3 key features of a modern recruitment software

The key to getting the most from your brand-new HRMS recruitment software is to know exactly what you need – for both present and future – and let that inform the selection process. Obvious, maybe, but too many buyers are still viewing recruitment and hiring through the classic (old-fashioned!) lens of advertise a position, sit back and wait for the applications, assess those ‘passively received’ applications and pick the best candidate from those that managed to find your advertisement.

The modern world of recruitment is significantly more interactive than that, with systems that allow you to fully leverage social media to pre-assess (and pre-select) candidates, build talent pools, automate part of the recruitment process, and so on. The following are some key features of modern recruitment software.

1) Riding the social media wave

It sometimes seems that everyone is on social media (Facebook would certainly have you think so) and it’s certainly true that turning to social media when recruiting significantly boosts both the choice and quality of candidate for a vacant position.

Recommended Reading: get in-depth information about which recruitment features you need using our guide to 52 HRMS features to consider for your next purchase

Before you even have a vacancy, your recruitment software can be trawling online, finding potential new hires through online referral systems and the networks of your current employees. This allows you to engage with and market your organization to these ‘future possibles’, building your employer brand so that you effectively have some goodwill in the bank for when you need it.

And let’s not forget, social media not only gives you a bigger pond to fish in, it’s two-way nature means that your potential workforce will also be sizing you up as an employer, from reading your Facebook posts to checking your rating on Glassdoor.

2) The LinkedIn connection

Of course, the biggest social media network for business is still LinkedIn (with 380 million users and counting). Here in the second decade of the 21st century, the online culture is one of fast feedback and one-click purchasing. Apply those ‘consumerized’ expectations to getting a job and the current online generation will respond better to recruitment processes that are easy to initiate. Please note that this doesn’t imply a process that is over-simplified or dumbed down in any way, just easy (one click!) to get started and show some initial interest.

Which is where LinkedIn comes in. Today’s candidates aren’t likely to be printing copies of their resumes and posting them to you. They’ll want to send you their LinkedIn profile with the click of a mouse. The question is, can your recruitment software deal with that?

3) The analytical approach

Finally, the cutting edge of HR analytics includes (of course) the recruitment process. One left field angle being used by some systems is the analysis of existing employees to predict the best candidates to recruit by looking at the profiles of the more successful and productive employees and applying that information to the candidate pool, all via their recruitment software.

More and more, the determining factor in HRMS choice will be the array (or otherwise) of built-in analytics on offer.