Administration tasks are one of the major bugbears for recruiters. It can take you away from sourcing candidates, and other important aspects of the day-to-day job. Admin tasks are a major part of your role; from screening and formatting CVs to all the administration that goes into arranging interviews and making offers. Reducing administration makes your life easier as a recruiter.
Here are some of the changes you can make to help reduce admin in your role as a recruiter.
1. Use Recruitment Software
Recruitment software is not the ‘nice to have’ it used to be. It is now an essential tool for every recruiter. One of the most effective ways to reduce your admin time is to introduce recruitment software into your organisation. If you are not familiar with recruitment software, there are two very common applications used by recruiters. A Recruitment CRM is used primarily by Recruitment Agencies who are actively sourcing new candidates. It allows users to manage and nurture relationships with candidates, automating many admin tasks such as communication, whilst also measuring engagement and creating comprehensive talent pools. An ATS on the other hand, is an Applicant Tracking System, a tool more commonly used by in-house recruitment teams for managing the entire recruitment process, from job creation to candidate onboarding. Applicant Tracking Systems are workflow driven but some vendors (and there are more out there than you can shake a stick at!) also incorporate CRM functionality into their product.
Both ATS’s and CRM’s are valuable tools for saving time, maximising your potential to fill roles quickly, whilst successfully managing relationships with candidates and reducing time to hire. Simply put, if you haven’t implemented an ATS or CRM in your organisation, you are probably being left behind in the competition for talent.
It is worth comparing the CRM’s and ATS’s on the market, as it is a common and costly mistake to buy one that is not fit for purpose. Don’t just go with reviews, as they all have different capabilities. If you find the right recruitment software, you could drastically cut down your recruitment admin.
The Alternatives
You may be in the process of looking for or implementing recruitment software, or you may not have the ability to invest in this right now, in which case, we have some other time saving tips to reduce your recruitment admin time;
2. To-Do Lists
Without creating a structured ‘to-do’ list, you may find your day passes by without achieving much of what you set out to do. If you are used to jotting down your to-do list on a piece of paper or relying on your brain to do it for you, you may wish to consider project management Tools such as Trello or Monday. Even if you have an ATS or CRM in place, these can be a great addition, and can save you a lot of time and energy in the long run!
3. Prioritise Tasks
Maintain all of your tasks in your central To-Do list. Work out a plan for your day and place your admin tasks into categories by considering their urgency and importance. For instance, if a task is both urgent and important – Do it now. If a task is urgent but not important – Do it next. If a task is important but not urgent – Do it later. If a task is neither urgent nor important, you might consider saving yourself time and not doing it at all. As an example, sending out a job offer would be certainly be an important task which may also be urgent if you’re aiming for a particular start date. Sending feedback to a candidate is also important, but probably isn’t urgent in most cases, so this could wait until you until you have some free time.
4. Create Templates
An effective way to cut down some of your admin tasks is to create templates for everything. Whether it’s the initial email to reach out to potential candidates or the interview invitation, or any correspondence with clients, ready-made templates can be a great time saver. When you get the initial job through to work on, it is worth having a template of set questions, as this will reduce the need for going back and forth.
5. Hire Administration Staff
If you are a small recruitment agency, it may seem too costly to hire administration staff, but it may be costly not to get some help. Even if you have an ATS or CRM in place, administrators can be a useful asset as they can manage the system and free your time up to secure job offers. You may even want to use Virtual Assistants for ad-hoc admin tasks if you don’t want to hire full-time support.
6. Use Your Database
It is one of the most important things that recruiters should do, and many don’t. They don’t use candidates who have already registered or previously shown an interest. Ignoring these candidates can waste a lot of admin time and money. You have potential hires just sitting there waiting, yet you are spending time and money creating and posting job adverts or headhunting candidates. It is another benefit of getting adequate recruitment software in place; you could be sitting on gold without even realising it!
How can we help?
If you’d like to find out more about our unique recruitment software comparison services, please get in touch with Rectec.
We’ve created a sophisticated tool that will allow you to quickly and easily find the right recruitment technology based on your specific business needs. We also provide a powerful assessment feature that will allow you to instantly score the vendors you review during their demonstration. If your organisation follows a formal tender process, we’ll also save you a wealth of time and effort by automating your RFI documentation and vendor communication.
A quick, responsive process is what you need to attract and engage the best talent.
At Rectec we help organisations to find the best Applicant Tracking System or best Recruitment CRM to suit your needs, accompanied by our unique complimentary tech marketplace, to help you build the perfect recruitment tech stack for your business.
You can click here to register for Rectec Compare – and best of all, it’s completely free of charge.