In this episode of Rectec Reels, Henna chats to Dale Parry, CEO at Quadzu. They dive into enhancing the candidate experience, tapping into Dales’ broad knowledge and revealing some top-tips for recruiters!

The post Rectec Reels with Dale Parry, Quadzu appeared first on Rectec.

But how do humble tech platforms, most importantly an Applicant Tracking System, really help in the modern War for Talent? 

An ATS provides a scalable, customisable “eye in the sky” view of your entire applicant base, and offers a granular look at individual applicant progress, providing both recruiter, employer and employee with ample data to adjust and perfect a job or applicant search. 

The end result, if well-manicured and maintained, is a hiring process of immense personality and leadership, built on efficient use of data and applicant visibility via a one-tech solution. 

Now, this all goes to plan in a stable recruiting environment.  

But we live in an era beset by a constant battle for talent, fighting for EVP visibility and hiring sustainability in a fast-changing world.  

We live in an era of aggressive, no-holds-barred recruitment competition, and we’d make a healthy wager any HR leader reading this has seen the frequency of talent gazumping explode over the last couple of years. It truly is a War for Talent. 

So how does an ATS help you stand above the competition when talent is in high demand and short supply, and the hiring landscape is more competitive than ever? 

The definition of “The War for Talent”. 

The beauty of living and working in a pluralist, innovative, ideas-centric culture is that there are multiple ways to build a career and myriad ways to connect with and develop talent both internally and externally.  

But these systems and networks are fragile.  

Since the pandemic, we’ve played witness to the effects of one of the biggest market shocks to this system in a generation, and the results, for some, have been catastrophic – the near collapse of talent pools across the world, mass walk-outs in others, and a considerable lack of skills and training in emerging niche sectors have all caused what can only be described as the perfect candidate storm.  

So where are we now?  

Ask any HR leader to define our current recruitment present and they’d say the market is “candidate-led”. 

• “A candidate-led market is, in short, when the number of vacancies is outweighing the number of people searching for employment and as a result, the market is highly competitive, with companies battling to attract and recruit the best candidates out there”. 

Candidates in most sectors understand their skills are in high demand, and as such “control” how and where they apply themselves.  

This has set a new precedent in a new War for Talent, and this new normal has come to define modern hiring.  

In areas of high talent demand – such as Tech, Education, Healthcare and Logistics – shortages of talent, the rise of remote work and upward pressure on wages have upended years of recruiting norms, and ushered in a hyper-competitive era of recruitment and retention. 

How an Applicant Tracking System can help in the War for Talent? 

So how does the humble ATS help in this war?  

Are the tools contained within applicant management systems the arsenal to defeat the immortal enemy of hiring managers everywhere? 

We believe there are 5 key features of an ATS that can improve hiring outcomes and help in the War for Talent: 

• Hiring Costs Reduced – ATSs are hiring efficiencies made real. As they centralise applicant details, provide accurate, real-time reports and provide the basis for establishing hiring metrics, not to mention the fact they systematically improve communication and applicant transparency, they massively impact the overall costs of hiring. They also reduce the need for relying on external companies or agencies to do the legwork of sourcing, vetting and hiring staff by providing talent management structure.
• Time To Hire Improved – ATS platforms simplify the recruitment process. They make staff more efficient, they improve applicant management, they improve talent pool management and they improve consultant behaviours and organisation. The end result is faster hiring through automated services, centralised data gathering and cloud-based accessibility.
• Quality of Hire Improved – the value of an ATS lies in the work it does behind the scenes – CV parsing; data gathering; shortlisting; automated communications. The sum result of a consultant utilising these tools is, simply, better quality hiring outcomes. By effectively screening and shortlisting the best applicants from an applicant pool, a consultant can spend more time establishing rapport and relationships with the best in class, without worrying about whether any candidates have fallen through the gaps. 
• CX improvements – in a candidate-led market, the candidate experience is often a significant career choice differentiator. Tech should not and, at this stage, cannot take the lead on establishing good CX, but it can most certainly help bolster it. An ATS can subtly (and sometimes overtly) improve the things that make CX great – open communication, application transparency and the digital foundation for real, consultant-driven emotional connection between worker and employer.
• EB Improvements – all of the above points impact the overall impact of an employer brand – the DNA of a company, the brand power and placement within a market and the overall attractiveness of a place to work. ATS’ do incredible work – they streamline applications, make communication easier and quicker, and improve shortlisting and reporting of applications. The cumulative result of these small improvements is a seamless candidate application process and a brand that screams “We hire well”.

