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The days of flipping over the newspaper classifieds to search for a vacant position are long gone. Today, all corporate jobs are posted online, as companies consistently lookout for ways to create a seamless virtual hiring process.
Hiring has always been a peculiar process, a dilemma where employers are always after top talent, whereas candidates are always looking for the best opportunity to grab. Today, with the unemployment rates at an all-time high, hiring the right candidates has become even more difficult. Any job opening is inundated with hundreds of applicants, making it virtually impossible for an employer to adequately evaluate every application fairly. Even with ERP systems integrated into business operations, it is never easy to go through hundreds of job applications fairly.
That’s where the recruitment management system (RMS) comes to the rescue…
Here in this blog, we will be looking at everything you need to know about RMS including, how these systems work, who needs RMS, and how to choose the best RMS for your business. We will also be looking at some of the best recruitment management systems in 2024.
So, let’s dive in…
Overview of Recruitment Management Systems
Just like ERP or CRM systems help businesses to streamline their business operations or customer relationship management, RMS enables businesses to streamline their hiring process. RMS are meant to facilitate employers gain more control over their hiring process. The systems bring in advanced tools, and features to help recruiters track all stages of the hiring process from job posting to candidates’ screening, technical assessment, and employee onboarding. Some of the potential features of recruitment management systems include;
- Job posting on hiring boards
- Collecting applicants’ material
- Track employee referrals
- Candidates screening
- Interview scheduling
- Recording interview feedback
- Perform background checks
- Create and send offer letters
- Employee onboarding
Stages of recruitment
There are four crucial stages of recruiting including;
- Planning
- Strategy development
- Screening
- Evaluation
Unfortunately, the recruitment funnel isn’t as straightforward as the sales funnel. The slightest complacency on part of recruiters may lead to either complete failure of the recruitment process or making a wrong choice. Both of these can cost companies a loss of time, resources, and capital. Most of the time employers fail to successfully complete the recruitment funnel due to their inability to harvest adequate resumes, or because of an inadequate application screening process.
However, with the RMS, it’s possible to streamline the entire hiring process. This is achieved by creating a robust and consistent hiring framework, which keeps filling in positions with the top talent consistently.
Here’s how RMS can help streamline each of the four stages of recruitment;
Step One – Planning
For a successful hiring process, companies need to transform the vacancy into a targeted list of activities to attract, screen, and onboard the right candidates. The planning stage is what actually influences the final pool of candidates that will be applying for the position. Thereby, it’s important for businesses to adequately plan for job postings, which will eventually attract potential candidates.
With powerful recruitment management systems, employers can create a unified applicant tracking system. This unified dashboard will help them to track activities related to the job vacancy including; tracking the number of applicants against the positions, and keeping To-Do lists. With the automation brought about by recruitment management software, employers can eliminate much of the manual work including interview scheduling, emails, and even generating offer letters. With the right RMS, employers save time and efforts; so they can keep the focus on core business activities and build brands instead of looking out for the right employees.
Step Two – Strategy Development
Recruitment strategies are often dictated by the market saturation of candidates. Typically, low unemployment rates necessitate employers to come up with better and smarter recruitment strategies like offering competitive salaries or hiring less experienced employees to train them on-job, instead of going with experienced candidates and paying them expensive salaries. With a recruitment management system, companies can understand the job market, create the right position requirements, and prioritize activities to ensure a streamlined, and consistent recruitment process.
Step Three – Screening
Once the company has a definite plan and strategy for their recruitment needs, they can proceed to lookout for the candidates. The complexity at this stage for companies is to go through hundreds of applications for the position fairly. Also, the multiple compliance rules like the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) make it even harder for companies to run a streamlined hiring process.
With a recruitment management system(RMS) it’s easier for businesses to screen through a massive number of applications and ensure fair assessment of each and every application. Also, these systems help businesses with documentation and standardization of the hiring process. Not to forget, these systems can help companies stay compliant with various recruitment regulations to avoid penalties and fines.
