If you’re a seasoned recruitment professional, you’ve undoubtedly had to navigate through an anxiety-producing array of unpredictability over the last few years as the industry has evolved at breakneck speeds. This volatility is attributable to significant forces that have impacted the entire work world—and chief among these is the relentless and unavoidable march of new technology and innovation that’s reshaping how business is done at every level. Talent acquisition and recruitment has not been spared from these disruptive forces.

Let’s face facts: It can be a challenge to keep up with the pace of change that characterizes the industry today. But, simply put, you can decide to either keep up and ride the wave of change or get left behind. In this light, what may initially seem like a choice may not really be one at all.

Some industry veterans are concerned that the encroachment of technology and programmatic throughout the talent acquisition process is threatening to erode the candidate experience—and that it may ultimately negatively impact a company’s brand perception. After all, for many potential employment candidates, first impressions with businesses occur during the application process. It can be a challenge to make a positive and lasting impression if everything is automated. If you share this concern, then think again.

Today’s leading-edge recruitment technology is designed to help you leverage your team’s available resources in order to achieve your target performance metrics, some of which likely have remained steadfast: to continuously attract and engage with the best available industry talent, maintain a stable pipeline of high-quality active and passive candidates for open positions, and hire the right individuals to help them meet their target performance metrics. The aim is to continue these practices over the short term, through the volatility, and into the future.   

In an era where companies from lean startups to huge multinational behemoths are embracing lean mindsets, new industry technology—including programmatic recruitment and job advertising, predictive algorithms, machine learning, and intelligent software—is empowering talent acquisition professionals to do more with less, while preserving the candidate experience. How is this possible? By allowing you to automate much of the tedious and time-consuming scut work of talent recruitment, application management, and HR pipeline processing, you’ll effectively free up your team to focus on other key tasks while meeting your recruitment needs with minimal time and effort. This includes spending more time and energy on impactful and high-quality candidate engagement and effective brand building—which is a real win for businesses, recruitment professionals, and prospective candidates alike.

Here’s the bottom line: in today’s volatile work world, it can be a challenge for businesses just to stay viable and afloat, let alone lead their respective industries and outpace the competition. Talent acquisition is more important to businesses now than ever before and remains an important contributor to your company’s success, especially in times of extreme uncertainty. Forward-thinking recruitment professionals who are committed to weathering the volatility and leading their industries into the future realize the value of programmatic technology to help them build effective candidate engagement strategies and reach new levels of success.