Is Your Recruiting Software Up to the Challenge?

Is recruiting qualified employees high on your company’s list of priorities, yet difficult to realize? Do you sift through a mountain of applications or wonder why you don’t have enough? When you make a job offer, has the candidate already accepted one somewhere else?

You’re not alone. The length of time needed to fill a job vacancy reached an all-time high of 29.3 working days in April according to statistics released by DHI hiring indicators:

Michael Durney, President and CEO of DHI Group, Inc., says “…recruiting continues to be a struggle. The inability to find qualified candidates along with employers waiting to find the perfect combination of specific skills to fill an open role has lengthened hiring times relative to last year.”

Here’s a breakdown of vacancy duration by industry.

When you’re too slow

What happens when the time between job posting and hire continues to grow? The best candidates accept jobs somewhere else. Operating with a talent deficit affects your productivity and the bottom line. A variety of realities contribute to this growing trend. Here are some examples:

Candidate-driven market

The labor market is tightening, making finding top candidates to fill open positions more difficult. Finding them fast enough is a problem, too.

Online applications

The ease of finding job openings, completing an online application, and sending it to the organization’s HR department or recruiter encourages some candidates to apply for a wider range of jobs than they might otherwise have done. Since it doesn’t take long to submit multiple applications, others may apply despite not having the required qualifications, figuring they might as well try. This can mean huge numbers of résumés filling the in-box and slowing the process for HR.

Qualification inflation

Managers may have inflated job requirements when candidates far outnumbered job openings. Even though the market is now more candidate-driven, some employers are still looking for candidates with qualifications and experience that exceed what is truly needed for the position.

Lack of qualified candidates

Many recruiters cannot find the talent they are looking for, despite receiving a pile of applications. As a result, they wait for the “perfect” applicant to appear while positions remain unfilled. Laura Mazzullo, owner of East Side Staffing, a New York City-based recruitment firm, thinks qualification inflation and lack of flexibility might be to blame.

Interview practices

Some companies have a multiple-round interview process that can include up to five interviews. Kris Dun, chief HR officer at Kinetix, thinks that’s too many and suggests one interview, bringing back two candidates, and making a choice.

The number one cause?

That’s difficult to say, but in his article, “Why Hiring Is Taking So Long—and What HR Can Do About It,” Roy Maurer quotes Matt Doucette, director of global talent acquisition for job board Monster, as saying that the lack of communication between recruiter and hiring manager is “the single most common reason it takes longer than usual to fill an opening.”

What you can do

One way to meet the recruiting/hiring challenge and to improve communication between hiring managers and recruiters is to use robust recruiting software that not only enables your company to provide online applications, but also includes functionalities that filter résumés and follows the process from application to hire.

From: http://www.softwareadvice.com/hr/recruiting-software-comparison

Here are some features to look for:

• Customizable—fits your company’s brand and needs
• Comprehensive—includes processes from posting job openings to hiring and onboarding
• Easy to use—has an intuitive, easy to navigate interface
• Automatic job posting—posts to company career pages and uploads to online job boards like Monster.com® and Careerbuilder.com®
• Résumé search capability—reduces time needed to sift through applications by identifying candidates most qualified for the position by incorporating multiple criteria and utilizing parsing capabilities
• Interview scheduling—streamlines the process of setting up interviews with prospective hires
• Requisition management—provides the ability to create and store hiring requisitions with quick access for those involved in the process
• Create reports—uses data for planning, running “what-ifs,” and review as well as to ensure your company stays compliant with EEO and OFCCP requirements
• Work-flow—facilitates communication between hiring managers and recruiters by creating alerts, actions, follow-ups, etc.
• Integration—connects with your HRMS and onboarding software

As you meet your organizations staffing challenges, consider the advantages to adding a strong recruiting product to your HR toolkit.

References:

http://dhihiringindicators.com/ DHI Hiring Indicators

https://www.shrm.org/ResourcesAndTools/hr-topics/talent-acquisition/Pages/Hiring-Process-Getting-Longer.aspx “Hiring Process Getting Longer, Recruiters Say” by Roy Maurer, Dec. 23, 2015

https://www.shrm.org/hr-today/news/hr-magazine/0616/Pages/why-hiring-is-taking-so-long-and-what-hr-can-do-about-it.aspx “Why Hiring is Taking So Long—and What HR Can Do About It” by Roy Maurer June 1, 2016

http://www.scmr.com/article/Its_a_candidate-driven_market/news