Pre-screen candidates to create shortlists

Gather interest or pre-screen candidates for open roles using automated surveys. For example, when a new role opens, you automatically match candidates and send a survey capturing job-specific criteria like lifting capacity or simple yes/no assessments.

Common Automation Fears

In today’s fast-paced business world, standing still means you might as well be moving backward. If you do things the way you always have, your competitors will find ways to work smarter, faster (and not harder). With that said, here are three common concerns about implementing automation and how to overcome them:

Fear of the unknown

The challenge: Can you trust technology? Today’s automation technology focuses not on replacing man with the machine but on alleviating the most laborious and monotonous aspects of a job, allowing workers to focus their efforts on higher-value tasks and let recruiting robots handle the busywork.

How you overcome it: By taking the time to understand exactly how automation works and what it could do for you, unknowns quickly become known and the fear evaporates.

Fear of change

The challenge: While our urge for comfort and consistency is strong, an attitude of ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ simply doesn’t cut it in today’s business landscape.

How you overcome it: If you can overcome the fear of change, you’ll quickly realize that the risks of automation aren’t all that risky. Once you’ve incorporated automation, your team will be doing higher value, less laborious, and less monotonous work.

Fear of unintended consequences

The challenge: What about the changes that can’t be foreseen? The fear of unintended consequences – of damaging systems and procedures that up until this point has run smoothly – is an entirely fair one to have.

How you overcome it: Start by planning, building, and then testing your automations. Allow employees to get used to the automation and roll out an internal overview before you make the switch. Use this time to identify best practices and create solid processes that workers can follow to the letter.

Questions to Ask When Evaluating a Recruiting Automation Solution

Here are a few questions to ask vendors during the evaluation process:

Can you build your own workflows?
Are you locked-in to a specific vendor’s workflow or do you have the freedom to build workflows based around your unique business processes.

How difficult is it to configure?
Does it require a 3rd party integrator or can you start using it right away?

Can the tool adjust with my business needs?
Ensure your future business needs are met by purchasing a recruiting automation tool that is flexible and configurable with clicks and not code.

How can I measure success?
Look for dashboards and reports that display real-time information and the health of your automation activities.

Can the tool support my entire business?
Purchase a tool that helps automate activities throughout the recruiting cycle and accommodates candidates, clients, submissions, placements, jobs, and other entities in your ATS.

Interested in Automation?

We're standing by to help you understand how automation can transform your business. Learn more today!

What Should You Automate?

There are hundreds of things that could be automated in a recruiting firm. Where do you start? To help, here are three things you should consider to determine where to implement automation:

Where are the gaps in your recruiting process?

Understanding where you are today will help you drive towards where you want to go. In other words, it’s important to figure out where the gaps live in your process and how automation can fill them. Below are some common areas where firms typically see gaps in their processes:

  • No communication around key dates and times. For example, not communicating leading up to an interview or start date.
  • Field values are not updated during key changes in the recruiting cycle. For example, changing a candidate status from passive to active when they apply or forgetting to change a client status to ‘Customer’ after they sign.
  • Lapses in client communication. For example, an active client hasn’t sent a new req in 30 days or not collecting feedback about recent hires from hiring managers.
  • Manual activities can lead to errors or delays. For example, sending emails manually or onboarding documentation.

 

Why do gaps in your recruiting process exist?

Why are new hires falling off? Why do we have candidates off contract with a current status of ‘Placed’? Why is our database full of inactive candidates? Once your team understands why the gaps in your process exist, determining how to address those gaps becomes clearer.

 

How can you fix these gaps with automation?

While automation can make a positive impact on many parts of the recruitment process, it’s important to differentiate between tasks that should be automated from those that should still be handled by each recruiter or team member.

Five Rules to Follow:

  • Automate repetitive processes: Things like updating field values, adding notes, or sending messages.
  • Automate things that happen every day: Things like messaging new applicants or interview prep.
  • Automate around key dates: Things like pre-interview information sequences or first-day need-to-knows
    Automate alerts when things go wrong: Things like receiving a bad satisfaction score from a client or if a consultant hasn’t been contacted in more than 60 days.
  • Automate data hygiene: Things like finding old records or automating the data update process.

 

Two Cases Where You May NOT Want to Automate:

  • If the use case requires a human decision
    While we’re big fans of automating around key dates and decision points, at the end of the day, some decisions are better left to humans, including accepting or rejecting candidates.
  • If the use case requires a human voice
    While there are some options for a voice assistant to book appointments, there is no substitute for human to human voice contact. Calling candidates or having phone conversations with clients should still be handled by recruiters or account managers.

Stumped Where To Start?

Download our free Recruiting Automation Workbook and start mapping and planning your process before you purchase a new automation tool.

Recruiting Automation Checklist

What to look for while you’re evaluating solutions:
Easily create automated workflows with a few clicks rather than code.

Create beautiful, mobile-friendly email templates for use in workflows.

Create and send text messages as part of automated journeys and respond when candidates have questions or concerns.

Integrated with third-party applications to expand capabilities.

Search across all entities to create very granular audience segments for use in workflows.

Leverage a solution built to handle client contacts, candidates, submissions, placements, jobs, and more.

Track the behavior of candidates and clients that visit your website and use that information to take automated action.

Capture satisfaction or NPS scores from candidates and customers to keep tabs on the pulse of your business.

Automatically keep data accurate by updating field values and writing back data to the ATS from survey responses, data age, or online behavior.

Personalize every communication using field values directly from entity records and dynamically use information relevant to the candidate or client.

Build surveys to capture work availability, upload resumes, pre-screen candidates, post-interview satisfaction, and more.

How Bullhorn Can Help Your Automation Journey

We’re pushing innovation in the staffing industry and helping firms automate busywork.

Herefish by Bullhorn

Herefish makes it easy for modern staffing firms to automate workflows, create a pool of talent, and enhance experiences throughout the entire recruiting cycle.

Explore Herefish

Bullhorn VMS Sync with Submittals

The only closed-loop VMS integration available to staffing firms and is empowering firms to fill job openings at over 350 of the world’s largest companies.

Explore VMS Sync

Bullhorn Onboarding

Create electronic pre-hire and onboarding forms, populate fields on forms automatically with job and candidate data, and provide candidates with a secure portal to complete and sign documents easily, allowing them to start their new role sooner.

Explore Onboarding

Marketplace Partners

The Bullhorn Marketplace is home to over 100 pre-integrated solutions that can help you to innovate and differentiate from your competition. With the Marketplace partners focused on recruiting automation, you can build a customised tech stack to power your team’s unique workflows.

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Automation is changing the recruitment and staffing landscape. Contact us today to learn how you can start automating busywork and take back more time.