A recruiting system – or recruiting management system – is a set of recruitment tools and processes that companies use to manage the recruiting process.

Due to the competitive nature of recruitment, especially for candidates with in-demand technical skills, a recruiting system improves the efficiency for both recruiters and job seekers. It results in companies hiring quality talent while reducing time-to-hire and recruiting costs.

Let’s delve a little deeper into what processes a recruiting system usually involves and what makes a good system.

Overview Of The Recruiting Process

An all-inclusive recruitment process generally has five to seven key phases. However, this may vary depending on the size of the company, the existing hiring process, and the organizational structure.

Here are the standard steps in the recruitment process:

  1. Hiring managers will define the position and write a job description for any job openings in the company. These descriptions should lay out the opportunity, the required skills and candidate experience, the tasks and responsibilities, and company values.
  2. The next step is to source candidates using job posting software. This software targets job boards and social media and scans your talent database.
  3. Recruiters will sort through applications. Companies can save time by automatically filtering out applicants in different categories using an Applicant Tracking System (ATS). It streamlines tasks such as analyzing skills and screening resumes to narrow down your list of candidates. This helps to identify the candidates you want to interview.
  4. Schedule the interviews.
  5. Evaluate short-listed candidates by checking their professional references and verifying all the employment details.
  6. Onboard the appointed candidate through various processes. For example, this could include emailing the required forms and creating employee portal pages on the company website for new hires.
  7. Prepare for future recruitment by building a strong talent pool of potential candidates.

What Makes A Good Recruiting System?

A LinkedIn survey showed that, in 2021, more companies are adopting virtual recruiting technologies. But what does that mean for organizations?

It means they have to invest in a good recruiting system for the hiring process. This system should include a solution to manage the sourcing, selecting, hiring, and onboarding of qualified candidates for an organization’s open positions.

Ultimately, a good recruitment management system should offer all the functionality a hiring team needs throughout the entire hiring process in one centralized or integrated system. Instead of using several disparate software applications, it gives teams a better overview of the process as a whole from start to finish.

Here are some key components that a good system should have:

  • Automated job posting, resume processing, and reference checking
  • Candidate matching, screening, tracking, and testing
  • Candidate relationship management
  • Making collaborative teams function smoother
  • Reviewing candidate applications and resume parsing
  • Posting to job boards
  • Email integration
  • HR analytics

Looking at these functions in more detail, powerful recruitment software typically helps HR with:

CRM

Candidate Relationship Management (CRM) software plays an important role in building and tracking the candidate pool.

CRM software engages with candidates throughout the process. However, the real benefit is that it provides an organized network of available talent that is pre-vetted.

Using a CRM system, recruiters can group candidates into specific, relevant categories while placing vendors, companies, and employees in other groups. This negates the need for multiple databases or using a number of platforms. Everything is centralized into one system.

CRM software as part of the recruitment system further enables routine tasks such as sending bulk emails, or scheduling group meetings between candidates and new employees via an integrated calendar. It can also help perform administrative tasks such as emailing invoices.

Applicant Tracking

A good recruiting system should feature an Applicant Tracking System (ATS). This will help recruiters to manage job postings, applications, and streamline the interview process.

This type of recruiting software quickly performs time-consuming tasks such as job posting, candidate screening, resume parsing, and applicant tracking. It can also make scheduling interviews easier as you can keep track of each candidate in one place.

Applicant Tracking Systems provide SMS messaging, bulk emailing, onboarding, and automated reference checking. As such, they are a must-have tool for recruiters.

Many ATS platforms integrate with popular job boards, both free and paid. This helps organizations reach a wider pool of talent that can then flow through the resume processing and candidate matching, screening, and testing processes.

Ultimately, an ATS reduces the time to hire by connecting many of the steps involved in the recruiting process.

Interview Management

HR personnel often waste hours coordinating and matching people’s schedules to figure out the best time for interviewing a candidate. This is especially the case when multiple interviewers are involved.

To this end, having specialized interviewing software helps organizations move through the hiring process.

Integrated interview software allows recruiters to schedule interviews via a multi-user, integrated calendar. This automates communication with candidates, based on how they prefer to be contacted.

Another benefit is that employees and recruiters can take notes or store recordings for later review.

Onboarding

Onboarding is the last important step in the recruiting process. However, it normally comes with a huge amount of paperwork. This can significantly extend the time from when the person is hired to when they start being productive.

Recruiting software that includes onboarding tools automates many of the time-consuming onboarding tasks, including orienting the new employee to the organization.

Onboarding software includes online forms – sometimes pre-populated via the ATS – that speed up new hires’ time to enter their details. They can submit it electronically where it becomes part of the recruitment management system. That way, you can easily record and access important information without any manual data entry.

Final Thoughts

Do you have a recruiting system that ticks all the boxes? Is it making you more effective and efficient, or is it slowing you down? To be able to place the best candidates you need to find, recruit, and onboard them seamlessly. Effective recruitment management software can help you do just that.

With the right recruiting system, you can do this and more. We recommend that you check out StaffingSoft today. Our solution enables you to find quality talent quicker, engage candidates easily, and reduce both the time and cost to hire.