Today’s recruiting climate is considered by many to be the most competitive ever. “The War for Talent” has gone from being just a buzzword to being a way of lie– with qualified talent harder to find than ever and critical roles increasingly difficult to fill. Considering these challenges, more recruiters realize that the future of talent acquisition will be defined by powerful solutions, driven by technology.

Instead of solving one problem while possibly creating another, today’s solutions revolve around data — streamlining day-to-day processes, saving labor costs, and freeing up precious hours to instead focus on strategic planning. This article will explore programmatic and data-driven recruitment technology and discuss how you can use it to maximize your recruiting budget.

Improve Your Employee Brand

In the age of data, having a compelling employee-facing brand has never been more critical. With the talent acquisition challenges cited above, hiring managers are going the extra mile to create a recruitment experience that is positive, user-friendly, and engaging for potential hires. According to the experts at SHRM, employee branding must go beyond simply having a snazzy new logo or an attractive homepage; today’s job applicants expect a seamless process that puts their experience and convenience front and center. The cost-saving benefits of this include:

• Attracting the right talent to your organization
• Compensate for lower remuneration
• Help retain hires longer
• Reduce time-to-hire

The data element of employee branding comes into play when you start to consider how you can make better-informed decisions about what direction you want to take your brand in. To reap the maximum money-saving aspects of smart employee branding, you’ll want to collect data relating to your sources of hire, open requisitions, time-to-fill, and then take a deeper dive into the behaviors of your target hiring demographics.

Automate the Mindless and the Tedious

How much time do you spend, on average, carrying out tactical recruiting tasks versus strategic ones? If you find yourself wasting hours every week on tedious, repetitive recruiting tasks such as reading resumes instead of planning your next steps, you should start thinking about ways to offload these jobs to automated processes, rather than hiring a second pair of hands.

Talent acquisition teams that use automated recruitment solutions have more time to focus on strategy. This is because automated solutions consolidate data from multiple sources and algorithms analyze all of the data to recommend the most qualified candidates to come in for interviews. This helps save time by narrowing down the selection process and reducing how long it takes to interview for and fill positions. In turn, this allows recruiters more time to focus more on developing relationships, leadership, and planning their next steps instead of doing repeatable, low-level tasks.

Grow Your Talent Pipeline with Social Recruiting

One of the most practical cost-saving aspects of data-driven recruiting pertains to social media and sourcing candidates online. This allows you to find “passive” candidates who may not be actively looking for a new role but still may be ideally suited to a position within your hiring organization. In fact, experts believe ignoring social media as an avenue for recruiting could mean missing out on top quality candidates.

For recruiters on a budget (and that’s most of us), this warning is especially important to heed. Even though the economy is on the upswing, small companies looking to save their budget can particularly benefit from low-cost social recruiting tactics. Budget-savvy recruiters can start using social recruiting in the following ways:

• Facebook: As one of the most free-wheeling social platforms, Facebook gives companies a chance to show off their unique company culture, tap into a unique user base from different backgrounds, and even screen candidates using the Social Jobs App.
• Twitter: Similar to Facebook, Twitter also has a diverse user base and allows you to create a uniquely engaging page for your company. Use hashtags to find recruits and generate buzz around a hiring organization. Resources like TweetMyJobs also allow recruiters to target job seekers directly.
• Linkedin: LinkedIn is a fan favorite for social recruiting because it was pretty much designed for that very purpose. Create a company page, start forum discussions, share recruiting posts, and enjoy 100% free access to more than 467 million professionals’ profiles.

The best thing about social recruiting is how cost-effective it is. Access millions of potential recruits for free, or just a small fraction of your budget, and many platforms can be fully accessed without buying ads or other cost-added features.

Save Recruitment Costs Through Superior Targeting

While social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn allow you access to vast swaths of talent, the most cost-saving occurs when you can use data to narrow down only the best talent. Remember that when you are creating job postings, the onus is on you to describe the position clearly and accurately in concrete terms to encourage only qualified talent to apply –reducing the amount of time and hourly budget needed for vetting unqualified applicants. While marketing professionals have been dissecting and targetting audiences for ages, it’s a relatively new skill for many recruiters. That’s why there are now a number of data-driven solutions to help target talent acquisition teams target the right candidates at the right time.

Here are some ways that accurately targeting your talent pipeline can help hiring managers to make faster and more cost-effective hiring decisions.

Segment employees based on the following criteria and data:

• Timing when candidates are most receptive, such as during Christmas break, etc.
• Personality, work habits, and cognitive abilities based on vetted assessments
• Ratings and quality of employment referrals
• Life stage or generation of recruit
• Interests, motivations, and career values

While the points mentioned above are not an exhaustive list or a how-to, consider them a starting point for recruiters who want to get into better data analytics and get the most value for their budget.