Enterprise-level tech solutions integration is growing significantly – businesses are increasingly applying tech systems to improve efficiency across their operations. Now, you can find tech stacks for all activities, from accounting to human resources (HR) responsibilities such as employee management and recruitment.
Modern recruitment has become more fast-paced. The sheer volume of applicants and shortened hiring timelines have made it increasingly challenging for HR professionals to attract and hire the best talents efficiently.
In response, HR technologies like Applicant Tracking Software (ATS) have become increasingly predominant in talent acquisition. Up to 97.4% of Fortune 500 companies use one to ensure a high quality of hire across the board.
Here, we’ll examine the steps to building a recruitment tech stack, why you need it, and the different software solutions that comprise a comprehensive stack.
What is in a Recruitment Tech Stack?
If you aren’t familiar with IT terminologies, a tech stack is a collection of programs and systems that provide similar technological solutions.
A recruitment tech stack combines tools and technologies that work together to optimize a hiring procedure. An excellent stack helps to improve efficiency in processes, including candidate shortlisting, interview, employment, and onboarding.
A recruitment tech stack is similar to other IT stacks, embodying a collection of different programs that provide specific software solutions. The significant stand-out feature is that, in this case, a recruitment tech stack provides varied, nuanced solutions for your company’s employee hiring processes.
Why You Need a Recruitment Tech Stack
While the job market is brimming with many seemingly high-quality candidates, it’s still tricky for recruiters to find the right candidate for their company. For HR personnel or agencies, providing the perfect candidate for their clients is also crucial for their reputation.
Finding the perfect fit for a role out of several applicants can sometimes feel like looking for a needle in a haystack. Doing it manually will be challenging, but a metal detector or powerful magnet makes it easier to get the needle.
Similarly, building a recruitment tech stack is synonymous with getting the magnet or metal detector to look for the needle (perfect candidate) in the haystack (pool of applicants). It’s taking a data-driven approach to reducing recruitment challenges and streamlining the entire process.
Integrating the best recruiting technology in a tech stack improves speed and accuracy in assessing potential candidates. It also helps to save costs, improve candidates’ experience, and give a good impression of the company.
Steps to Create a Recruiting Technology Stack
Many brands, like Vonage, offer varied unified communications and contact center solutions useful in a recruitment stack, but where do we begin?
Follow these steps to build an ideal solution-focused recruitment tech stack for your needs.
Identify Your Challenges and Needs
The best approach to building a system is creating it as a solution to a specific problem. Building an effective recruitment tech stack requires thoroughly understanding your organization’s unique needs and objectives.
How to Determine What Your Recruitment Tech Stack Needs
Assess your business needs to determine your recruitment requirements and the appropriate tech stack to address them.
- Evaluate Current Processes: Evaluate your existing recruitment processes to identify bottlenecks and improvement areas. Your selection decision will be easier when you understand the pain points in your current workflow. For instance, if accessibility is an issue, then you want a recruitment stack with cloud migration features for universal accessibility.
- Define Goals and Objectives: Clearly outline what you want to achieve with the HR tech stack. Your goals may be to reduce time-to-hire, improve candidate experience, or enhance collaboration among hiring teams. A well-defined objective will assist you in selecting the right technologies for your stack.
- Consider Scalability: Scalability is crucial to accommodate an increasing operation intensity without compromising efficiency or the quality of the hiring process. As such, only choose tools that can scale with your organization’s growth.
- Consider your Budget: Investing in cutting-edge technologies is often tempting, but keeping your expenses within your budget is more important. Understand your budget constraints and allocate resources accordingly—you must balance functionality and cost-effectiveness.
Create a Tech Foundation
A tech foundation forms the base that’ll hold the rest of your recruitment stack. It is the core technology which other programs in the stack will integrate into.
Traditional HRM and Payroll software programs make excellent foundational tools for recruitment tech stacks. These systems incorporate functionalities for managing an organization’s workforce resources. They may also include features for managing job applications and candidate screening.
That’s why most HR personnel build their recruitment tech stacks on traditional HRM and Payroll software programs. Recruiters similarly use applicant tracking systems. These programs aid the applicant filtering and sorting process. They scan several applications for predefined seed keywords and select the ones that pass the tests.
Overall, your tech foundation selection should be determined by your specific needs. But in today’s world, it’s almost always better to choose a platform with cloud migration functionalities which are easily scalable and accessible.
Research Available Solution
Several tools and solutions fit for recruitment tech stacks. But that doesn’t mean you should include them all in your stack. As such, you must carefully research the solutions that match your unique needs before choosing.
Identify all the possible tools that will be necessary to manage different areas of your recruitment tech stack.
For example, you may research call center outbound software to add to the stack for seamless communication with applicants and clients. With call center integration, you can prioritize and respond to candidate inquiries quickly, improving overall response rates and enhancing individual candidate experiences.
Select Your Preferred Solutions and Optimize Your Tech Stack
Setting up your recruiting stack is the next stage once you identify the best tools and technology for your needs. Put all the software programs together and get the stack running.
You may experiment with different software solutions at this stage to identify the best way to tailor the tech stack for your recruitment procedure.
Ensure the stack includes technology that caters to every touchpoint in the applicant’s journey from awareness to onboarding.
Incorporate Assessment and Testing Platforms
Continuous testing and assessment are crucial to ensure your investments yield the desired results you want. It also applies to operating a recruitment tech stack.
When creating a recruiting technology stack, incorporate testing mechanisms at every setup step. Integrate assessment tools that align with the skills required for your hiring roles. This step ensures that candidates possess the necessary competencies to succeed.
For instance, personality assessments should be a part of the recruitment process for customer-facing roles where the selected candidate represents your brand.
Types of Recruitment Software
Now that you know how to build a recruitment tech stack, let’s examine some common tools you can incorporate into your stack.
Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS)
Applicant Tracking Systems are core to every recruitment technology. These software programs enable full hiring process automation through functionalities that manage job postings, track applications, and organize candidate data.
An ATS uses a sub-category of artificial intelligence known as machine learning. The system uses machine learning to learn patterns and shortlist potential high-quality candidates for a role.
An ATS manages candidate shortlisting, making it easier for recruiters to quickly whittle down large volumes of applications to a few candidates. In addition, the system streamlines collaboration among hiring teams while serving as a centralized repository for candidate data.
Candidate Relationship Management Systems (CRM)
Candidate relationship management systems assist in nurturing relationships with potential employees. They work similarly to customer relationship management systems,