3 Points to Consider Before Building a Recruitment Tech Stack in the New Normal

This is a guest contribution by REC business partner QX.

The COVID-19 pandemic has turned the global economy and business landscape upside down. Most businesses didn’t even realise what hit them till it was too late. They’ve had to furlough employees, cut salaries, defer vendor payments, thereby limiting cost and maintaining liquidity. The most important step businesses have needed to take is to pivot their business model to continue operating in the current environment.

One working model that has come to the forefront of business practice this year is Work-from-Home model. This transition to remote work has pushed recruitment agencies to revisit and rethink their hiring strategies, taking into consideration numerous factors such as making virtual recruitment work, adopting data-driven tactics, acquiring the flexibility to cope with the jobs marketing volatility, gain the capability to able to process hard-to-find niche as well as high-volume applications.

This homeworking practice is being regarded as a core part of the new normal. And in this new normal, technology has a crucial role to play. A LinkedIn survey reported that 68% of recruiting experts consider investment in new recruiting tech as the most excellent means to improve performance over the next five years. However, don’t rush into buying all the best, trending tools and software in the market. You must build yourself a tech stack that caters to your recruitment needs, addresses process gaps, optimises process speed and quality, and enables you to deliver superior recruiting service.

3 points you must make a note of while building a new tech stack for your hiring business:

1.     Identify and fill process gaps

The gaps in our process are what is inhibiting the growth of your service delivery capability. Are you finding it difficult to reach out an adequate number of candidates in the market? Is coordinating with candidates ensuring positive recruitment experience a challenge? Are you unable to bring out the best of your talent acquisition team working remotely?

Identify the process gaps, address the pain points, do your research keeping strategic priorities and business liquidity in mind. Buy recruitment tools building a technology stack that fill in these process gaps and optimise your business process. If the tools you need are out of your budget, consider partnering up with recruitment process outsourcing companies that may already own the tools you need. Collect information about their tech stack and make your assessment if these tools prove beneficial and optimise and streamline your recruitment business process.

2.     Identify & prioritise business functions that need improvement

Is candidate sourcing your most important remunerative service? Or is it booking management in locum healthcare recruitment? Or is it background check and compliance management for UK-based companies? Review your business functions and map the tools you include in your technology stack to each service. Keeping strategic and profitability priorities in mind while doing so will increase the probability of tech stack implementation success.

3.     Think Long term

Businesses must be future-ready. They must be prepared to endure the worse case scenarios. Most companies lacked adequate Business Continuity Plan (BCP), and this was laid bare by the COVID-19 pandemic. Businesses that were agile and owned the right tech stack coped with the disruption better. Recruitment agencies partnered with RPO companies with precise tech stack managed to even thrive amidst the COVID-19 disruption while other companies barely managed to survive.

Also, take note that business models usually undergo a shift from time to time. You may be happy with the tech you have now, but that tech could face redundancy in future. You may want to scale up quickly in the near future, and need tools to achieve the same, you need to revisit and rebuild your recruitment tech stack.

Let’s consider the current jobs market condition, for instance – unemployment levels are at high levels. Recruitment agencies may not receive a high number of job requisition or candidate applications. But that could change, and suddenly these employment agencies may need to cater to a large number of requisition and process unprecedented volume of applications. Here, your tech stack will come to the rescue and help you cope with the increase in demands. Recruitment Process Outsourcing companies are stocked up with such recruitment tech as they need to process large volume applications on a daily basis.

Concluding thoughts

Make sure you build a recruitment tech stack that caters to your unique business needs and challenges. Continuous optimisation, addressing process gaps, acquiring agility to pivot at ease, and being future-ready are key points to consider while building a recruitment tech stack. If cost is a challenge for you, partner up with RPO companies that own the right technology stack. Working with an offshore talent acquisition team of RPO agencies will inject your employment company with necessary agility and scalability, which is vital in the new normal.

This article was originally published via QX. 

This is a guest blog contribution for the REC website. The views expressed by guest writers reflect the individual's personal opinions.