The ATS bottom line.  

In our view, your Applicant Tracking System is your biggest weapon in the War for Talent, allowing you to engage, protect and nurture talent more efficiently, and more importantly, better than your competitors.  

At the end of the day an ATS will never supersede the very human nature of talent acquisition – what it should do, however, is provide a platform that elevates expectations and performance. 

A good ATS is the landscape on which you do the hiring fighting, to mangle the metaphor even further – it sets the context and creates an indomitable culture of hiring that’s impossible to ignore, due to its efficiency, speed, personality and ease of use. 

At Rectec we help organisations to find the best recruitment and talent acquisition technologies to suit your needs.  

From Applicant Tracking System and Recruitment CRM comparison, to vendor snapshots, and technology showcases in our unique technology marketplace, we provide fee-free tools to help you build the perfect recruitment tech stack for your business! 

The post How to use an ATS to stay ahead of the competition in the war for talent.  appeared first on Rectec.

But behind every placement, every happy employer and every happy candidate are the hard-working recruitment people keeping the connections fruitful – the recruiters, sourcers, resourcers, admin staff, onboarders and HR leaders. 

In our view, a recruitment tech stack serves people, not the other way around. It augments their abilities and gives them a larger, more efficient platform to do something even the best chatbot or automated CRM can’t do – build better relationships.

Good recruiters know it’s the people behind recruitment tech who really make our business work. Recruitment success is quintessentially human, and will forever be so.

That’s not to say, however, that WorkTech can’t be the most effective recruiting item in our human capital tool belt. 

In our heady, fast-paced, hypercompetitive working environment, recruitment tech provides breadth, a clear voice, brand visibility, and audience reach, not to mention incredible organisation and CRM capabilities too.

This is especially important when you’re trying to create an effective candidate experience. And while tech can and should never replace the human element within CX, tech can most certainly improve it and be the difference between standard talent matching, and game-changing, life-changing end-to-end recruitment services.

So here are 4 ways recruitment tech can elevate your employer brand and candidate experience.

Start at the beginning – organisation!

A primary candidate complaint about recruiters is that they get simply forgotten about, left to float in the recruitment sea. Or, that communication is sporadic and impersonal. Or that there isn’t a sole contact or communication focus, and there are too many consultant cooks spoiling the new job opportunity broth. 

What we’re trying to say is candidates hate it when recruiters don’t communicate well. And while we can’t answer for every missed email or slow replay rate, we know full well that most of the time it comes down to poor organisation skills. 

This is where tech can make all the difference. The targeted use of an applicant tracking system or recruitment CRM platforms to better organise and move candidates through the recruitment funnel is the safest and easiest way to keep on top of candidate flow. Simple email and contact integration mean emails are never forgotten about, and there is a single point of contact for all candidate comms. 

The business development benefits from a good ATS or recruitment CRM are well documented, but in our candidate-led market, candidate comms have to take priority – and a good recruitment CRM or ATS makes all the difference. 

You can compare Recruitment CRM and Applicant tracking system vendors using the Rectec Marketplace! 

Employer brand reach. 

Employer branding is your front line in recruitment outreach, and utilising recruitment tech – in line with savvy marketing strategy – will make your brand cut through the noise. 

The key is consistency and cross-platform alignment. 

The success of any employer brand outreach campaign is the alignment of your messaging across every candidate or client touch-point, user platform or professional space, so every potential candidate or client will see your brand message.

From business development direct marketing efforts to entire social media content campaigns, you need to know a campaign is working, you need to be able to analyse the data and feedback from that campaign, and you need a well-integrated CRM or applicant tracking system to immediately capture leads and feed them into your workflow. Tech provides the means to get your content in front of the right people at the right time.

Efficient recruitment practice. 