Step Four– Evaluation
The recruitment process involves significant costs. Thereby, to ensure the success of the hiring process, companies need to benchmark activities and create a standardized hiring process. Some of the costs involved with the recruitment process include;
- Recruiting salaries
- Advertisement costs
- Cost of hiring a staffing agency
- Cost of failure to complete a job due to failure of the hiring process
The key to a successful hiring process with a high ROI is to have a consistent, and standardized hiring process with trackable metrics that indicate the cost-versus-ROI of the recruiting effort.
With the modern RMS, it becomes easier for businesses to create a standardized hiring framework with definite success metrics. This ensures that the hiring process remains profitable for companies, while they are able to source top talent out of the lot.
How does a recruitment management system work?
The first step for companies after the implementation of a recruitment management system is to create and post open positions.
Just like ERP and CRM systems that automate various business functions, RMS ensures businesses are able to leverage automated systems and processes to succeed. Almost all of the recruitment management software comes with the solid job opening templates, which can be customized easily by adding job title, location, experience required, employment type, skills required, and others to create a detailed job posting.
Once you are done creating and posting a job opening in the RMS, you will then need to create the multiple stages of the recruitment process. Again, with a solid RMS, all of these stages can be customized as per unique business needs or hiring framework. These stages may include; screening applications, conducting in-person interviews, reference & background checks, generating offer letters, completing legal documentation, and employee onboarding.
As soon as an application is submitted against an open job, the RMS system automatically collects all the relevant information into the centralized data repository. This means that you no longer have to go through floating resumes or cover letters. The recruitment management system also fastens the process of hiring by automatically weeding out applications not meeting the specific job requirements set up in the system.
For instance, if a job requirement includes “Digital marketing experience”, the RMS will automatically screen the applications for the “digital marketing” before accepting them into the potential pool of candidates against the job opening. This means that you will have less clutter at the later stages of recruitment, as well as, ensure that only the best matching candidates are able to make it into the next stages of recruitment. Advanced recruitment management systems can be trained by companies to crawl through the applications for specific keywords, which further reinforces the utility and versatility of the software for the recruitment process.
Most of the major RMS also assist recruiters to keep generating and collecting notes of their interactions with candidates. This enables them to keep track of all applicants and not oversee any important detail. RMS also offers employers a personal account that helps them to directly communicate and interact with candidates within the RMS. This helps employers to set up interviews, ask for references, give feedback or even inform candidates of rejection.
All of these steps can be performed using a single RMS platform through a unified and interactive interface, thereby making recruitment management systems a lifesaver for companies for their hiring needs.
Who needs a recruitment management system?
The recruitment management system is definitely useful for companies to meet their hiring needs. However, the cost of implementing RMS may be significant for most companies, especially startups, SMEs, or companies with few job openings. Some of the good candidates for RMS implementation includes;
- Companies actively looking to ramp up hiring
- Companies with high job openings
- Companies looking to improve tracking of HR-related documents
- Entrepreneurs looking to set up an employee referral program
If you are a startup, SME, or don’t fit into any of the above criteria, you can still leverage free or low-cost recruitment management systems. While These systems certainly come with some limitations as compared to most expensive options, they nonetheless offer multiple benefits for companies to streamline the hiring process.
How to choose the right RMS
Well, now that we are done with discussing all the features, and benefits of the RMS, let’s see how you can choose the best RMS for your business.
The key to choosing the right RMS is to choose one that aligns with your business recruitment needs. Remember, each business is unique and so are the recruitment needs, thereby make sure your RMS meets those requirements.
Here are some key considerations that you should consider when choosing the recruitment software;
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Analyze Company Needs
The right recruitment management system will not only depend on the recruitment needs of the business, but also the size, and industry of the company.
For choosing the right RMS, you need to identify the core needs of the business. As mentioned above, RMS may be an expensive investment for companies, thereby, make sure you know if you need one or not. Also, make sure the system is aligned to your industry, niche, and recruitment needs. In addition, make sure that you will be able to actually hire people using the software.
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Decide the required Features
Once you are done analyzing your business needs the next step is to create a list of features you will need in the software.
