By Lynn Connor, COATS Staffing Software
Today, software runs the world. The staffing world is no different.
The recruiting business simply doesn’t happen these days without a staffing software solution. Recruiting software for staffing agencies is the engine behind finding talent. Staffing agency software lets these companies source, track, and manage candidates on behalf of their clients. These solutions also help staffing agencies organize their efforts to seek new clients and drive sales and candidate prospects pipelines.
This article will examine four types of staffing agency software tools, their benefits, and what to look for in this technology.
What is Staffing Agency Software?
Today we can’t imagine a job where manually managing candidates and prospects was part of the job. Recruiting software for staffing agencies organizes our work efforts, communicates faster, and helps automate mundane tasks. These staffing software solutions streamline our processes in ways we couldn’t have imagined even a decade ago.
Today we can use these tools from any digital device to:
- Maintain candidate relationships.
- Communicate with potential business clients.
- Text a prospect.
- Record data directly into a candidate record.
- Run reporting metrics such as time to hire.
Staffing agency software is so ubiquitous today that it’s easy to take it for granted. Let’s step back a second to ask: Why should a temp agency consider this kind of technology?
Why Should Temp Agencies Use Staffing Software?
The American staffing industry is big business and getting bigger. Today more than three million people go through temporary and contract engagements via these firms. Each year, more staffing agencies hire more than 16 million people for their clients.
Imagine keeping paperwork straight on all these hires without staffing agency software? Imagine maintaining compliance with state, local, and federal hiring rules without recruiting software for your staffing agency? There is simply no better tool than staffing agency software for keeping up with the volume of candidates and clients you touch every day. Besides the obvious organizational benefits, what else can these digital tools bring to the table?
Recruit Faster with Staffing Software Solutions
Staffing software helps you speed up candidate screening, arguably the most labor-intensive part of the recruiting process. The average recruiter spends 24 hours every week reviewing resumes and 80 to 90% don’t even fit the position.
From the candidate experience perspective, a resume spends about 38% of its time in the screening process. That means the candidate is in limbo while waiting for someone at your company to review their credentials. In a job market with more than 10 million open positions, the longer candidates wait, the more likely they’ll go somewhere else.
Manual recruiting processes are one of the industry’s biggest challenges. But staffing agency software can replace manual processes with sophisticated keyword searches to parse down resume applications to the handful that meet job requirements. Then the recruiter can quickly move to this “low-hanging fruit,” letting the staffing agency software do a pre-screen right up front.
This is just one of the ways staffing software solutions can speed up your time-to-hire numbers.
Recruitment Automation Increases Data Accuracy
You know the expression, “Garbage in, garbage out?” Quality control is particularly critical during the hiring process. But up to 40% of the data your recruiting or HR team is entering manually into the computer has at least one typo. Imagine if you pull out the wrong amount of taxes on a new hire or send their direct deposit to someone else’s account? What if you classify a part-time worker as a 1099 contractor?
These things (and more) can happen if your data isn’t accurate. Staffing agency software ensures better data accuracy with parsing and automation features that simply require a drag and drop of a candidate resume to capture employment information. The best recruiting software for staffing agencies offers self-service portals where new employees can enter their own data, record time, and see important details such as how much PTO they have remaining for the year.
Recruiting software for staffing agencies ensures the accuracy of your candidate and client data. Automation is the icing on the cake, allowing information to flow between systems without the need to touch it or enter data manually. This reduces the risk of data error and increases labor and tax compliance. But the benefits of staffing agency software don’t stop there.
Staffing Software Improves Communication
Communication is critical to the hiring process. Staffing software solutions can help recruiters share information with employers and candidates. The automation in modern technologies streamlines many processes, improves the candidate experience, keeps clients happier, helps with compliance, and speeds up your workflows.
Phone calls and emails are the most common communication channels, but texting, videoconferencing, chatbots, and even social media are also important. The problem is that most recruiters are bombarded with open job positions. Each job may have dozens of candidates to respond to and manage. Then there are interviews to schedule, paperwork that needs to go out, and information to share with employers.
Staffing agency software can automate various parts of the process to improve communication. For example, candidates often complain that submitting a resume is like sending it down a bottomless well where the company never responds. Staffing agency software can automate your response to the candidate submission or even, later on, send out emails letting second-round candidates know they’ve made the cut—and more. These correspondences are entered directly into the candidate record, so you have a history of the communication. Imagine how communication can slow down if you are still handling these processes manually.
