In today’s dynamic job market, recruiting professionals are increasingly reliant on Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software to upgrade recruitment performance. However, the implementation of these systems can be complex and challenging without proper guidance.

In this comprehensive guide, we’ll delve into the best practices for implementing a new ATS/CRM system, tailored specifically for organizations seeking to optimize their recruitment software to answer to the growing needs of their business.

1. Define Your Objectives

Before diving into the implementation process, it’s crucial to clearly define your objectives and expectations from your new ATS/CRM system. Determine the specific pain points you aim to address in your current system, whether it’s improving candidate sourcing, enhancing candidate engagement, or streamlining recruiter workflows and communication with clients.

By establishing clear goals upfront, you can align your implementation strategy accordingly and properly assess if a new system can meet your business needs.

2. Conduct Thorough Research

Not all ATS/CRM systems are created equal, and finding the right fit for your organization requires diligent research. Engage thoroughly with demos to gain hands-on experience of the technology. Evaluate multiple options, considering factors such as user-experience, scalability, customization capabilities, integration with existing tools, and access to customer support.

Ensure the chosen solution aligns with the growth trajectory of your business. Don’t just consider what you need now, but be sure to prioritize future business goals as well.

3. Involve The Team

Successful implementation of an ATS/CRM system requires buy-in and collaboration from key users and account managers across your organization. Involve your recruiters, IT professionals, and management in the decision-making process to ensure their needs and concerns are addressed upfront.

Solicit feedback from end-users to understand potential challenges or roadblocks, fostering a sense of ownership and enthusiasm in anticipation for the new system’s adoption.

4. Customize and Configure

One size does not fit all when it comes to recruitment technology. The ability to leverage customization and configuration capabilities offered by your ATS/CRM system is critical to tailor the platform to your organization’s industry, specific workflows and preferences. Define custom fields, workflows, and automation rules that align with your recruitment operations, ensuring seamless integration with existing systems and maximizing efficiency.

Embrace the flexibility and agility of a configurable ATS/CRM system so your organization can optimize recruitment and adapt more effectively to the dynamic needs of your industry.

5. Provide Comprehensive Training

Effective training is essential to ensure smooth adoption, utilization and engagement with the new ATS/CRM system by your team. Offer comprehensive training sessions tailored to different user roles and skill levels, covering basic functionalities as well as advanced features can further enhance understanding and retention. Provide hands-on practice and resources such as user manuals, video tutorials, and help documentation to support ongoing learning and mastery of the software.

By investing in robust training initiatives, empower your team to harness the full power of the ATS/CRM system and all of it’s tools, ultimately driving efficiency, productivity, and recruitment success.

6. Implement Data Migration Strategies

Transitioning data from legacy systems to a new ATS/CRM platform requires careful planning and execution to prevent data loss or corruption. Develop a robust data migration strategy,
identifying the types of data to be transferred, data mapping requirements, and data cleansing processes. By meticulously planning and executing a comprehensive data migration strategy, organizations can seamlessly transition from legacy systems to a new ATS/CRM platform while safeguarding the integrity and completeness of their valuable data assets.

Collaborate closely with your IT team or external vendors and partners to ensure a smooth and accurate migration, maintaining data integrity and continuity of business operations without disruption.

Conclusion:

Implementing a new ATS/CRM system is a significant undertaking that can yield substantial benefits for your recruitment business when executed effectively. By following these best practices, from defining objectives and conducting thorough research to providing comprehensive training and implementing data migration strategies, you can maximize the success of your software implementation and empower your team to achieve superior results in talent acquisition and client management.

Ready to embark on a journey towards upgrading your recruitment tech? Learn more about driving success in recruitment with TargetRecruit!

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The staffing and recruitment industry has undergone significant changes, primarily driven by incredible technological advancements. Today, recruiters are no longer bound by manual processes, paperwork, and phone calls, but instead are able to leverage comprehensive software solutions that wholly upgrade business operations. Although significant strides have been made with applicant tracking systems (ATS) and recruitment technology, there is always room for improvement and advancement as business needs continue to shift and change over time. Because of this, TargetRecruit prioritizes educating companies on the current gaps and pitfalls of common ATS solutions on the market today.

During our initial software evaluation process, we always ask potential clients to identify their biggest pain points with their current Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS). Our primary focus is to assist our clients in overcoming any gaps in their existing ATS solutions. Through our experience working closely with clients and through these conversations, we have gained invaluable insights into the recurring challenges faced by our industry over the past several years. 