We’ve spoken a lot about how effective an ATS is at ensuring recruitment processes are diligently maintained and easy to use, but it’s worth reiterating. 

Applicant tracking systems are developing at a ridiculous pace. Now, most contemporary ATS’ contain everything you need to manage the entire end-to-end recruitment process, from multi-posting to onboarding. Simply put, recruitment tech is often a one-stop shop for processes and how candidates are captured and fed into the system.

Understanding the effectiveness of an applicant tracking system is one thing, but choosing an ATS from the hundreds on the market can be a challenge – which is exactly why we built Rectec Compare!

The benefit of easy-to-see ROI and usable data. 

We advocate for never using tech for the sake of it. It needs to serve a purpose, improve a service, or elevate staff performance. 

But another thing good recruitment tech and a well-sourced ATS can do is provide clear and definitive ROI data, to better build frameworks of recruitment understanding that improves future service provision. 

An ATS offers a single data platform from which to extrapolate information, and it provides a clear data stream on what does, and doesn’t, work across your recruiting performance, such as job applicant attrition rates, strategic brand reach and more. 

The bottom line. 

Recruitment tech simply helps recruiters do their job better. 

But they go much further than simple admin and candidate capture. WorkTech platforms and programmes now provide the sort of organisational and strategic underpinning that improves entire recruitment cultures, as well as the individual performance of consultants.

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 complementary technology 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.

The post 4 ways recruitment tech elevates your employer brand and candidate experience.  appeared first on Rectec.

From major national newspapers to reams of LinkedIn conversations and thought leadership, the concept behind Quiet Quitting – when staff members coast along at their job, not overperforming, not underperforming, but just slowly and almost invisibly pulling back from engaging with their work over time – seems to be the magnet for which conversations around general unproductivity in the UK workforce is attaching itself to. 

Quiet quitting is nothing new, it’s just a new tagline for a perennial workplace issue – that of workplace disconnect. 

As companies scour the digital and physical leadership world for productivity hacks and quick fixes to dysfunctional teams (most of which are sticking plasters and don’t address systemic cultural malaise), the solution could be lying right under our noses – the tech that has embedded itself into our every-day working lives.

Targeted, cross-functional tech can be an immensely positive weapon against burnout, unhappiness and, indeed, quiet quitting. 

Tech could be the method and the means of connection that workplaces are struggling to maintain in a disrupted working world…if senior business leaders knew how to deploy it properly!

Tech, and Rectec, Origins.

We’ll admit that one of the driving reasons we created the Rectec Marketplace was to draw recruiters and agencies towards recruitment-adjacent tech that could complement any employer’s or agency’s tech stack. 

The reason why is, on the surface of it, pretty simple – it’s a more streamlined way for recruitment companies and agencies to connect with a wide variety of innovative recruitment solution services they didn’t even know they might need. It’s a chance to open the door to tech creators that are changing the way we do business, and through this, we like to think our Marketplace is doing the good work of promoting innovation in the world of HR and talent acquisition. 

But as anyone who’s had their working lives turned positively upside down by tech over the last decade (hello, cloud applicant tracking systems!), the platforms we now do so much of our work on should be considered a part of the solution to novel forms of presenteeism, burnout and work disconnect. 

Indeed, the universality of our online and always-on culture means tech should be leading the way on how to help reduce incidents of quiet quitting. 

Here’s how we think tech, and specifically recruitment tech, can help:

Performance Management. 

A large part of the quiet quitting mentality is a complete lack of enthusiasm for work, caused by, well, you name it – toxic work cultures, too-remote work, a lack of connection, a lack of brand alignment, a disbelief in the product or service, or simply that they don’t feel heard or seen. 

During the pandemic, tech was the communication saviour. Messaging apps, workplace networks, Slack, Teams, Zoom, these solutions combined to create not just great products, but a culture of support and visibility as companies rushed to work remotely. 

As people return to the office, some of the remote work cracks are starting to show – digital burnout, Zoom Fatigue, and quiet quitting. 

Many of the above issues can be somewhat mitigated by one, simple, leadership shift – creating continual feedback loops utilising tech. 

