Tech Сandidate Sourcing Automation: How to Speed Up Hiring

Can tech candidate sourcing be automated? This is the case when both “yes” and “no” are the right answers. While you can automate manual and repetitive tasks with the help of artificial intelligence (AI), you still need a human mind to ensure the personal and cultural fit and make the hiring decision. That’s why in this article, we will find out how to automate tech talent acquisition, what tools to use for this goal and how to speed up hiring stress-free. 

The pros and cons of automated candidate sourcing

36% of HR managers believe AI makes their everyday job better and more effective, especially when it comes to hiring tech talent remotely. In such a case, recruiters have to deal with the candidates’ shortage, strong competition and possible talent gap at once, while still meeting the company’s expectations, job requirements and budget limitations. Let’s find out how candidate sourcing automation solutions help with these challenges, and what pros and cons such software comes with. 

Pros

• Speed. While it takes 42 days on average to hire an employee, headhunting for the top-experienced candidates with a specific skill set and engaging them with a job opportunity can take even longer. Automated talent sourcing solutions allow for speeding up the process of searching and screening the candidates, getting in touch and engaging them, interview scheduling and candidate nurturing. 67% of hiring managers agree that AI hiring software saves them time at each of the hiring steps.
• Cost. In addition to streamlining the hiring speed, AI-driven recruiting automation technology allows for achieving significant cost savings. For example, those companies which adopted AI solutions for hiring automation reported a 75% decreased cost per screen and a 35% turnover reduction due to data-driven and better-validated hiring decisions. 
• Wide choice of automation tools. What’s more, there are a lot of sourcing automation tools that can support HR managers at each of the hiring steps, getting started with preparing the job description and distributing it across the channels, and ending with candidate hiring, onboarding and performance tracking. 
• Fewer  (human) mistakes. 66% of employees using AI automation tools across the industries agree that reducing human error is one of the main benefits such apps promise. The reason is simple – a pre-programmed algorithm deals with data analysis, structuring and cleaning several times better than a human mind. 

Cons

• Some tools may be difficult to handle. While most AI software developers strive for simplifying the user experience and visualizing data arrays as much as possible, some recruitment automation solutions may still be difficult to use. In this case, the company needs to additionally invest in in-house HR manager’s training. 
• Sometimes AI algorithms can also be technically biased. For example, if an AI algorithm was trained on biased data, then it will make the same mistake again and again. That’s why relying on recruiting automation completely can lead to certain risks and hiring mistakes. Instead, it is still better to re-validate the algorithm’s suggestions with a human mind. 

What automation tools to use for each of the hiring steps?

More than 50% of recruiters say that AI-powered recruiting automation tools are most helpful with candidate sourcing, screening and nurturing, however, such solutions can also be successfully used at every hiring step. Let’s find out what recruiting automation tools you can use through the hiring pipeline. 

Preparing and distributing a job description

Writing a compelling job description and distributing it across the channels to meet the right candidates is one of the most time-consuming tasks of the hiring process. In one of our recent articles, we have already discussed how to write a job description that attracts the attention and encourages the candidates to apply, and to date, it is still better to do it on your own.

How to Source Technical Candidates: A Guide for Recruiters and Hiring Managers

But when it comes to posting your job ad, you are welcome to take advantage of a dedicated application. For example, with the help of TalentCare, you can create customized templates to post a job description to the leading job boards, centralize the accounts in a single place, track your ad performance, calculate the cost per acquisition and generate visual reports. 

Looking for candidates

Attracting the right candidates is the biggest challenge recruiters face, and what’s more, this is the task that defines the success of the whole recruiting campaign. However, with the help of Circa, you can make the process of searching for the right talent completely data-driven and bias-free. This solution opens access to 160 million candidates across the globe. 

Circa functionality

It also allows for distributing the job ads across the internal network, making the candidate’s outreach more targeted and automated, plus tracking the hiring progress and preparing performance reports. 