Uncovered, one of the biggest challenges faced today is working with applicant tracking systems (ATS) that are incapable of being tailored to specific business needs. As a result, we compiled a list of the top seven pain points across the board and quickly discovered they are some of the most significant challenges shared by many staffing and recruiting firms worldwide.

The top seven pain points for staffing and recruiting firms when it comes to their Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS):

• Reporting
• CRM | Sales & Business Development
• Integrations
• Automation
• Customization
• Configuration
• Middle Office

At TargetRecruit, we specialize in providing enterprise software solutions for staffing and recruitment firms so we understand the unique challenges and opportunities that come with implementing new technology. By recognizing and addressing these common pain across reporting, CRM, sales and business development, integration, automation, scalability, and customization, we aim to help companies maximize their potential and achieve success in our ever-evolving industry.

We offer direct solutions to these pain points so that any staffing, and recruiting firms can utilize them to improve business operations, streamline and automate workflows, upgrade productivity, drive new revenue growth, and more. Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) have been game changers, but with advancements in business come new challenges ahead. As we explore these challenges in detail, break down their pain points, and provide solutions that address each pain point, companies looking to upgrade their ATS, and modernize business operations can make informed decisions when searching for the right software solutions to match their business needs. 

In our new eBook, “From Frustration to Success: Tackling the Top 7 ATS Pain Points,” gain critical insights into the biggest challenges faced by our industry today alongside the actionable solutions that can overcome them. So, whether you’re looking to upgrade your current ATS or explore a completely new software solution for staffing and recruiting, this eBook is a must-read for any enterprise organization looking to stay ahead across the competitive landscape of staffing and recruiting. 

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Choosing an applicant tracking system (ATS) for your staffing agency is an important decision to make. An ATS is crucial for your hiring process; it may be the most important tech investment for your organization.
Due to the significance of the ATS, it is crucial not to make a hasty decision. Picking the wrong solution for your team can waste months as you reassess and repeat the evaluation process.

Taking too long to make a decision isn’t optimal, either. If the decision-making process continues for a long time without ending, it’s more likely that you won’t make a decision. Instead, you will keep doing things the same way as before.

How can you compromise and find a solution? What are the best practices for selecting an ATS for your staffing agency? Let’s look at the things you should consider as you begin your ATS evaluation process:

Check Your Bias

This isn’t the time to play favorites. When you’re choosing an ATS, it’s important that you put any personal feelings or previous experience aside.

Even if you have previously employed a specific solution with a different company, that same solution may not be suitable for your present organization. Even if you possess extensive knowledge about that platform, it may not align with the operational needs of your organization and team. Functionality and adoptability should be the key contributing factors to your decision — not how much you like it.
If you have a strong preference during the assessment phase, you may try to influence others towards your preference. You will focus on the flaws in other solutions and ignore any potential issues with the platform you prefer.

Keep in mind that what may be optimal for you may not necessarily be optimal for your organization. Look at each potential software solution with fresh eyes and an open mind.

Fight the Urge to Overanalyze

Occasionally, the burden of a choice – or the anxiety of selecting the incorrect one – can halt the process of decision-making completely.

Think of it this way: Your kids ask you to pick up a box of cereal on your way home. You stop by the grocery store, walk to the cereal aisle, and you’re hit with the sudden realization that sometime between your childhood and theirs, 300 extra varieties of cereal were created, and it’s up to you to pick the right one.

Do you panic? Do you run screaming from the store?

Do you stand there in the aisle for thirty minutes looking at ingredient lists and cartoon mascots? Picking one ATS from all the options out there isn’t all that different. (Though we do think it would be easier if cartoon mascots were involved.)

Most people don’t realize that a software company’s biggest competitor isn’t another software company. Forrester found that almost half of lost sales opportunities in the internet technology industry were due to “no decision.” The company in question simply chose not to choose anything and remained with the status quo.

Realizing that your solution can greatly improve a business can be scary. The process of deciding and making changes may still feel overwhelming. Some companies find it easier to stick to their old ways, even if those ways are not effective.

The enemy of progress is not regression — it’s stagnation. Do not allow information overload or an intimidating number of options overwhelm you. Remember that there was a reason you started shopping for other options. Don’t go back to the status quo just because the decision grew more difficult than you expected.

(Read about the other 5 things to consider when selecting an ATS for your staffing agency by downloading our eBook!)

