If you work in HR at a small business, you know there aren’t enough hours in the day to handle all the items on your task list. Recruiting new employees is essential to grow a company, but the amount of paperwork and coordination required to conduct a thorough search for new talent can be overwhelming.
In some cases, the natural reaction is to try to hire as quickly as possible, so you can move on to your next assignment. That approach can be dangerous, however. As the National Federation of Independent Businesses noted in a recent article, it’s common for small businesses to fall into recruiting pitfalls like hiring the first person who comes along, not vetting candidates thoroughly, or scheduling too many interviews on a single day which results in burnout and poor hiring decisions.
Automating the recruiting process may be the solution. Imagine a world where you aren’t trying to keep track of piles of paper applications and references, and you aren’t constantly playing phone tag with candidates as you try to schedule interviews. You actually have time to focus on evaluating different applicants and finding the one that’s the best fit for your open position. Do you doubt that this vision can become a reality? Think again - cost effective applicant tracking systems exist that are designed especially with small businesses in mind.
The first step toward automating your recruiting and hiring processes is to create a “wish list” of tasks that are currently manual and paper-based. One approach is think through the entire hiring lifecycle and consider which processes you’d like to streamline and automate. For example:
- Job postings. Finding the best candidates means publicizing your job postings as widely as possible. But, that also means additional work associated with finding the right newspapers or online job boards to post to. An applicant tracking system can post job openings automatically on leading Internet job boards which reach candidates in multiple cities. More candidates, but less effort.
- Screening questions. Before you have hiring managers invest time in an interview, you probably conduct phone screenings with potential candidates. It makes sense, but it takes time and after the conversations, you most likely have a bunch of hand written notes to decipher. Consider looking for an applicant tracking system that has candidates respond to job-specific screening questions on line and then automatically ranks applicants based on their answers.
- Tracking applicant information. File folders with papers sticking out, emails from hiring managers, sticky notes with the names of references on the edge of the computer monitor. Sound familiar? It’s a common scene among organizations that use manual recruiting processes. With a recruiting system, each candidate has a unique, online file and applicants are organized by the position they applied to. In a glance, it’s easy to gain insight into where people are in the hiring process.
- Interviews and references. Scheduling interviews and gathering references can be some of the most time consuming aspects of recruiting, but time playing phone tag and sending emails doesn’t add a lot of value. A benefit of applicant tracking systems is that they automatically communicate with candidates and schedule interviews based on times that are mutually convenient for the hiring manager and the applicant. In addition, references can be contacted with a pre-written email. The system then tracks all incoming reference replies and routes them to the appropriate applicant file.
- Onboarding. Once you’ve found the perfect candidate and they’ve accepted your offer, you need to get them onboard. By its nature, onboarding is a document intensive activity. It doesn’t have to be time-consuming, however. Applicant tracking systems can automatically send new hires all the forms and orientation materials they need. Once employees complete the forms, applicant data can be fed to HRIS, payroll, and other information systems.
- EEO reporting. Regulatory compliance is an important part of the hiring process, but collecting EEO data in a consistent way that facilitates reporting can be a burden. Applicant tracking systems can automatically collect EEO data so it’s always available for reports and audits.
Automating the recruiting process doesn’t have to be expensive. Solutions exist that are designed for small businesses, focusing on key functions like job posting and applicant tracking and without unnecessary extras like payroll management or long-term contracts. Many companies have found that Hyrell’s month to month commitment is less expensive than newspaper ads or posting to individual job boards.
Sometimes it’s hard to take a moment away from the seemingly endless tasks associated with recruiting. But investing a few hours now to investigate an online applicant tracking system can translate into days and weeks of saved time in the future.