Just like every other technological tool, not all recruitment management systems are developed with similar features. For instance, some software may have video interview options, while others may have better features for social recruitments. In fact, some recruitment platforms may lack crucial features, making them useless for your business. Thereby, make sure you know the features you want and ensure the software of your choice has those features available.
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Analyze Software ROI
Just like all other business processes, the recruitment process also has its KPIs. When you are looking to take employees onboard, it incurs some costs while simultaneously contributing to the development of your business. Thereby, you should analyze the ROI of recruitment software against the expected business-related outcomes.
Another way to analyze the ROI for recruitment software is to determine the time, and resources saved by the platform against the overall hiring process (time required for screening resumes, interacting with applicants, scheduling interviews, etc.).
Best Recruitment Management System (RMS) Software & Tools for 2024
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JotForm
JotForm brings convenient form-building tools, which have a wide range of applications including as a RMS.
The convenient, and intuitive drag and drop feature of JotForm enable companies to create customized job applications with ease. You can also collect all relevant applicants’ data into the recruitment tracker template offered by the software. This allows businesses to oversee and track all applicants for the position and compare the strengths and limitations of each candidate through a single comparison table.
At the interview stage, JotForm can help businesses schedule interviews conveniently using Google Calendar integration. The system also enables candidates to know about interviewers’ feedback through feedback forms.
The platform can be integrated with various ERP systems including Salesforce, thereby, creating a powerful business management suite. The system can also be used as an effective CRM database and lead generation tool.
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Zoho Recruit
Zoho is a familiar name in the business management software industry, offering businesses a complete suite of business management tools including customer relationship management (CRM) tools, remote workplace management tools, and others.
To make it even more appealing, Zoho also offers its recruitment management tools – Zoho Recruits. The tool offers services into three specific verticals including, corporate HR, temporary staging, and agency recruiting. The biggest benefit of Zoho Recruit is perhaps its easy integration with other Zoho tools, making it a highly efficient and effective tool for businesses.
Another interesting feature of Zoho Recruit is “Source Booster”, which helps companies find passive candidates. The tool assists companies in determining applicants’ skills, and expertise on a first-hand basis.
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Greenhouse
Greenhouse is a powerful RMS that is aptly suited for large organizations, and businesses with a higher number of job openings. The software has consistently received appreciation and praise for its advanced and innovative features, as well as, its ability to continue upgrading functionalities to meet unique business needs.
Another interesting tool of the platform is the new employee onboarding feature. This tool enables companies to create a customized welcome experience for new employees of your team. One downside of Greenhouse is its relatively complex interface, which makes the learning curve a bit more difficult for new users. Also, the higher implementation costs may impede the adoption of the platform by smaller businesses.
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Freshteam
If you are looking for an RMS with easy scalability to meet the growing needs of your HR function, Freshteam is definitely a highly recommended tool. The platform enables businesses to create completely customized career sites, create tracking links to trace the origins of applicants, as well as, take onboard the entire hiring team to have their opinions and ratings in the hiring process.
The platform automatically synchronizes with the HR system to collect data of new employees, thereby, acting as a self-service portal for the entire staff. While the premium version of the software may come at a relatively expensive price, it does offer a 21-days free trial period, so you can experience the features, and functionalities offered by the system, before buying any specific plan.
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Jobvite
Lastly, we have yet another powerful RMS that is aptly suited to meet the complex hiring needs of large businesses and organizations. Jobvite is known for its robust customer service features and a highly intuitive user interface.
Another great feature of Jobvite is that it enables companies to create a completely customized hiring process, aligned with their business needs. Thereby, you don’t have to needlessly fit in any template hiring process.
Jobvite Engage is another high-utility tool offered by the system. The feature enables businesses to promote job openings by creating tactical recruiting strategies, specifically customized to their business needs.
The software is also highly oriented to data analytics. Therefore, if you prefer making data-backed hiring decisions, Jobvite brings you the powerful analytical tools you need to choose the best employee against an open position.