The post 7 Things to Consider When Selecting an ATS for Your Staffing Agency appeared first on TargetRecruit.

If you’re like most people, there is at least one spot in your home that isn’t company-ready. It could be an overcrowded closet or a catch-all drawer or the cords and cabling behind your entertainment center. In a staffing business, it’s often the duct-taped and jerry-rigged systems that connect the staffing front office to the back. When multiple applications and systems are cobbled together over time, you eventually reach a point where what was once cool or expedient is now costly and inefficient. That’s the bad news. The good news is that there are now highly flexible solutions built on powerful platforms that allow you to transform your business with a fully integrated, single-source enterprise solution.

How Companies Outgrow Their Technology

When a staffing business starts, everyone wears multiple hats and performs lots of different jobs, creating unique processes to streamline the work. That could mean a simple accounting solution, a timekeeping application or a payroll and billing system. As the business grows, we add an ATS, then a CRM solution. We fill in with email marketing and content management apps. Some may be created in-house; others we buy. As the speed of technology accelerates, we may switch from do-it-yourself to off-the-shelf. As the business grows, we become more sophisticated and specialized, and we get more tools to help us do our jobs.

What happens to the business processes and tools that fall into disuse? Some may disappear, others get pushed into the corners of our offices, our computers and our closets. They are forgotten until that moment when they unintentionally disrupt process flow or complicate operations or decelerate growth.

Staffing Companies Focused on Growth Need Technology Designed for Growth

We may plan for measured expansion and incremental growth, but we all take advantage of opportunities as they arise. Building your technology stack is a similar exercise. We plan for future needs, but immediate opportunities may require unplanned decisions. Sometimes we buy new technology outright; sometimes we inherit it via mergers and acquisitions. No matter how it is accumulated, the result is usually a somewhat chaotic collection of overlapping and duplicative applications that are difficult to manage and eventually impossible to support and sustain.

Growing Pains

When you outgrow all the different applications and point solutions that helped you build your business and hone your capabilities, it’s time to make a significant shift to a solution that is big enough and flexible enough to grow with you. You need a trusted enterprise platform with out-of-the-box security, performance, reliability and scalability. No matter how great the features and functionality of the latest software, if it cannot support your end-to-end requirements, it will only delay the inevitable discussion of how to get past the plateau growth state. You can no longer rely on fill-in solutions that are only as good as the workarounds created to connect one to another.

Take Advantage of Enterprise Technology Designed to Grow with You

Anything on your technology wish list is attainable, given enough time, money and development skill to create it, but why would you want to do that? Why expend resources on technology that could be better invested in recruiting and staffing capabilities? When you choose a powerful and flexible enterprise technology platform, you multiply your capabilities at any scale. You can configure features and functionality to meet your specific needs without the expense or time commitments that always accompany heavy customization. For example:

• Automate workflows through clicks rather than code. Build complex workflows with visual elements and reusable building blocks. Cut down on unnecessary extra effort, reduce human error and deliver a better service to your candidates and clients.
• Integrate everything faster. Connect disparate systems with API-led services or access a large, established library of proven apps, components, templates and more, without the need for customization.
• Keep it simple. No matter how many different countries you operate in or how many business units or brands you have, an integrated enterprise solution allows you to run everything on a single platform. System users only see what they need to see, despite the many different requirements users may have.

It’s Time to Open that Closet and Clean It Out!

Get ready for a new beginning. Clean out the proverbial mess in your technology closet. Prepare to accelerate growth for your business with a fully integrated, single-source enterprise solution that will give you the flexibility to expand when possible, pivot when needed and take advantage of opportunity whenever and wherever it is presented. Explore the possibilities for your staffing business by scheduling a demo or reach out to learn more.

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Applicant tracking systems can transform your staffing business as long the candidate database is well managed. The internal database software of the applicant tracking system should be the most obvious initial sourcing strategy as it accelerates the search for finding the right candidate for a job order without incurring additional advertising or sourcing costs. The importance of managing your candidate database well needs no explanation, but it is not always easy. Here are ways to manage it well and ensure you beat your competition to time-sensitive placements.

Use Skills Along with Keywords

When you add skills to candidate profiles (either manually or through the automated parsing process), it becomes easier to perform candidate searches. Keywords are a great way to search for candidates but there are instances where keywords are hidden in resumes or inappropriately used. To get precise search results, make sure each candidate has skills tagged and then finding candidates matching the core requirements of a job order will be simpler.