Continuous feedback isn’t a new concept, but it’s come into its own as remote working has exploded. Many recruitment and HR tech providers offer easy, hassle-free platforms on which leaders and employees can offer seamless feedback, reviews, project updates and more – all essential cogs in creating a more supportive machine of workplace culture.

An open forum approach to communication between peers and seniors is verifiably good for team engagement, happiness and productivity!

The power of a good CRM.

When two of the primary complaints of candidates stuck in a convoluted hiring funnel are “the process takes too long” and “they don’t communicate with me where I am in the process” it’s easy to fixate on poor recruitment practice and lazy recruiters as the sole reason. 

But the channels on which some consultants have to work on (legacy CRM, mostly) simply aren’t up to the task of offering efficient, personal communication channels suited to our now multi-channel online existence.

Contemporary recruitment CRM providers prioritise communication and data access, giving consultants peace of mind they can keep on top of comms. 

The search for meaning. 

Another reason quiet quitting is ascendant is a lack of meaningful connection to an employer’s purpose, or indeed the work employees are doing.

It’s imperative employers use every means at their disposal to help employees reconnect with their brand, vision and mission. 

This is where tech helps the process along – by being a vector for employer brand messaging, recruitment tech can be the vessel in which staff are shown how, where and why the company continues to trade the way it does.

Employer branding is one of the most important recruitment and retention tools in a business leader’s hands, so utilising every opportunity to remind staff of that brand and what it means will make a massive difference to staff morale, connection and meaning. 

Tech is the means, and the method, by which this messaging continues to hit home. 

At Rectec we help organisations to find the best Applicant Tracking System or best Recruitment CRM to suit your needs, accompanied by our unique complementary technology 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.

The post Is recruitment technology the cure to “quiet quitting”? appeared first on Rectec.

1. Does it suit the size, and expected growth, of my business?

It will help if you have a 3-5 year growth plan. However, even if you don’t, ensuring you source a Recruitment CRM which can quickly and efficiently grow with your business is going to be key.

2. Does it have the features I need and may ever need.

Do you even know what features you’ll need? When you look at the market, you’ll see a vast number of Recruitment CRMs, all with varying features. The challenge is to know what the key features are that will offer the most value in terms of time and cost saving. My top ones would be management reports, CV parsing, workflow tracking for individual users/campaign management, easy to connect/record email and phone correspondence, ability to integrate with job boards/multiposter tools, searching capability of LinkedIn network, searching capability of in-house database (ought to be obvious really!), candidate matching and the ability to search external candidate databses.

3. Is the provider able to keep up with new trends and allow the customisation I want?

This is quite important. You aren’t going to know what you’ll need from the system in 12 months but you do want to be sure that your provider isn’t going to leave you out in the cold when your competitors are able to do the next whiz-bang social media thing. Difficult to assess but try and determine how quickly they can respond; in the old days if you wanted a product customised you had to add requests to a long (never to be seen) wish list. Now many providers are more responsive.

4. Can I trust the company and the product?

Is your data secure (i.e., no one else can access it) and is it safe (i.e., it can’t be lost when your/their office burns down) and will the solution provider have the longevity you need (i.e., still be operating in 5 years’ time)? Apart from anything else you have a legal obligation to carefully store the data you collect from clients and candidates.

5. Is the support and training in the format I want when I want?

Do you want/need someone at the end of a phone 24/7 or is 9-5 fine for you? Is desk-based training high on your list of criteria? Maybe you’d suit webinar or online training better.

6. Where and how will I use the database?

Accessibility used to be a big issue – but you really shouldn’t even be looking at a system which can’t allow you to access your client and candidate database whenever you want from wherever you want.

Allowing consultants to set up interviews, search for candidates, update information and email CVs on the move could be the difference between losing and closing a deal.

7. Does it suit my style of business

Quite honestly, a system which suggests it can be all things to all people is unlikely to be much to anyone. Clarify what niche your business holds and then look for a match. Some of the big providers have more than one offering enabling them to be able to serve all elements of the market.  When you find a good match consider aligning your processes to the system rather than asking for, potentially expensive, customisation to align it to yours.

8. How does the cost work for me?

Not just the monthly or annual (or one off) fee but support costs, training costs (see above), upgrade, development, etc. costs. Also check for migration costs and de-migration costs should you ever wish to move to a new platform.

