How do you implement a recruitment system?
By Oz Oved, customer director at Niloosoft, responsible for dozens of successful implementations by our customers
As part of my job, and based on conversations with HR directors and placement agency owners, I have learned that every organization employs their own unique recruitment methods.
Of course, one of the most important parameters in selecting the best recruitment system is its capability to support the existing recruitment process as fully as possible, so as to improve it and streamline it, rather than changing it completely and thus damaging the work being done by the organization.
In order to implement a recruitment system in the organization as correctly and smoothly as possible, the existing process needs to be analyzed first: what we want to preserve, where its weak point are that we want to improve and streamline, and the parts that slow down and hinder the process that we want to replace with a more advanced alternative.
We will need to locate what parts of the process consume most of the recruiters’ time, where the process slows down, and what parts make your daily work awkward and cumbersome.
Based on my experience in implementing recruitment systems in many large and small organizations as well as in placement agencies, the basic stage of the implementation process is listing the entire existing recruitment procedure, from the moment an applicant views the different job websites and applies for the job, through the method of inputting his information into the system, documenting his recruitment process including opinions, interview summaries, impressions, feedbacks from relevant position holders and creating a complete candidate card, to the final step of either being accepted for the position or rejected for some reason and informed that the process has been ended.
Our purpose is to provide the organization with an automatic process for each step that would be intelligent, effective and economical, without harming the human aspect and personal contact with every single candidate and every executive or customer that we are servicing.
If we have been successful in streamlining the existing process and have ensured it would now be friendlier, we can then save time and direct it to the more challenging aspects of our work. We can then add additional steps to the recruitment process based on the features offered by the recruitment software being implemented.
Around the recruitment process we will establish the various entities that are part of the process. The most important of these are the sources of CV’s, positions, customers (or executives in our own organization) and of course – the candidates.
A successful implementation of a recruitment system will be possible when the system fits the user like a glove. The user must be completely familiar with it and should know who to ask when he has a question or is in need of additional improvements. Sometimes attaining this desired state of complete, successful implementation can take a week, but other times it can take several months.
Of course, in order to implement the system, the user has to begin working with it and cause other users to start utilizing it as the main recruitment tool. In some cases, the fear of becoming familiar with a new system causes new users to go back to their old habits of using the Outlook and the computer’s directories.
However, when automatic filing is done directly by the system and CV’s are not sent to the recruiters’ personal inboxes, and when the system employs intelligent hunters that go through CV’s and quickly and effectively locate new candidates who are suitable for a certain position, without any waste of time or human intervention, the system’s advantages are revealed, and even the most stubborn, difficult user will want to begin using it as his main work tool. The fear of learning about a new system and giving up his old habits will go away, and he will be excited about using the system exclusively, without any external components that are detrimental to a smooth, high quality recruitment process.
It is important to be aware of the fact that switching from one method to another or changing any system used by the organization involves difficulties that must be taken into consideration. You should not give up and go back to your old habits, because after the implementation process is complete as covered above, the satisfaction level is high and results are visible.
Users who have switched to this recruitment system and have implemented it successfully testify that it has been a positive and even essential process, and do not even want to hear about going back to their old work methods.
Would you like to hear about customers who have completed our implementation process? We have collected success stories of customers who are using our system and warmly recommend it.