Avoid Duplicate Creation in the First Place

The faster you find out that a new candidate has a potential duplicate in the CRM, it is easier to manage. This means that recruiters need to be guided well in the candidate creation process itself to see if the duplicate exists or not. Users should be prompted when attempting to create a contact or candidate if a potential duplicate exists and given a chance to compare the records. In addition to this, the ATS should be capable of scanning applications from the websites and other external sources and updating a candidate’s existing record if required.

Put a Clean-up Process in Place

You may consider hiring someone outside to make sure the candidate recruitment database can be continuously monitored not only for efficiency but also to maintain compliance with relevant privacy legislation. You may think of this as an activity that needs to be done only periodically but having someone full-time would be preferable so that any consent limits are not exceeded. Involving recruiters in the clean-up process can be super helpful as they often know their candidates and clients best. This way they can review and merge records on their own when they come across duplicates in the recruitment database software or enter incomplete information where needed. They will be engaged and will also own the database.

Tools to Help with Duplicate Management

There are many third-party tools available that help with duplicate management. TargetRecruit already has an inbuilt duplicate management system in place. Every time a new candidate is created in the pool by uploading/parsing a resume in TargetRecruit, the profile is scanned and if the same candidate has applied for a different job in the past then the existing candidate record is updated. There are tools like Datatrim.com that can make duplicate management in the CRM or ATS even simpler.

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As you continue to add more and more information to our ATS, it gets richer and even more powerful. However, this “gold mine” of data can only deliver the maximum benefit when managed efficiently. A huge recruitment candidate database can become cluttered and then hinders rather than helps effective searching, so it is well worth investing the time and resources to ensure it is managed efficiently. Contact us if you would like to learn more about how to maintain recruitment database.

The post Managing the Candidate Database in Your Applicant Tracking System appeared first on TargetRecruit.

Even though global economies are opening up slowly, we all know that remote working or the virtual office is not going anywhere. Some staffing firms are opening (or planning to open) their physical office spaces soon, while others continue to work from home and have no plans of opening up anytime soon. However, learning from the pandemic, we all need a more flexible workforce for the future. 

While a 100% virtual workforce has its challenges as of now, we need our teams enabled for a remote working environment for the foreseeable future.

The staffing industry is geared up to play a crucial role in re-opening the economies. With the US, the UK, and many other countries facing the highest unemployment ever, recruiters will play a critical role in helping people get back to work.

This is the time for staffing firms to make a difference and a cloud-based applicant tracking software can help elevate the profile of your firm and ensure that your recruiters are efficient while working remotely.

Here is how a cloud-based, online applicant tracking system can boost the efficiency of remote work:

Data literacy and Access

The staffing industry has always been using data to make decisions but with this new uncertainty, recruiters need to understand data even more: patterns, outliers, emerging skills, etc. The amount of information that a recruiter needs to work effectively cannot possibly be interpreted by individuals alone. ATS solutions are equipped with reporting suites and analytics for recruiters to become more data literate and make informed decisions. One can debate that I can have data analytics even in an on-premise ATS. But a cloud-based ATS will ensure that recruiters can access information from anywhere, making it apt for remote working as well.

Video Interviewing

With staffing firms considering their working policies in the future, traditional interviewing is going to be disrupted for sure. Video interviewing has already made its entry into the recruitment process, and tools that support it are going to be in demand from now on. Experts believe that virtual recruitment will become an additional filter before the final interview even after the pandemic is over. This will help to save time and effort that the entire interviewing process requires.

More innovation in the interviewing space is on its way as recruiters are looking for ways to find the best talent for their clients in the shortest time possible.

Paperless Onboarding

We have been talking about paperless onboarding for a long time now and have all the technology to enable it, yet many organizations are still doing things the manual way- getting documents signed, verified, submitted, and more. It’s time to do all of that document management online: get your candidates to submit their documents in a self-service portal, make sure they can e-sign documents using an eSignature tool, get their credentials verified against online databases and have all your candidates on-boarded without physical intervention.

Increased Collaboration

If your team is planning to work remotely than they need a collaboration tool. A collaboration tool is not just a messaging app, rather a way to work securely with each other, network, share files, status updates, etc. A great example of a collaboration tool is Salesforce Chatter. It is revolutionizing organizational collaboration and allows employees to work seamlessly with each other on every task. ATS solutions that have in-built collaboration tools or integrate with collaboration tools have clear advantages because recruiters can easily chat about candidates, clients, positions, job order, post announcements, and even work in smaller groups for more privacy- all of this in real-time and within the main ATS, ensuring vital information is not lost in external email applications.

