The recruitment software market size in 2024 stands at USD 3.05 Billion. It is poised to grow at a CAGR of 9.86% and may soar to USD 4.89 Billion by 2029. In fact, in 2024, 65% of employers have expressed an intent to increase their budget investment in AI, machine learning, and staffing automation technologies. Read this insight to understand what’s fuelling this revolution, and how you can embrace staffing automation in your organization.
What’s Driving The Staffing Automation Revolution?
There could be multiple factors.
First, AI Supercharges Skill-based Hiring Strategies.
- Skill-based hiring is all rage. 81% of employers use it, and 94% are positive about using skill-based hiring.
- Recruiting software with advanced skill-focused filters enables recruiters to power their skill-first hiring strategies.
- With advanced filters AI not only assists in skill-based recruitment but augments it by enabling recruiters to tap into skill ontologies, aka skill taxonomy, which only 21% of employers are able to leverage at present.
Second, AI Deals With The Messier Parts Of Recruiting.
- By embracing intelligent staffing automation, recruiting teams save themselves from boring and repetitive hiring activities like sifting through tons of resumes or manually reaching out to 100s of candidates via email.
- In short, adopting AI & automation has reinvigorated recruiters' ability to attract, hire, and manage talent.
Third, AI Is Improving The Business Outcomes & Recruiting KPIs.
- Unequivocally, the biggest driver of the high adoption rates for AI recruitment software in the staffing & recruiting industry is the impact staffing automation has on the bottom line.
- It’s no surprise that staffing automation can do wonders for your recruiting process—from enhanced recruiter productivity (ROI) to reduction in cost per hire and increased quality of hire, staffing automation can assist your firm in more than one way.
However, the underlying question is “How do you embrace staffing automation in your agency?”
Well, read this Skima AI insight to figure it out. If you are planning to bring about automation in your hiring process, or are new to recruitment automation, this article is specifically for you.
Staffing Automation Vs HR Automation
Although staffing automation and human resource automation are closely related in terms of the end goal of “hiring candidates,” they differ in the way human resources are managed within a company.
Staffing automation is the process of employing the latest technologies to streamline tasks like sourcing, screening, interview planning, and onboarding functions.
- Automation at this level seeks to identify the right talent more efficiently. Some of the most common tools that staffing firms employ throughout their processes are Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) and AI-enabled recruitment tools.
- 41% of recruiters using AI reported an increase in productivity as its biggest perk. Rightly so; staffing automation tools primarily reduce manual workload, enhance the candidate experience, and speed up the overall hiring timeline.
HR automation doesn’t stop at the functions within the HR department but requires automation in more administrative tasks like employee record management, payroll processing, performance management, and beyond. It’s a comprehensive effort that includes everything in staffing and more.
- Automation at the human resources level aims to ensure compliance, increase employee experiences, and boost overall operational efficiencies. In fact, 30% of recruiters say that using AI helps them keep bias away from recruiting.
- Tools like HRMS (human resource management systems) and performance management software, among others, are employed by HRs to streamline several manual tasks in their processes. 69% say that using HR technologies has helped them unlock greater efficiency and save time.
A more simplified explanation would be that while staffing automation focuses on enhancing the recruitment process, HR automation addresses a wider range of HR activities that aim to improve HR operations and employee management.
Key Benefits Of Staffing Automation
Reduced Time-To-Fill
68% of recruiters and HR professionals are strongly optimistic about Gen AI and automation saving their recruitment time. With the gap between applicants and qualified candidates growing, and identifying top talents becoming more difficult, a fast-paced hiring strategy must be adopted. Automation at varied states of the recruitment process can help recruiters save time and reduce time to fill.
Data-Driven Decision Making
Recruitment tools not only assist you in tracking every step of your process but also provide insightful reports. Crucial data from these reports can complement your hiring decision-making. With recruitment KPIs like application drop-off rate, offer acceptance rate (OAR), and interviews per hire (IPH), among others, you can pinpoint which areas of your hiring process need improvement and which are performing well. In essence, automation can deliver data, which can, in turn, deliver quality decision-making capabilities.
Enhanced Compliance
The complex recruitment process can easily take your mind off of the varied labour laws and state regulations you must follow throughout the journey, especially if you plan on memorizing it all.
- Staffing automation can help you identify and ensure that your staffing agency complies with the latest laws and regulatory requirements.
- When flawed, it can flag anomalies and help you mitigate any future legal complications.
- Moreover, automated recruitment systems can track and report on compliance metrics. This ensures that hiring practices meet legal standards and reduce the risk of discrimination claims.
Standardization
Research shows companies with a standardized onboarding process witness a 62% increase in new hire productivity and 50% more new hire retention. A uniform method of evaluating and onboarding candidates is a practice that can easily be adopted with automation. Standardization is one of the most difficult aspects of staffing that many companies face. By streamlining key aspects of the hiring process like candidate screening, onboarding, and feedback, companies can ensure that all candidates undergo a fair evaluation.
