It can be tricky to discuss the intersection of “candidate experience” and “automation” together. Why? Well, automation can definitely make the candidate experience process more efficient — more on that in a second — but the efficiency is felt by the company, i.e. those who are hiring for roles. Candidates, in general, don’t necessarily want more processes automated — they want more communication from humans. So, the relationship is a bit asymmetrical: companies and organizations like the idea of injecting automation into their candidate experience, but it’s not always what candidates want more of. Is there a way to streamline the process for the company, and take advantage of tech advances, without giving up a winning candidate experience? Let’s dive in.
This is a question for the organization/company side of the conversation. What can hiring managers do to make their lives easier? Here are some of the most logical buckets for automation:
Pro-tip: Track these key metrics to see how your candidate experience approach is going
We all want to know what candidates want. Broadly speaking, these are the items that come up in most of the research over the past decade:
Doesn’t sound like too much to ask, right?
Thankfully, there are some platforms that focus on automated candidate experience, including Paradox, Ideal, PeopleScout, and more. Look into some of those options, as they’re establishing expertise at this intersection of “what candidates want” and “how companies need to automate to spend their time more effectively.”
One of the most important elements of this discussion for an organization is one question: “What will you do with the time you save automating?” For example, if you automate candidate sourcing and candidate follow-up, great. But that means you need to find value-add activities to do with the time you saved. Your talent acquisition team should be working on a three-year strategy, or going to local events and building relationships with passive, future candidates. They should be working on job descriptions and the value proposition of working with you. If you automate and still end up doing a bunch of task work, that is not valuable and may be costing you the good opinion of your candidate. But if automating allows you to be more forward-thinking and strategic, that can be incredibly valuable.
Read More: Explore the 5 factors of a meaningful candidate experience
The key takeaway here is that companies will continue to pursue automation one way or another. It’s a train that cannot be stopped. And in truth, there are many pieces of a company’s hiring process or talent acquisition strategy that can benefit from technology. The trick comes in striking the balance between in-person and automated touch-points so that candidate’s don’t feel like they were hired by a robot rather than a recruiter. Job seekers take the time to invest in the interview process and (hopefully!) behave respectfully in terms of their hiring manager’s time. A recruiter, in the same vein, needs to return that respect by valuing the candidate as a person, not a number. Great candidate experience can’t happen by only relying on technology and tricks to make work easier. But if you automate the parts of hiring that are tedious or time consuming, that frees you up to handle the human elements of your recruiting process with more care. And when candidates feel like they are treated well, it makes them far more likely to say yes when you extend that great new offer.