To help enterprise-level companies optimize their talent acquisition technology, we asked industry experts for their advice and received nine insightful answers. From integrating staffing agency tools to facilitating global hiring, here are the top recommendations shared by a Head of People and a VP of Recruiting, among others, to improve your hiring process.
- Integrate Staffing Agency Tools
- Enhance Recruiters’ Relationship-Building Tools
- Focus on Competency Assessments
- Prioritize Candidate Experience and Analytics
- Maintain the People Element
- Build an Effective Talent Pipeline
- Automate Routine Administrative Tasks
- Leverage Data Analytics
- Facilitate Global Hiring
Integrate Staffing Agency Tools
Enterprise-level companies often heavily rely on contingent labor and fractional project professionals. These companies need a good integration with their preferred staffing agency’s recruitment and/or onboarding tool. Freelancer platforms like UpWork also offer enterprise clients HRIS integration options. These integrations streamline hiring by moving our candidates straight from the hired stage in the staffing company’s portal to the first step in our onboarding workflow, which kicks off a series of automated workflows. This seriously saves us (and our enterprise customers) time and money!
Susan Snipes, Head of People, Remote People
Enhance Recruiters’ Relationship-Building Tools
In our remote recruitment agency, we focus on technology that enhances our recruiters’ ability to headhunt top professionals. Our key tools are an advanced CRM for managing long-term relationships, market-intelligence platforms for industry insights, and secure communication systems for confidential discussions. The game-changer for us was a specialized executive recruitment CRM. It helps our team track interactions, set follow-ups, and note career aspirations of potential candidates.
This tool boosted our successful placements of hard-to-reach executives by 35%. It doesn’t replace our recruiters’ expertise—instead, it allows them to make more timely and personalized outreach. By focusing on technology that supports relationship-building, we’ve strengthened our position as go-to headhunters for placing top-tier, employed professionals in key global roles.
Ihor Shcherbinin, VP of Recruiting, DistantJob
Focus on Competency Assessments
In my experience, enterprise-level companies should focus on a few key areas when optimizing their talent acquisition technology, with competency assessments being at the heart of each. Comprehensive candidate assessment tools that offer detailed insights into a candidate’s competencies are crucial because they help identify the best fit for both the role and the company culture, ensuring a holistic understanding of each candidate.
Additionally, implementing technology that leverages data analytics derived from competency assessments provides actionable insights. This makes hiring decisions more accurate and helps predict future job performance based on key, job-specific competencies. It’s also essential to ensure the technology offers a smooth and engaging experience for candidates, particularly in how competency assessments are conducted. A positive and well-structured assessment experience reflects well on the company and can attract top talent by demonstrating a commitment to understanding and valuing each candidate’s unique strengths.
By using advanced tools to measure specific competencies, we can see beyond resumes and get a true understanding of each candidate’s strengths and potential areas for growth. This approach has allowed us to identify individuals who not only have the necessary skills but also align with our company’s values and culture. Focusing on comprehensive competency assessments has greatly improved our hiring process. As a result, our new hires are more engaged, perform better, and stay with the company longer, contributing to the overall success and stability of our teams.
Linda Scorzo, CEO, Hiring Indicators
Prioritize Candidate Experience and Analytics
As per my experience working as a tech-recruiting expert, I believe enterprise companies should prioritize candidate experience, data analytics, and AI integration to optimize their talent acquisition tech. A positive candidate experience is essential for attracting top talent in any organization, big or small. After implementing a chatbot to provide instant answers to candidate queries, we were able to improve our time-to-fill metrics significantly. This freed up recruiters to focus on more strategic tasks and created a positive first impression for candidates.
On the other hand, data analytics offers valuable insights into our hiring funnel, allowing us to identify bottlenecks and refine our sourcing strategy. Also, by using AI algorithms for resume screening and job matching, we’ve streamlined the process, saved time, and improved the overall quality of candidates.
Sergiu Matei, Founder and Tech Recruiting Expert, Index.Dev
Maintain the People Element
Don’t go too tool- or software-heavy to the point that you lose the “people” element from your processes. Your staff don’t just want to become software programmers, and the teams you’re recruiting don’t want to converse with AI chatbots and prerecorded questions as a means of onboarding.
Stress that you have the “people” element of your acquisition strategies at the forefront of everything you do, so that new talent knows that they’re actually valued as a person (both personally and professionally).