___________________

A cloud-based, online ATS has never been this important for staffing firms to keep employees, clients and candidates engaged and effective while working remotely.  

The post Improve the efficiency of remote working with a true cloud-based ATS appeared first on TargetRecruit.

The Covid-19 pandemic has created upheavals across industries and the year 2020 has seen unprecedented levels of unemployment. This means that hiring is becoming increasingly competitive due to the sheer volume of applicants, making the job of recruiters even more challenging. If at this time, your recruiters are busy doing their tasks manually, then most probably the goals that you would have laid out for your staffing firm this year are not going to be met or it would be challenging to meet them. Recruiters need to start thinking strategically for your firm to succeed in these times.

Technology is known for easing the challenges of any industry and staffing is no different. Irrespective of this global crisis, a strong recruitment software can empower your recruiters and ensure that they face the challenges of the industry head on.

In this blog, we have listed some of the tedious tasks that recruiters have to do while hiring and how they can be eased with the use of recruiting software.

Deal Sheets

Deal sheets, especially for healthcare staffing firms, require recruiters to perform the complex mathematical calculations and to determine rates and margins profitably. Deal sheets need to change on a client-by-client or job-by-job basis. This means changing burden types and rules for every single client or job.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. Taxes need to be loaded in the calculation, orientation rates need to be set, overtime thresholds need to be set up, and more. Recruiters need to refer to the GSA database to populate lodging and per diem rates based on the location of the job.

If done manually this can be extremely complicated with a high risk of human error. An applicant tracking software that supports deal sheets configuration can be invaluable in such cases and can save a lot of time and improve productivity for recruiters.

How can TargetRecruit Help?

TargetRecruit’s Deal Sheets with Pay Packages feature helps recruiters dynamically confirm rates for both candidates and clients on the fly while adhering to contractual rates and maintaining margins. All the calculations are done on a deal sheets template, which can then be assigned to a client or a job. See this video and pdf to learn more.

To help close the loop, we offer the ability to send Pay Packages. Every time a job is created, including those from your VMS, and every time an applicant is created, including those from your website, you can automatically send formatted and personalized customized pay package emails to your candidates based on criteria you determine.

Emails

Most recruiters receive a huge volume of emails a day, from candidates or clients. In a scenario without the right technology in place, the recruiter will be moving back and forth between email and the ATS. So every time, a recruiter gets an email from a new contact or a candidate, he has to go to the ATS and create the profile manually. When a client sends a job order in an email, the job needs to be created in the ATS separately.

This may be manageable for smaller volumes but can easily tie up too much of a consultants time when the number of applicants increases, and can result in delays making candidates and jobs live, or result in only a selection of candidates making it into the ATS.

But, email is still the preferred communication channel for staffing firms, and it’s not going to change anytime soon.  The solution is an ATS with a fully integrated email solution, allowing seamless blending of data between the email client and the ATS database.  Candidate resumes and job briefs can be added in seconds and are immediately available for consultants to work on.

How can TargetRecruit Help?

With TargetRecruit Email Connector, TargetRecruit ATS can be integrated with Outlook or Gmail, you can view and access information about clients, candidates, and contacts directly from your inbox. Email integration will allow you to track all candidates and client emails automatically. You can quickly add a contact or a candidate from Outlook or Gmail, create job orders, parse resumes or add notes- all from your inbox. See this video and pdf to learn more.

Presentations

In our previous blog, we talked about how staffing firms can improve their speed-to-hire. But there is one step that slows the speed down more than any other – when you have finally found that perfect candidate, presenting that person to the hiring manager as quickly and professionally as possible usually decides your placement success and closure rate.

A good Candidate Presentation requires a lot of time. Recruiters need to select what data elements to include in the presentation including work history, education history, background checks, skill tests, on-boarding documents, etc. The Document needs to be clean, well-formatted, and branded as per client requirements, with the candidates contact details removed. Also, the same format needs to be maintained every time for a client, which means maintaining multiple formats of presentations depending on the client. This can be extremely laborious if done manually. What recruiters need is a Candidate Presentation Tool that can generate presentations automatically, depending on the client.

How can TargetRecruit Help?