How to Automate Your Staffing Agency Recruitment Operations?
You can divide your automation implementation into 4 stages.
- Sourcing
- Identification
- Communication
- Selection & Placement
1. Sourcing Automation
Recruiters spend 33% of their time per week sourcing candidates. Bias at this stage is highly prevalent which could derail your hiring efforts or deviate from the desired results.
An example of bias could be in creating and assessing the quality of job descriptions. 72% of hiring managers claim that their job descriptions are clear. However, only 36% of candidates feel the same.
From understanding a job requisite to developing JDs, job postings, and more, sourcing includes many key aspects that recruiters must execute with precision and minimal bias (preferable ‘zero’).
It takes hours for recruiters to develop job descriptions. Certainly, automation can be pivotal in ensuring that your sourcing game is top-notch.
Use Automated Job Description Generators
You can start by embracing top job description generators to create stellar JDs .
Skima’s free job description generator uses artificial intelligence to help you create detailed JDs in a matter of minutes. Whether it’s a technical role like UX Develop or a leadership role like Project Manager, recruiters can employ Skima’s JD generator to create technically accurate job descriptions that not only include various key details of the job role but also emphasize factors like pay range and work culture, among others.
Automated Job Posting
If you have a job requisite, apart from your talent pool, you need to distribute it in the right places. In addition to traditional job sites, you must also post on varied niche job boards and targeted social media platforms to find qualified talents.
A study found that 98% of employers use social media for recruiting, with LinkedIn and Facebook recruiting being the top 2 social platforms for recruitment.
An ATS can help you centralize the job posting and distribution process across platforms. A modern recruiting solution helps you not just post your job description, but also keep track of the responses you get from them.
2. Talent Identification Automation
With a successful sourcing strategy, you will be able to gather a variety of applications. However, as denoted by the Korn Ferry study, by 2030, 85 million jobs will be vacant because of a lack of qualified candidates. Signs of this can be seen today too as the difference between job-seekers applying for a job and recruiters finding qualified candidates within those domains.
So, it’s necessary to reduce the cost of hiring, and the time time it takes to find the right candidate. It's possible with proactive recruitment strategies and with automation infused in the identification stage of the hiring process.
Automated Candidate Screening
Manually screening hundreds and even thousands of applicants (considering high-volume recruitment) can lead to unconscious biases, fatigue, and, very often, an oversight in discovering the right talents. It’s one of the most tedious steps in the hiring process. In fact, 45% of recruiters agreed that ranking candidates is a difficult task.
Using Skima AI's candidate screening capabilities, you can significantly narrow down the margin for error when screening resumes.
Skima AI (platform for recruiters) uses AI and machine learning to screen 100s of 1000s of candidate profiles against a set job role and delivers a ranked view of the top candidates ranking from the most apt profiles at the top. Instead of eliminating unmatched profiles, Skima allots an AI Matching Score to each profile, even to the least preferred candidate.
3. Automate Candidate Communication
- 78% of candidates believe that the candidate experience they receive throughout the recruiting process is an indication of the company’s overall work culture.
- 80% of candidates further add that a negative or positive candidate experience can change their mind about going forward for a job role in the company.
Today, the job market is employee-oriented and candidate experience holds an important place in both the job seekers and recruiters journey.
One of the necessary elements of candidate experience is communication. With streamlined automation of candidate communication, you can set email triggers, send personalized notifications, and keep the candidate overall engaged through the process.
Personalized automation, aligned with jobseeker persona, can also reduce the chances of candidates ghosting and dropping off during the hiring process. Some common tools like AI conversation chatbots and automated email marketing tools can be useful.
4. Automate Selection & Placement
Finally, you must automate certain parts of your selection and placement processes. While retaining the final decision of making a hire with you or the right hiring managers, aspects like interview scheduling and onboarding can be standardized with automation.
Automated Interview Scheduling
Use staffing automation to make interview scheduling more efficient. Allow the candidates to choose their preferred time slots and make rescheduling convenient for them. With automation, you ensure that 100% of the interviews happen at the convenience of both the hiring managers and candidates time.
Automate Onboarding
Once the hiring is done, onboarding can take weeks and sometimes even months. From understanding the job role to blending into the company culture, there are several steps to the onboarding process. Automating these steps can ensure you follow a set pattern and all the boxes are checked. Instead of a half-hearted approach, onboarding automation keeps the recruiter focused and maintains efficiency.
End Note
You can incorporate staffing automation at almost every level of your recruiting process. It’s necessary to identify which tools you require for each of these levels and incorporate them to see their impact on your hiring efficiency. For maximized output, use automation to make better decisions instead of relying on it to make decisions for you.
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- Use the Skima AI Matching Score product feature to find qualified best-fit talent in record time.
Happy Recruiting!