Automating communication with your clients is also beneficial. For example, you could set up regular reporting to current clients. These reports can automatically pull data from your candidate or billing activity and send it to the client. You can automate client prospecting, too, recording into the record whether the prospect responded to your query.
While these benefits can help your organization achieve an advantage over the competition, it also comes with some difficult decisions about what kind of staffing software solution you choose. Automating communications with your clients is also beneficial. For example, you could set up regular reporting to current clients. These reports can automatically pull data from your candidate or billing activity and send it to the client. You can automate client prospecting, too, recording into the record whether the prospect responded to your query.
While these benefits can help your organization achieve an advantage over the competition, it also comes with some difficult decisions about what kind of staffing software solution you choose.
4 Staffing Software Solutions for Agencies
Recruiting firms have four distinct software choices. You can purchase these tools ala carte, but the latest generation of applicant tracking systems (ATS) also incorporate features from other HR-related tools.
#1 Customer Relation Management (CRM) Software
What is CRM Software?
Who is your customer, and how will you communicate with them? These key questions are answered by customer relationship management (CRM) software. A CRM can:
- Organize a large prospecting effort for candidates or clients.
- Automate repetitive tasks.
- Improve and streamline communications with a job pipeline.
- Analyze and report data.
A CRM often has marketing features that help you proactively reach potential clients or candidates. It’s a good tool for pipelining, which is a key differentiator from applicant tracking software.
#2 Applicant Tracking Software (ATS)
What is ATS Software?
An applicant tracking system (ATS) is a central database for applicant records. The benefits of these systems include:
- Optimizes your hiring process.
- Automates resume screenings.
- Creates and posts job openings.
- Serves as a repository for candidate data.
- Uses keywords to help with resume screening.
- Systematizes the hiring process.
- Streamlines the hiring pipeline.
- Helps with compliance.
A good ATS can link with other software that you use every day, including LinkedIn Recruiter or other job boards where you can post open roles. But what happens to the ATS record after you hire the candidate?
#3 Employee Onboarding Software
What is Employee Onboarding Software?
Employee onboarding software digitizes the process of bringing on a new team member. These staffing software solutions can send new hire paperwork back and forth with a candidate to ensure the security of confidential data. The software generally operates from an online self-service hub making it easier for a new hire to complete their paperwork even before orientation. Much of this paperwork is automated to ensure your company complies with labor relations and tax rules. The features of these tools include:
- Self-service portals.
- Onboarding checklists.
- E-signatures.
- Integrations with other HR software tools (such as QuickBooks for payroll or calendar apps).
#4 Interviewing Software
What is Interviewing Software?
Interviewing software helps recruiters conduct online interviews. These tools help recruiters conduct online video screens in real-time, or you can pre-record a message to candidates or have the candidates record an interview to pre-recorded questions for your review later on. Interviewing software is a relatively new tool for recruiters, but it can effectively streamline a big pool of applicants.
How to Choose the Right Staffing Software for Your Agency
There are many staffing agency software options today. How will you choose the right tools to get the job done?
Identify Current Recruiting Problems
Start by identifying the hottest issues in your business. What are the problems you are trying to solve?
- Are you spending too much time screening resumes?
- Are recruiters failing to capture candidate communications?
- Do candidates complain that they don’t hear from you frequently?
- Do you want to make each team member more efficient?
Determine Most Valuable Staffing Software Features
Now look at the staffing software features that can solve these problems. For example, does the recruiting software:
- Use keywords to intuitively sift through resumes to find the top matches for the job requirements?
- Allow email and texts to occur directly from the candidate record so everything records in the ATS?
- Automate communications to improve the candidate experience?
- Streamline manual workflows to cut errors and busywork?
Inquire About Trial Periods
Every staffing software solutions provider wants your business. Beware of sales speak; instead, ask if you can try out the service before you buy it. This will eliminate any buyer’s remorse that could set in later.
Staffing Software from COATS is the Premier Solution for Recruiters
Today, the candidate experience is everything. That is probably the top reason to select a staffing agency software that combines ATS, CRM, onboarding, and interviewing features. These tools give you the best of all of these worlds without requiring four layers of different software vendors to get everything done.
COATS offers recruiting software for staffing agencies that streamlines the myriad of tasks associated with the hiring process. Find out why companies choose our tools and how we can help your business.