With TargetRecruit’s Candidate Presentation feature, recruiters can create presentations in just a few minutes. They can choose which data elements to include, add branding elements of the company such as customized header, footer, and company logo, create multiple presentation types per candidate, and easily send the presentations to the clients. 

The post Top 3 Tedious Tasks of Recruiters and How to Ease Them appeared first on TargetRecruit.

Communication is central to the recruitment cycle. An ATS integrated with email helps you respond faster to clients and candidates, capture and organize critical details, and collaborate and share in brand new ways. In fact, it enables a new way of working, giving you an edge when you communicate both outside and inside your organization.  Let’s look at the top benefits of ATS and Email integration: 

Get critical information straight from your inbox

With ATS and email integration, you can view and access information about clients, candidates, and contacts directly from your inbox. You’ll watch information flow and sync like magic, allowing you to edit on the fly, stopping you from bouncing between systems. Productivity will skyrocket because everything you need is in one place.

Track all emails

Integration allows you to track all candidate and client emails automatically. No backtracking. No extra clicks. Just forward movement. You’ll be able to see all of the emails from one contact, then filter those emails too see them in order, as one project, however you choose. You’ll feel organized. You’ll work full speed ahead.

Create candidates, jobs, tasks, and more

After receiving an email from someone new, quickly add as a contact or candidate directly from Outlook or Gmail. Say a client sends you a job order in an email. Now you can finish the job right in your inbox. Say you want to parse some resumes or add some notes. Easy. All from your inbox. Any new task you create flows right into the ATS.  

Easy internal communication

Need support for enterprise collaboration tools? Want to chat with your team about a contact or candidate? No problem. TargetRecruit’s Email Connector gets everybody on the same page, helping your team get work done faster than ever before. Let technology drive teamwork. These are the kinds of enterprise-grade tools that help navigate projects, track actions and events, and maximize opportunities. 

Work from any device

Employees to clients to suppliers, everyone wants to be mobile. Without any additional plugins, ATS and email integration allows anyone touching your business to work from any computer or mobile device. Today’s candidate wants to engage, connect, and communicate from a phone, wherever they are. 

Email is still the preferred communication channel for staffing firms, which makes email integration a must-have ATS feature. So what happens when you combine TargetRecruit with Outlook or Gmail? Valuable data flows through email. Workflows accelerate. You build a culture of collaboration. You get everything: contacts, leads, accounts, opportunities and tasks – in your inbox. Ever wanted your email to do more? 

TargetRecruit Email Connector integrates your software solution with Outlook or Gmail, unleashing the real power of communication across your entire staffing organization.  The integration is seamless and transparent. Overnight you’ll have people and jobs and tasks all in one place, all at your fingertips. Your email inbox will transform into a single workflow of speed and agility and intelligence. And success, mainly success. 

The post 5 Reasons Why ATS and Email Integration is a Must appeared first on TargetRecruit.

Blog by Bobby Bartlett on Payroll Solution within the ATS

I often speak to temp staffing companies that are frustrated with their current system because their technology is seemingly lagging behind the rest of the industry and it makes it difficult for them to progress their business in certain ways. Strong front office (sales, marketing, and recruiting) features often seem like an afterthought in these systems, and they really struggle with scalability due to the lack of API integrations, reporting functionality, and overall configurability. I believe that this is due to many vendors striving to be a jack of all trades instead of mastering one. Payroll is such a beast of a product for software companies to manage with all of the functionalities involved and ever-changing compliance, rates, etc. It becomes all-consuming and does not allow for the rest of the technology to progress. I simply do not believe that as it stands today, companies can have their cake and eat it, too. In other words, they can’t have payroll solution included with their staffing technology suite and still enjoy the most cutting edge technology features elsewhere within their tool.

