Quality recruitment software is a crucial component to all recruitment agencies from startups to multinationals across all industry sectors. In fact 75% of recruitment professionals utilise recruiting or applicant tracking software (ATS) as part of their day-to-day work [1] and 94% of those professionals say that their recruitment software or ATS had a positive impact on delivering their recruitment services.
Not only is recruitment management software clearly an integral part of any recruitment agency or internal staffing operation, it’s also a considered investment. Depending on the pricing structure, your software license may cost a monthly fee of roughly £50 – £100 per user, or a one off cost of up to £250 – £1,000 per licence [2].
As a potentially significant spend of your budget, it’s vital you ensure you’re getting the maximum ROI from the ATS or recruitment software you’ve purchased or are considering purchasing. To help you evaluate your current or prospective recruitment software, we’ve put together some key considerations to make sure you are actually getting the most from your software.
1. Before You Buy
Know your business
While this might seem like an obvious point, you’d be surprised how many recruitment agencies fail to evaluate how their business actually operates or even how new recruitment software could solve existing process issues, increase productivity or have a positive impact to their bottom line.
Understanding your business processes inside and out is critical when choosing software that’s “the right fit”. Unfortunately there isn’t a definite answer when asking what “the right fit” is, it’s completely subjective. Deciding what’s right for you is relative to the pain points your software users face day-in day-out, and most importantly what’s right for you is determined by the specific plans and requirements for your business.
If price is a decision factor, it’s more than likely you’re considering going with the cheaper option now while you’re still growing and looking to save capital. But have you stopped to consider those options that are perhaps slightly out of your budget range? Paying that little bit extra when initially investing in quality recruitment software will certainly pay dividends when you’re reaping much larger savings in the long term.
Know your recruitment software supplier
Ultimately, when it comes to your software you should be investing in a partner not a supplier. If you’re looking to rapidly grow your recruitment agency from a SME into a much larger organisation, then an out of the box software solution that doesn’t scale with your growth plans is a short-sighted investment.
Discussing the scalability of your prospective software is one of the most crucial conversations you need to have with software suppliers, combined with how their software can integrate into your technology ecosystem. If the features, functionality and pricing don’t support your growth plans, consider partnering with a different supplier.
Enticing software features that have caught your eye and even tempted you to purchase are basically gimmicks if those features don’t actually add any tangible value to you business. Don’t fall into trap of the software sales cycle and take enticing functionality at face value, simply ask if those features really matter to your staff and your business.
2. Preparation
Establish new operational processes
Successful recruitment software implementation starts with preparation. Understanding how your recruiting software is going to integrate into your business is one thing, it’s even more important to redefine and map your new operating procedures and processes. Use this as an opportunity to evaluate existing processes and divine some new processes that will help not only better configure your new ATS or recruitment CRM software, but potentially streamline your operations in general.
By defining new operational processes on how exactly your new ATS or recruitment CRM will integrate into your staff’s day-to-day work is a critical success factor to ensure all your staff utilise the software to its full potential.
Data
Another critical success factor that will ensure you maximise you ROI is your data. Firstly take the time to ensure your data is cleansed before it is imported into your new recruiting software. Secondly know how your data needs to be entered and captured throughout the software to assist your software users with real time searching and reporting. We recommend you spend time with your software users and senior management team to understand their requirements as this will provide a road map on how your data needs to be entered and maintained in your new ATS or recruitment software. Remember the golden rule; garbage in garbage out (GIGO)
Invest in training
Ensure your staff are properly trained and up-to-date on the features and functionality of your new ATS or recruiting software. With the everyday stresses and challenges in the industry, it can be all too easy to let training take a back seat and focus on hitting KPIs and sales targets. That’s why it’s crucial your staff fully understand the capabilities of the software they’re using day in day out to stop them picking up bad habits, duplicating work or simply wasting valuable time. If your business doesn’t have an internal trainer, appoint one and make sure you identify the specific training requirements for all of your different software user groups to ensure that everyone knows how to use the software to perform their duties.
Arrange regular training and consultation with your supplier on your recruiting software’s full capabilities so that you, your staff and your key stakeholders are fully aware of the systems possibilities and limitations.
3. Post Go Live
Review and feedback
Once you have implemented your new recruitment software and trained your staff, make sure that you are consistently reviewing and auditing your staff’s knowledge and understanding of how they are using your software and your new processes. Use this as a valuable opportunity to not only evaluate individual staff members but gather valuable feedback from them on any issues they’ve experienced regarding the software’s functionality, reporting or searching capability.
Support
As part of your partnership with your recruitment software supplier you should expect and take advantage of the expert support they provide. If you don’t have a dedicated account manager, get in touch with your supplier’s helpdesk support team for any questions or queries you might have. If however you find your support tickets aren’t being dealt with in a timely manner, it might be worth reconsidering your recruitment software supplier.
Relationship
Stay close to your recruitment software supplier. Quality software should be seen as an ongoing partnership with your supplier, as your business grows your supplier should always be there to help you at every juncture. Keep your supplier up to date with your business growth plans, give them regular feedback you’ve gathered from your software users and suggest software improvements. Likewise if your supplier has a software user committee, try and join it. A customer centric supplier will embrace your feedback and will always be looking to improve their software.
At the end of the day it’s down to you to make sure you maximise your ROI from your recruitment software, but hopefully we’ve helped and given you an idea of what to look out for when sourcing and partnering with a recruitment software supplier.
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