Wendy Makinson, HR Manager, Joloda Hydraroll
Build an Effective Talent Pipeline
The key area that I would recommend enterprise-level organizations focus on is building an effective talent pipeline. Having a list of potential candidates who are already interested in your organization can dramatically speed up your recruitment process when you have open roles to fill. It also improves your hiring across the board because you can make more targeted outreach to those specific candidates from your pipeline who are a perfect fit for both the role and your organization’s culture and values.
Having a talent pipeline also allows you to nurture talent leads over time, building a rapport with them that helps you get to know them better before making your decision. This also lowers the odds of candidates dropping out of the recruiting process or not showing up to interviews because they already have a relationship with your company and are interested in your organization specifically, not just in landing a job.
Recruiting software can be invaluable in building and growing a talent pipeline. Having an ATS or CRM lets you keep track of all your candidate data, not just when you’re hiring for one role but in an ongoing capacity. Applicants for past roles are some of the best candidates to put into your pipeline because they’ve already shown an interest in your company, especially the people who made it to later rounds of the hiring process but didn’t end up getting hired.
Developing a talent pipeline improves the recruitment process in a number of ways. You can learn more about the candidates before you hire them, for one thing, which helps you to make better hiring decisions. Doing this also forces you to focus more on candidate engagement. That can have a positive impact on your employer brand, not just for the specific applicants you’re communicating with but also for others in their network who might be looking for a job in the future. In short, it’s a great way to have a core base of high-quality talent that you build on and then draw from whenever you need to hire.
Rob Boyle, Marketing Operations Director, Airswift
Automate Routine Administrative Tasks
Enterprise-level companies should concentrate on a few important topics when utilizing talent-acquisition tools to enhance the hiring process. Data analytics, task automation, and integration skills are a few of these fields.
One crucial subject is the automation of routine administrative tasks. This includes sending follow-up emails, scheduling interviews, and examining resumes. HR professionals can spend much less time on administrative tasks and much more time engaging with candidates and developing innovative solutions by automating these processes.
We implemented a system that automates the initial screening of resumes based on predefined criteria such as skills, experience, and education. Our hiring process has been enhanced by this modification, which has also enabled us to interview candidates who are most suited for the positions. Also, it has expedited the hiring process in general, enabling us to fill positions with greater effectiveness and speed.
The integration capabilities of talent-acquisition technologies should be an important area of focus as well. Smooth information flow and fewer data errors are ensured by seamless connections between several HR systems.
Data analytics must be used by talent-acquisition technology to make good hiring selections. Based on historical data, it helps in anticipating the need for jobs, assessing the effectiveness of different sourcing channels, and identifying process improvement needs.
We are now able to monitor KPIs like candidate conversion rates, time to fill, and source of hiring by integrating advanced data analytics into the systems we use. Our ability to maximize job ad placements and enhance candidate interaction strategies has significantly increased because of the data we have utilized to hone our recruitment techniques. We have also seen an apparent rise in the quality of recent hiring and a decline in turnover rates.
Jessica Munday, People and Culture Manager, Custom Neon
Leverage Data Analytics
I would say that effective use of data analytics is crucial for enhancing talent acquisition processes. Without leveraging data analytics, organizations miss out on valuable insights that can inform decisions and strategies in hiring.
Data trends—such as candidate sourcing effectiveness and time-to-hire metrics—can help organizations identify what recruiters are doing well and what isn’t. This allows for a more targeted approach, optimizing recruitment campaigns and improving overall efficiency.
For instance, utilizing predictive analytics can help forecast future hiring needs based on historical data, allowing talent acquisition teams to anticipate needs proactively rather than reacting as they arise. In essence, integrating data analytics into the talent acquisition workflow not only streamlines processes but also significantly improves the quality of hires. Without focusing on these areas, things will not improve and will just stay as they are—which is not good if a business is aiming for sustainability and continuous improvement.
Vikrant Bhalodia, Head of Marketing & People Ops, WeblineIndia
Facilitate Global Hiring
Enterprise organizations looking to improve their recruitment technology should prioritize tools that facilitate global hiring and cross-cultural understanding.
We’ve seen how focusing on cross-cultural communication enhances talent acquisition strategies, especially when helping clients recruit internationally.
This focus has led to more successful placements and higher satisfaction rates among both employers and candidates while allowing our clients to tap into a truly global talent pool and find the best fit for their roles regardless of geographical boundaries. Also, it created a more welcoming experience for candidates, increasing offer acceptance and long-term retention.
Reyansh Mestry, Head of Marketing, TopSource Worldwide