An example of where the technology often suffers is with search technology and applicant workflow management. If your firm does 100% light industrial staffing and/or administrative staffing, you might only need to pre-board candidates, check availability, and send your employees to the next assignment. This is not usually the case though, as most temp staffing firms do a percentage of higher-margin contract engagements or permanent placements. Often I see these types of companies splitting this work into two different ATS tools—one meant for their lower-margin temp staffing and another meant for their higher margin staffing. Or they try to make their higher margin work fit into their ATS they use for temp staffing, and it becomes a problem because the system is not designed to handle both. With a highly flexible system and an integration to a 3rd-party payroll solution, you should be able to handle both! Below are the general strengths and weaknesses of some of these staffing software tools that specialize in high volume temporary staffing (i.e., systems that include payroll as part of their solution):

Weaknesses

Sales & Marketing

It is tough to grow revenue without strong sales and marketing functionality. Most temp staffing software provides the bare minimum of contact and task management with little else in mind for sales people. Having the ability to manage inbound leads, or forecast off of a sales pipeline is important for many firms. Also, marketing automation tools (like Hubspot or Marketo) can help create customized outreach campaigns to sales contacts and candidates alike, while using custom landing pages to help track where every lead is sourced from. What really sets TargetRecruit apart here is you can automate the majority of the heavy lifting salespeople do with tools like computer telephony integrations (CTI), integrations with data providers (like ZoomInfo), SMS messaging, or sales drip campaigns (Groove.co, Outreach.io).

Recruiting

Candidate search is important for all types of staffing companies. The stronger your search capabilities, the faster you will be able to find quality candidates, the happier clients will be, and the more revenue you will make. Companies outside of the temp software space tend to spend much more time enhancing search capabilities on their roadmap. Also, candidate workflow management tends to be much stronger in the non-payroll ATS space. This process tends to vary greatly from company to company so flexibility is really important here.

Reporting

In fairness, this tends to be a widespread weakness of other systems. Short of bolting on an expensive and hard to understand business intelligence (BI) tool, it is nearly impossible to get the information you need to run your business in one place. Having the ability to create reports from scratch as well as tweaking existing reports is one of the crucial pieces I see missing from systems in our space. Finding a tool with ad hoc reporting that can pull data from any table in your database is crucial. I talk to people every day that take information from 3-7 systems, export it to excel, doctor it, and try to make sense of the data that way, which can take hours, if not days, of time. Staffing technology should save time and provide a deeper level of insight for your business, not the opposite.

Configurability/Flexibility

By far the hardest to explain in one paragraph, but rigidity is the biggest drawback of systems in this space. The inability to make changes without having to pay professional services for customization kills the agility and speed of staffing organizations. Moreover, customizations break and disallow new system updates because they are not “backwards compatible.” Some examples are things we already covered, like changing candidate workflow or building ad hoc reports. Some other examples are:

1. Building custom objects (creating your own data tables to intermingle with existing data tables, like accounts, job orders, or candidates). A use case for this is one of our customers built their own custom assessments object that integrated with their candidate portal and other objects in TargetRecruit.
2. Limitations of record types, such as job types. For example, some companies want to have many different job types so they don’t have to pack too many fields into one record type (for ex. Temp-to-Hire or Perm), thus making the screens too busy and confusing.
3. Some staffing companies want to change the entire look and feel from one screen to another to fit their vision. Most staffing software providers have very little you can change about the layouts.

There are many more examples I could mention here but I just wanted to highlight a few common ones.

Partner Ecosystem/API Capabilities

Many tools in the temp staffing software space have very weak API capabilities, if any, and very few partners to choose from. I often see somewhere between 20-40 partner integrations, and without a robust API, it is very difficult to integrate with new partners because it requires expensive development resources from both sides. Not to self-promote, but to provide a frame of reference, the TargetRecruit and Salesforce platforms provide for over 5,000 plug and play integrations. For us as well, plug and play literally means one click installation, just like when you download an app on your smartphone. 

Weak (or no) API capabilities also means you can’t take another technology provider you really like that isn’t already integrated and do so without expensive development.

Strengths

Payroll Solution

The main strength of temp staffing tools is their payroll solution. They are generally going to get the most attention from a research & development dollars standpoint, because compliance is not an option for temp staffing, it is a must. If you can’t effectively search, or you have to take the long road to get a report you want, the cost to your business is for the most part hidden and difficult to quantify. If you are not in compliance with payroll, Uncle Sam WILL find you and make you pay. Thus, a payroll solution needs to be airtight, and with most temp staffing software providers, this is the case. I’ve found the payroll technologies here to be for the most part impressive.

Payroll Agility

If you control your payroll and your payroll is not outsourced, you can cut a check on the spot if a mistake is made, which they will be.

Cost (Managed vs. In-House)

General consensus is that managed providers (ADP & Paychex) are more costly than handling payroll in house, and it’s hard to argue this sentiment. For example: ABC Staffing has 25 internal employees (sales, recruiters, operations, management, etc.) and pays 500 temp employees per week and 650 employees per month (PEPM) due to 30% turnover. Let’s assume in an equal world that an ATS for all three scenarios will be a wash from a cost standpoint.

