Here is the pandemic predicament for HR: There are a lot of people looking for work, but recruitment teams are low on staff. The high unemployment rate means a single vacancy will yield more applicants. This means more candidates to engage, more resumes to sort, and more work to fill vacancies. Today’s recruiters have to do more with less. The disruption to normal operations has changed our work lives and put the system of hiring out of balance. For many industries scaling down has come with a lot of hard decisions and pain, and scaling operations back up in the near future will require a lot of work. You can rebuild your workforce stronger by creating a streamlined hiring process with recruitment automation technology to support a leaner staff.

Use AI To Control Candidate Quality

A higher volume of job applications per vacancy may sound good in theory—more applicants mean more to choose from and the more likely you’ll find a good fit, right? Not exactly. In practice, a greater quantity of resumes does not translate to a greater number of quality candidates. In fact, it more likely does just the opposite.

With the high unemployment rate, there may simply be a greater number of applicants who are flooding the system. How do recruiters keep from drowning? The answer lies in recruitment automation. Recruitment automation eliminates the manual effort required for time-consuming tasks. When you operate with a leaner staff, taking the “busywork” out of recruitment can make a real difference.

One of the most important things recruitment automation can do is increase the quality of your applicant pool. A programmatic advertising platform like PandoLogic uses targeted advertising to source better quality candidates. Rather than have recruitment staff manually post job ads, this tech uses data to place ads where candidates are likely to search on the internet or find while scrolling through their social media feeds. This type of technology is comprehensive, as it posts job ads on popular sites, keeps tabs on the ad performance by continually collecting data, and even manages job ad budget using up-to-the-minute data. When a job ad underperforms, the platform can reallocate the budget to increase the effectiveness of the overall job campaign. All of these complex calculations are automated, handled by AI software using smart decision-making that allows for more strategic sourcing while simplifying the process for the recruitment team. This type of tech can ensure the tidal wave of resumes coming your way will include the quality candidates you seek.

Streamline Your Screening Process

But there’s still a tidal wave. With a leaner recruitment team, it’s vital to streamline the hiring process and allow the most time-consuming tasks to be automated.

One of the most time-consuming tasks is sifting through resumes. Resume screening software with AI components can score applicant resumes using natural language processing. In essence, the tech can “read” resumes in a more complex way than simply sorting by keyword searches. Utilizing recruitment automation in this step of hiring allows your staff to engage with a core of the most qualified talent within your applicant pool, and it can weed out the candidates that just don’t have the skills for the job.

Keep Candidates Engaged Along The Way

A streamlined process is also key to keeping candidates engaged. As the hiring timeline gets longer, there is a greater chance of drop-off or disinterest among candidates. But when operating with an increased volume of applicants, you still need a way to engage individual candidates and ease the burden on recruitment staff. A good candidate experience can lead to candidate referrals and repeat applicants, which may be important to future hiring. So, how do you engage a glut of candidates with a leaner staff? Again, the answer is in the technology. AI chatbots can field candidate questions and manage candidate expectations. There is even tech that can undertake the time-consuming task of scheduling candidate interviews.

When you incorporate recruitment automation into your hiring process, you create a system of success that can handle shifts in volume. So no matter what is happening in the job market or how quickly you need to scale up your hiring, you and your recruitment team will be ready for whatever comes next.