7 Recruiting Automation Trends for 2020

As we prepare to enter a new decade, talent acquisition teams and HR departments are seriously looking at ways to speed up their hiring cycles with recruiting processes automation. Whether through the use of recruiting chatbots, text recruiting software, AI or self service functionality one thing is clear, a faster, friendlier candidate experience is what they seek.

How do you recruit in 2020?

Today’s recruitment process has a great deal of repetitive and time consuming tasks that talent professionals struggle with. But most recruiters loathe those frequent manual tasks that suck up their time. Recruiting automation frees you of those burdens. Let’s take a look at which of these trends will gain traction in 2020 and beyond.

Sourcing: Though they are not mainstream as of now, we are starting to see some automated sourcing tools enter the market. These sourcing ‘bots’ actively seek out candidates online and try to match them to certain job requisitions. Once they do, the bot contacts them through an email to gauge their interest in hearing about the job. These recruiting bots should get better as their AI learns what works/what doesn’t when it comes to engaging a passive candidate. Passive outreach through automation is coming.

Status Updates: According to data from CareerBuilder, 67% of job seekers have a positive impression of a company if they receive consistent updates throughout the application process. Most ATS providers have built in triggers that notify candidates when their resume has been received or when they get rejected. But more needs to be done to improve and automate the candidate experience. Some job boards now alert candidates when their resume has been viewed by a recruiter. Why can’t the ATS do that too? Candidates need more status updates around what’s happening with their application, ideally via text message to improve speed and access. With ‘ghosting’ such a hot topic among recruiters these days, status updates and timely SMS reminders offer an easy solution to that problem and are becoming more popular with HR software vendors. 

Resume Scoring: Manually screening resumes is still the most time-consuming part of recruiting. According to one stat I read, up to 88% of all resumes that come in are unqualified thus wasting your recruiters time. By scoring a resume using AI against the requirements of the job your team can concentrate on the top ranked ones first rather than looking at them all. We are seeing this more and more as recruiting software tools integrate machine learning and artificial intelligence into their products. Being able to quickly get a stacked ranking of candidates as they come in is poised to become a huge time saver.

Pre-screening: This is probably the most pervasive trend in the market right now. Recruiting chatbots are really good at pre-screening applicants as they apply, essentially acting as a virtual recruiter that never goes home. They can answer questions and guide the candidate through your initial set of questions in order to qualify them. In some cases, AI recruitment chatbots can also schedule the interview or even reject the candidate should they not be a fit.

Text Recruiting Software: Applicant tracking providers are also now building in or partnering with text recruiting software vendors like Emissary to move the email portion of communications, status updates and reminders to the SMS format. Even job boards like Indeed now offer text job alerts. Expect to see more texting options in the hiring process from vendors of all shapes and sizes.

Automated Hiring: Through technology you can now automate almost all stages of the hiring process. High volume employers like Amazon and many large retailers are already doing this which allow them to staff up for seasonal hiring and special events. In fact Amazon warehouses are already hiring virtually, a massive achievement for the world of recruiting process automation. The successful candidate just has to pass the screening process in order to get a job offer invite for orientation.

Onboarding: The onboarding process has traditionally been a paper intensive one. But now recruiting automation is leading the way through automated workflow tools that enable candidates to fill in and sign these forms digitally, often prompted by a text message. This allows the new employee to get to work faster, feeling like part of the team from day one. Welcome emails or texts, technology passwords, and training invites can (and should) be sent at the push of a button. 

What are the best recruiting tools?

The best recruiting tools to provide solutions to the above trends would be platforms such as sourcing tools like Hiretual or Seekout. For screening tools recruiting chatbot software can do the trick. A number of vendors in the space can handle this functionality including of course, Emissary. For automated hiring and onboarding an applicant tracking system is your best option. It can send onboarding docs to the new hire and also have them sign electronically and store them in the cloud.

Recruitment automation trends are clearly making the hiring process a smoother one for candidates and saving recruiters valuable time. As we head into 2020, the automation of recruiting is well under way.