Scenario 1 – Handing Payroll In-House with an ATS that Includes Payroll: First there is the human capital cost. Let’s say ABC staffing has 2 FTEs that cost roughly $45,000/year full burdened. Those two employees spend Monday and Tuesday of every week just handling payroll, so ⅖ of their job, or $18,000/year each. This totals about $36,000 of cost in human capital. Plus there are other costs like paying for Greenshades, managing ACA compliance and worker’s comp that come into consideration as well.

Scenario 2 – Paying for Managed Payroll: Let’s guesstimate that the full service payroll provider charges $6 PEPM. That comes out to $46,800 per year. Pretty simple math!

Scenario 3 – The Hybrid “Best in Breed” Approach: In this scenario, you would buy a front to back system (sales, recruiting, onboarding, timekeeping, invoicing, etc.) and integrate it with a payroll software solution. This software solution manages your ACA compliance, worker’s comp, and all of your tax tables for you. You run your own payroll, but they charge $1/check. If you’re paying on average 500 employees per week at $1/check, that will come out to $26,000/year. You will still need to pay at least one to two people to run payroll each week for 2 days, costing $18,000-$36,000 year. In theory, there should be less work here.

Conclusion

In the end, there are pros and cons for using an ATS with or without a payroll solution. Scenario 1, the scenario your firm is probably using today, is the cheapest and seemingly cleanest, but there could be consequences to your firm’s growth by going this route. Scenario 2 largely depends on the PEPM price you negotiate, but if that rate is low, it can make a lot of sense for staffing firms to just outsource payroll altogether. Scenario 3 is the scenario I predict will become more popular in the future, because staffing companies realize how much that maintaining a payroll product weighs the rest of their staffing solution down, yet they still prefer to handle payroll in-house for multiple reasons.

Decisions are often made based on the bottom line, just be careful not to prioritize cheapest over best value. Your system should never dictate what your business can do. It should help mold to whatever your future needs or opportunities might be. It should also have a strong focus on front office features, since they are what drives revenue, especially in sales and marketing.

If you’d like to connect to discuss, send me an invite here.

The post Should My Staffing ATS Include a Payroll Solution or Not? appeared first on TargetRecruit.

In part one of the recruiting automation blog series, benefits of automation were outlined and automated screening was discussed in detail. Recruiting automation is not just limited to screening and can automate most of the hiring processes- one of them being interviewing. Automated interviews differ drastically from traditional methods because everything happens virtually. Not only does this save time and effort, but it also reduces the cost of hiring.

Why automated interviews

Scheduling automated interview is extremely flexible and considers the availability of the candidates. With automated interviews, applicants from all over the world can be included in the process without having them travel to a specific location.

Organizations are switching to automated interviews due to several benefits. It does not compromise on the quality of the recruitment process and with the right automation platform, one can hire the best talent. Automated interviewing is not just a replacement for traditional methods, rather it is a new avatar of interviews- a complete digital overhaul.

How does it work?

The structure is the key to an automated interview process, which is followed by applicant tracking systems or staffing software. Here is how it works:

Step 1:

When a candidate expresses interest in a job opening, the candidate is sent an invitation for the interview. Automated emails are sent out to all of the interested applicants and candidates can select a suitable time slot, using the scheduling feature.

Step 2:

On a predetermined date, the candidates are required to record the answers using video interviews platform support by the ATS. Most of these products are customizable and can be used by recruiters to set the questions required for the job. They can even set multiple stages of the interviewing process.

Step 3:

The video interview is initiated with an automated email sent out to the candidates with a link to submit the response. Recruiters can even include guidelines in the email for the applicants. The video is recorded and candidates can even do retakes.

Step 4:

All of the video interviewing responses can be analysed by the recruiting team to select the best candidates. This saves a lot of time and is done much more quickly and efficiently. Further automation can be also done by using artificial intelligence to analyse video responses of the candidates and automatically select the best from the group and email them as well upon selection.

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Read about TargetRecruit’s automation tools to transform complex hiring processes into powerful workflows. TargetRecruit includes many built-in rules that simplify business processes and secure data. Download the PDF here.

In the next blog of this series, we will discuss the future of automation. Stay tuned!

The post Automated Interviews is Changing Recruiting Forever appeared first on TargetRecruit.