Recruiters spend too much time sourcing. There, we said it. Finding the right talent, particularly for highly technical roles, is time-consuming and tedious. But today, recruiters spend about one-third of their week just trolling social media to find candidates. One in four candidates spends half their week sourcing for just one role. But 70% say automation could improve their productivity, eliminate some of the busywork, and help recruiters find candidates faster. If this is the case, why are talent teams not using resources such as artificial intelligence to help them work smarter?
Why Automated Sourcing Doesn’t Suck
In 2016 Recruiting Daily ran an article called “Old Time’s Sake: Why Automated Sourcing Sucks.” It’s true that four years ago, our efforts to use technology to take the busy work out of recruiting was in its infancy. But the article suggested that the human ability to carry on a meaningful conversation is something that Siri can imitate but never replicate.
We agree. But the point of automation is to eliminate the hunting and gathering portion of sourcing to get the recruiter to the real-time conversation with a real candidate interested in the position. Spending all day sending out email blasts to LinkedIn profiles is not the best use of a human recruiter’s time.
AI-driven automation software can help identify potential candidates and even cull out the best people for the recruiter to interview. This can reduce the time to hire and ensure the recruiter always has a full pipeline to help them achieve success. The software takes a proactive approach to search for candidates that fit a specific profile, freeing up the recruiter to have the kind of intelligent, engaging conversations necessary to rope in the best talent in the region.
Automation software for sourcing can help reallocate the recruiter’s time by eliminating tedious tasks. For example, an automated recruiting software can:
- Attract more talent with very targeted emails, ads, social media, and web pages, to raise awareness of the open jobs.
- Narrow the applicants down to the best 500, instead of a cattle call 5,000 applicants that take days to wade through.
- Chatbots on your recruiting website can pre-screen candidates for things like their Visa status or if they need to relocate or even how much money they’re seeking.
- These tools can also help screen resumes that may get just a glance from a recruiter. The software can “learn” the qualifications, skills, certifications, and experience needed for the job, and then select out of the databases only the resumes you should spend time on.
- Software can also be programmed to avoid unintentional bias like race, gender, or age, instead focusing strictly on the qualifications of the candidate.
- Technology can also rediscover your database, something that many recruiters fail to do. If you’re like most companies, you probably have an extensive database of applicants that have applied to roles in the past. When was the last time you went into that database to scout for the perfect candidate? Why not let the AI do that tedious and time-consuming job?
Cut-down your sourcing time!
Exelare offers AI-driven recruiting software that can help your recruiting team close more candidates. Talk to us about how these tools can improve your time to hire.