You’ve got a business. You’re looking to hire. You just don’t know how, or who, or where. There are tools that are supposed to make it easier, but there’s so much to learn about those tools it might seem completely overwhelming.
Don’t worry, though. Sure, many business softwares make life more difficult for a while until you’ve learned about them, but in the end, they definitely save a lot of time. I mean, filing systems are helpful already, but once you add the ability to contact potential new hires across email, job boards, and any other contact systems, plus integrating many job board websites so you can see applicants from them all at once, and automated replies and encouragements to complete the application process—well, now you’re cooking with gas.
So how do you get there? There’s still a lot to know about the softwares available and how they can make your life easier. Here’s a quick guide to what you need to know to take your business to the next level.
Staffing Software
A staffing software is just a software that handles your staffing needs. I know, pretty obvious. But this includes both hiring and maintaining your workforce. Staffing software can help recruit new hires, but it can also help manage paychecks and keep track of time sheets and performance.
It can be hard to keep track of all of these things. A staffing software agency can help. There’s so much variety, and the descriptions are so vague, that it’s hard to find out exactly what you’re getting without trying it out. The good news is, a lot of companies offer a trial run of their software before you sign up permanently.
There are a handful of usual features. One is automated sourcing of candidates, which finds available workers matching your job description. This could be by sorting through people who responded to a job posting, or reaching out to those with public profiles on job boards.
Most staffing softwares also try to “read” resumes to pick out people with matching qualifications, using artificial intelligence. This is a difficult task for a machine. It has to pick up synonyms and related skills—for example, it has to know that experience listed with “mathematics” is helpful for jobs for “accounting.” It could just look here for a useful thesaurus, but that might not be specific enough for the hiring process.
In fact, language processing is so difficult for computers that it’s actually easier to just tell the computer all the related skills and all the words that people might use to describe those skills than to just train the computer to figure that out for itself. After all, a computer only knows the numbers and math that it does inside its head. A computer doesn’t know what an accountant is. It doesn’t know what a business is. So you can either try to teach it the concepts behind every word in the English language (or any other language), or else just tell it what things mean roughly the same thing and leave it at that.
Staffing software is also helpful when it comes to integrating with job boards. If you’re posting the same job opening on Indeed, Ziprecruiter, and Monster, it can be a lot to keep track of. Especially if the same candidate has accounts on multiple job boards and doesn’t even realize they’re applying for the same position twice! Staffing software can coordinate results from all different platforms into one easy readout.
It’s useful for communication, too. With most softwares, you can easily send out an email to everyone who has partially completed the application, reminding them to return. Or you can send a form email to everyone you turn down for the position, or to everyone who’s moving on to the next step. You can see all the conversations about scheduling interviews in the same place so you don’t lose track of any moving pieces.
Overall, a staffing software can do a huge amount for your business and your recruitment process. The most important thing just comes down to the fact that the software will keep everything in the same place. Other features, of which there are plenty, are just addons to that one extremely useful perk. And with the work crisis only speeding up (https://www.uschamber.com/workforce/understanding-americas-labor-shortage-the-most-impacted-industries), anything that keeps your recruitment a cut above is a valuable resource.
Staffing Software vs. CRM
CRM stands for Candidate Relationship Management, and it’s a kind of software that can be very useful for recruiting. A CRM highlights the early stages of application, like finding the job posting and applying for it at first; other types of software focus on later sections, like interviews and onboarding. A CRM is a part of a staffing software, but there are other parts.
Ideally, choose a software that has a CRM integrated into the rest of it. This will allow you to seamlessly move candidates from the early stages to the later stages. Again, the entire point of staffing software is to keep everything in the same place, so try not to split them up.