Candidates outreach

While distributing a job description is the most time-consuming task when done manually, outreaching potential candidates is the most repetitive one. For example, LinkedIn allows for sending 1000 messages per day, so depending on the hiring campaign, the job scope can be really insane. 

Reply.io functionality

However, Reply.io can streamline the process significantly. Despite the software being created for cold mailing and lead generation, there is a dedicated product for candidate outreach. With the help of this solution, you can automate LinkedIn messaging, reach out to candidates via instant messengers, analyse the performance of your email campaigns, schedule meetings and interviews, and much more. 

Interview scheduling and management

Despite that solutions like Reply.io and our candidates’ management platform (which we will review a bit later) are coming with interview management and scheduling features, there is also a dedicated application that can make this process easier and more transparent. 

Calendly functionality

With the help of Calendly, the candidates can choose free and convenient time slots for them, while HR managers can never be double-booked and the process of rescheduling is also instant. Calendly is also perfectly integrated with LinkedIn so that both recruiters and candidates can schedule interviews even faster and more conveniently. 

Candidate nurturing

Herefish is an all-in-one staffing automation solution that covers all the hiring pipeline. It performs especially well for candidate nurturing because of candidate engagement and feedback collection features. For example, it allows for setting up and running surveys, automating candidate outreach and also unlocking some insights into the candidate’s interaction with your emails. 

Herefish functionality

Hiring and onboarding

At this step, the most laborious, repetitive and time-draining tasks are already done, which means it’s time to hire and onboard your new employees. This stage implies a lot of paperwork, training and feedback gathering, while with Bamboo HR these processes become easier, more transparent, effective and centralized. This platform allows for managing the candidates’ onboarding experience from a single place, supporting their engagement and tracking their performance metrics. 

Bamboo HR functionality

How to source the best candidates with no sweat?

Using a partially automated talent sourcing strategy is a smart and cost-effective decision; still, there are some additional tactics that can speed up the hiring process, decrease the related risks and avoid recruiting headaches. Let’s discover the opportunities. 

Use IT team recruitment

If you are struggling with hiring top tech talent remotely, consider IT recruitment services. This is an opportunity to get rid of hiring tasks like candidate searching, screening and validating, especially if you have to hire a large team of different specialists. Plus, you can hire remote talent from multiple locations, for example, Eastern Europe and Latin America, and get the best engineers for reasonable prices.  

What’s more, you are welcome to use our customer-exclusive candidate management platform instead of choosing the suitable tool from the suggested above, and paying additionally for the subscription. Our candidate management software allows for assessing candidates depending on their work history and experience, scheduling the interviews, tracking the hiring progress, reporting and payrolling using a single platform. 

Drop us a line now to find out how our hiring automation tool works and makes recruitment easy! 

Consider sourcing-as-a-service

In addition to IT recruitment, there is another effective hiring tactic to consider. If you aren’t ready to run a full-fledged hiring campaign right now and invest additionally into dedicated tools for automation recruitment, consider sourcing-as-a-service for remote teams. For example, the sourcing process at Bridge is 80% automated, while our sourcing specialists understand the technology, which simplifies the vetting process. As a result, you will get a list of validated candidates much faster compared to looking them on your own. 

We, at Bridge, have practical experience in matching tech specialists with the most specific job requirements, so the only thing you have to do is to interview the suggested candidates and proceed with the best fits. 

Apply for our sourcing-as-a-service right now to reach out to the top-notch technical candidates 5 times faster! 

Conclusion

There are a lot of benefits of automating recruitment process. Modern hiring solutions are perfectly tailored to each of the hiring steps, most of them come with extensive and customizable functionality, and you can also choose the most cost-effective subscription plan depending on your hiring goals. 

In addition to the opportunity to hire on your own with the help of data-driven tools, you are also welcome to get in touch with a talent sourcing vendor and leverage from their hiring experience. Standing for data-driven recruitment and AI automation, Bridge will be able to help you with finding the perfect-match candidates at a better speed and lower cost.

Get in touch with us now!