The holiday season is a historically tough time for businesses across a wide range of industries. Things are typically busier than ever, with increased demand and tighter deadlines. Plus, employees tend to take more time off around the holidays to spend time with family, further contributing to hiring difficulties and staffing shortages.
This year, the problem is compounded by a tight labor market, ongoing supply chain issues, inflation, and a host of other issues. It can be extremely tough to find and keep the right people for your organization around the seasonal crunch – but it’s not impossible.
Recruitment software is one of the essential tools at your disposal that can help you overcome seasonal hiring challenges and stay on-target as we round out the year. From ATS software solutions for streamlining your talent acquisition efforts to recruitment automation software like text-messaging apps that can help offload the burden from your core team, this type of technology is simply indispensable in today’s difficult hiring and recruiting environment.
Let’s take a closer look at recruiting software and how it can help you overcome hiring difficulties this time of year.
What is Recruiting Software?
First, let’s define what recruiting software is. It can be defined as any system that helps an organization hire qualified people in an efficient way. Recruiting software is an umbrella term that encompasses many types of technology, software platforms, formats, and more, including:
- Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS)
- Talent Acquisition Software
- Recruitment Marketing Software
- Vendor Management Systems (VMS)
What does recruiting software do, exactly? It centralizes an organization’s entire hiring process to manage and expedite all necessary functions, making things much easier on HR teams, hiring managers, and recruiters. Everything from posting job ads to screening resumes, texting candidates to sending job offers, can be handled by HR recruiting software to simplify and streamline the process.
Recruiting software is beneficial for recruiters and hiring managers, yes, but it’s also good for candidates. When candidates interact with a good recruiting software platform, the job application process is simplified, they’re able to stay in constant communication with their recruiter, and they’re able to find and apply to jobs that match their skillsets and experience more closely.
What Are The Challenges of Seasonal Hiring?
Everyone knows that the holiday season is a busy time of year. But what are the challenges that employers tend to face this time of year? Before we dive into how recruiting software can help solve your hiring challenges, let’s define what the challenges are.
Challenge #1: Finding Qualified People
Finding talent with the right skills and experience is a challenge at any time of the year – but it can be even more difficult during the holidays when fewer people are looking for work. Many candidates are simply waiting until the New Year to start their job search, or they’re not looking to start a new role right before the holidays. Many employers report a low percentage of qualified applicants for their openings this time of year, and some employers report no applications at all.
Challenge #2: Finding Talent on a Short Timeframe
An additional challenge of hiring great people during the holiday season is finding those people in such a short timeframe. You might know you have to hire a certain number of employees to meet the extra demand through the holidays – but before you know it, you need those people right away. And finding qualified talent that can start immediately is easier said than done.
Challenge #3: Outdated Hiring Processes
If you’re not using automated recruiting software or a modern ATS software solution for your hiring, you’re probably using outdated hiring processes. And that only exacerbates the challenges described above. Using outdated technology or processes – or, at worst, hiring purely by word of mouth or pen-and-paper applications – isn’t helping you to solve your seasonal hiring challenges.
How to Solve Hiring Challenges with Recruitment Automation Software
We’ve learned what recruitment software is and what it does, as well as the kind of challenges faced by employers during the holiday season. Now, let’s put two and two together. Here’s how HR recruiting software helps you solve your seasonal hiring challenges:
Hire Faster with Recruiting Software
As noted above, one of the big challenges of seasonal hiring is finding people in the tight timeframe you need to adhere to. And automated recruiting software speeds up the process dramatically. Think about the time involved when going through the hiring process manually – multiple emails to candidates, coordinating interviews, sending meeting confirmations and reminders… the list goes on. Not only is this time consuming, it lessens the candidate experience, making it more likely top talent will walk before you get them in the door for an interview.
Automating some of these processes and speeding up the entire cycle through the power of recruiting software lets you bring great people on faster. That’s good for them, and for your business.
ATS Software Helps Track Top Talent
An Applicant Tracking System, or ATS, is designed to do just that: track talent through the recruitment cycle. Without the proper software in place, it’s far too easy for candidates to get lost in the shuffle. And because one missed follow-up or one late reminder text can be the difference between a candidate remaining engaged and a candidate walking, you want to be sure your ATS software solution is up to par.
A modern ATS helps you avoid problems like lost applications or overlooked correspondence. It also keeps recruiters aware of where every candidate is in the recruiting process. You can prioritize your most valuable prospects and even generate and send job offer letters when a final decision has been made.
Automating Your Hiring Process Improves Efficiency
Faster hiring, more qualified candidates, a better way to track candidates… all of this is adding up to a more efficient hiring process overall. And in the busy rush of the holidays, when candidates are harder to find and retain during an already tight labor market, efficiency is everything. Much of this is accomplished through automated technology.
Whether it’s an automated email greeting candidates and keeping them engaged in the process or first-day reminder texts to ensure employees get to the job site when they need to, automating much of the recruiting process is a great way to free up your team for essential tasks. That way, they don’t waste valuable time on things that can be done automatically.
Improve Candidate Engagement with Text Message Software
In today’s recruiting environment, text messaging is king. Candidates – especially millennials and members of Gen Z – are much more likely to open and respond to a text message than an email or a phone call. In fact, according to information from recruitics.com, text messages have a 97% open rate as compared to email’s 14% open rate. And because so much job hunting is done through mobile devices today, you’re truly meeting candidates where they are.
Texting is simply the best way to stay in touch with candidates today, and to keep them engaged in the hiring process. Even a simple text to let a candidate know their application is still being processed can be extremely helpful. When candidates submit an application and don’t hear anything back for days, they’ll simply feel abandoned – and they’re not likely to follow up. Using the power of text messaging software designed for recruiting is the best way to remain top of mind with the candidates you need.
Boost Holiday Recruitment with Exelare ATS Software Solutions
Do you need to solve your hiring challenges as the holiday season bears down on us? Coupled with a tight labor market and other pressing issues, it’s going to be harder than ever this year. That’s why you can benefit from the recruiting software provided by Exelare.
Our mobile ATS apps are available for iPhone, iPad, and Android devices – no matter what technology your recruiters work with, our apps let you do it all from the device in your hand. From pulling up candidate and job data to sending emails, scheduling interviews, screening resumes, and much more, our technology is designed for the recruiters who need it most.
Ready to learn more about our HR recruiting software solutions? Schedule a free demo with the Exelare team to get started with us and transform your recruiting strategy this holiday season.