9. Do I like it?

If you and your team look at the system and go arrrggggggggggh then maybe think again. If your team hate the system and don’t find it intuitive and easy to use then they won’t. If they don’t use the system properly then you might as well go back to using Excel or a rolodex!  Ensure all stakeholders are involved in the decision making and obviously go beyond just how it looks and see the processes; can they minimise manual processes, do they integrate with job boards, websites and the finance solution?  Are they going to make your life easier?

In Conclusion

Your Recruitment CRM is a critical (and often undervalued) bit of kit.  It can be expensive to buy, setup and run. And to add insult to injury, it can make you little or no profit and be a laughing stock when investors come auditing…Or it can be a USP – a unique selling point. The top recruiters will understand where their CRM sits in their workflow. It is an addiction for their recruiters, and interestingly their clients, candidates and investors. All of which does the one job they bought it for – to make you more money.

Ultimately, you need the right team to manage the solution, not just IT.  Someone needs to own it and promote it throughout the business, and it needs to be able to provide key insight, in real-time in the right format to the right people.  If Management can’t see the output or if it’s not relevant, then the value will be questioned.

How can we help? 

Whether you’re an employer or a staffing agency looking to implement an Applicant Tracking System or Recruitment Agency CRM in your business for the first time, or you’re reviewing or renewing your current technologies, Rectec Compare is your unique opportunity to quickly and easily identify the vendors you should be talking to. If you’d like to find out more please check out our comparison services or get in touch today for a free, no obligation chat. You can also pre-register for exclusive access to Rectec Compare by clicking here.

If you found this article useful or insightful, please follow us on LinkedIn to be kept up to date with our latest tips, updates and industry news.

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.

Louise Triance, Partner Manager – Recruitment CRM (UK&I)

Changing the way that recruiters buy software…

The post Key things to consider when choosing a Recruitment CRM. appeared first on Rectec.

Working remotely has become normality for many and video calls and video conferencing is being utilised more now than ever before in place of meeting in person. Television studio audiences are now made up of people sat in their home in front of their laptop and mobile devices, virtually seated in an audience of some of the biggest shows on TV. The events industry has virtualised, for now at least, and the way that businesses procure products and services is changing.

At the end of September 2019, before the word Covid had a place in our daily vocabulary, I made an incredibly tough decision to leave a job that I loved, working with great people and managing an amazing team. I decided to leverage the many years of experience I’d gained to setup my own business with a key objective; to solve a common and significant problem that exists in today’s recruitment and HR industry – finding and procuring the right recruitment technologies.

I’m Rob Green, the Founder and Director of Rectec. I’ve spent almost every waking hour of 2020 pursuing my vision and I am super-proud to announce, on the last day of this incredibly challenging year, that Rectec has successfully created a powerful and unique solution, designed to connect organisations with the right technologies for their business needs.

I’ve worked with a team of wonderful experts to make this happen, conducting detailed industry research, designing and developing a sophisticated software product, and forming unique industry partnerships.

I am incredibly proud to introduce to you, one of three new services that Rectec are launching to the Recruitment and HR industry in 2021. Our software puts years of experience and industry research at the fingertips of our users, saving enormous amounts of time, money and effort, and significantly reducing the chances of making the insurmountable mistake of implementing the wrong solution.

We want to improve how technology is used and increase the harmony between a business and the vital technologies it depends on to achieve its objectives.

Introducing Rectec Compare – Our revolutionary software comparison engine, designed and developed to review and match your detailed business requirements with the best technologies in the market, like never seen before. Listen out for more news from Rectec in the new year, but for now I’ll leave you with a video introduction.

If your organisation is looking at reviewing or renewing your recruitment technologies, then we can provide you with the information, help and support you need to get it right. Contact me to register your interest and I will personally ensure that your organisation is provided with free access our tools to support your procurement process.

Happy New Year everyone, here is to a prosperous 2021 as we continue our path to the new normal.

We’re Rectec, and we’re changing the way that Recruiters buy software…

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.

The post Big news at the end of a challenging year… appeared first on Rectec.