Top 5 HR Tasks That Leading Agencies Automate

Automate Your Admin Tasks & Get Back To Recruiting

1. Clear Lines of Communication  

How cost and time effective is your communication with candidates? Perhaps not as effective as you think. Technology can do amazing things, especially for businesses - mass emails, individual texts, group chats, etc… the list goes on. However, it’s easy to underestimate how much time these avenues of communication can take - and in the workplace, time really is money.  

In the short term, communicating with candidates personally and individually can seem fine. But it quickly becomes expensive and tiresome. In a recruitment agency, it’s likely you don’t have time to sort everything out yourself - however, while hiring an assistant to sort out communication can seem like a great idea, it’s also a pricey one. In fact, even a part-time assistant earning minimum wage can cost you upwards of $25,000 annually.  

If you’re a recruiter, you assuredly know that your candidates don’t always reliably run on your office hours. It’s not uncommon to receive a text or email on the weekend, or a little later in the evening than you might like! Having communication streamlined into one app allows you to collect information automatically, without the stress of organising and remembering everything for the upcoming job. A candidate’s schedule is often complicated, and changes often, which can also make them feel guilty - they know you’re only human too, and want to make it as easy as possible.  

So what’s the answer? Your time is valuable and expensive, an assistant is an impractical added cost, and constantly dealing with communication yourself is becoming quite inconvenient. Automating communication regarding job offers, schedules, timesheets, calendars, and more saves time and money, and reduces headaches for both you and your client. With everything automated, the need for individual texts, mass emails, and private groups is eliminated. There’s no more confusion about which job candidates were responding to, if you have too many or too few available workers, or where information is stored. Using a job requisition platform ensures that all communication about different jobs and candidates are streamlined - everything is organised and managed clearly, for you, your candidate, and your client.  

2. Timesheets 

Have you ever considered that your current timesheet system may be hurting you? Physical timesheets can cause a huge amount of unnecessary stress - they can be damaged or lost, need to be past around a myriad of people, and are easy to forget. In fact, it’s almost too easy for timesheets to be handed in late or disappear into the abyss of your inbox or spam folder. It’s especially difficult when we consider that temp workers aren’t usually in the office - in fact, they might not be anywhere near the office. becoming a nuisance for you, your client, and your candidate.  

To solve this problem, many companies use ‘digital’ copies that are emailed directly to you. However, this also comes with issues. Not only is it easy to misplace an email or miss it before payday, but it also takes a substantial amount of time to organise each individual timesheet. An article from the Harvard Business Review discusses how a large number of workers spend their Friday afternoons trying to remember what their hours were, so they can record them, which wastes their own time and the client’s money - a significant amount of it.  

The simple solution is to use an automated digital timesheet software. This works by reminding workers to submit their timesheet on time after each work period, and notifying clients so they can finalise it. The invoicing and payroll system is also automated, and integrated into the same software, making communication between clients and candidates incredibly efficient and simple.  

Time will no longer be wasted gathering and passing on physical timesheets, or scouring through your deleted, spam and inbox folders to find emailed timesheets. Saving yourself time and money has never been easier! 

3. Trawling Through Your Candidate Database 

The hiring process itself can get expensive, tiresome, and difficult, as recruiters know well! This problem is most commonly solved by using a candidate database - but even then, trawling through every single candidate each time a new opening pops up gets old pretty quickly. This becomes more and more difficult, so recruiters and agencies with a high volume of candidates find it impossible to search through their database quickly.  

When you’ve got a lot of candidates, it can be difficult to find one that really is perfect for the job. It’s exasperating when you have a whole list of good candidates, but just know one is right - except you can’t find them! Of course, you can’t compromise and just pick someone ‘good’ - you have to spend the extra time looking for your person. Hunting through your candidate database can be daunting and troublesome, and can cause an abundance of unnecessary stress, and wasted time. So, what now? 

Using an easily accessible candidate database system allows you to find the exact person you’re looking for. Once you’ve mastered the user-friendly search function, you’ll have mastered the way to hand-pick someone you know is qualified, without the hassle of checking through emails, documents, and texts, and having to check each profile and resume. This means that you’re able to complete a candidate skills search, and fulfil any urgent placement requirements with the click of a button. 

A platform with a built-in recommendation system makes the hiring process even more simple. This is especially effective in temp work situations, where turnover can be fast, and notice extremely short. An automated software can search through your entire database instantly, picking the top candidates based on who has all of the up-to-date credentials, who is available, and who is in the area.  

4. Getting Feedback 

Feedback is a key aspect of recruitment. From the hiring process, until the job is finished, it’s important for both your candidates and clients to be able to communicate with each other, and with you.  

 However, there are a lot of obstacles that can prevent feedback from being given on time, if at all. Clients are usually pretty busy - after interviews, they might be rushing to their next meeting, or might not understand the importance of feedback in the first place. Candidates doing temp work are also busy, usually looking for their next role, and can easily forget to reflect on their recent jobs. In reality, feedback is important for the reputation of both clients and candidates, and shouldn’t be put to the side by either.  

A lot of businesses and agencies use either physical or digital feedback templates, which are sent out manually after the hiring process or after a job has been completed. However, the rate at which these are consistently filled out is low, and the rate at which they are used even lower. Because of the tight schedules of recruiters, candidates and clients alike, timesheets like these can simply be too much of a hassle to bother with. So why not take it a step further, and rely on a system to sort out feedback for you? 

Consider the Uber app’s rating system: it reminds you to leave feedback as soon as you get out of the car, through the app itself and again later, through email. You’re able to rate your ride and leave a comment, and the driver is encouraged to do the same - it’s user friendly, and super quick. And yes - recruitment technology is just as advanced!  

Giving feedback stops miscommunication and increases engagement, so it’s imperative that you can get it as fast, quick and speedy as possible. Therefore, it’s essential that you have the most efficient feedback, survey and ratings systems. Automating your system for receiving feedback from clients and candidates eliminates your task as a recruiter, of following up with physical or emailed feedback templates.  

5. Collating Information  

Word documents, Teams files, spreadsheets, shared drives, Google docs, iCloud, email, reminders, Facebook… there are hundreds, if not thousands, of platforms for storing data and communications. So when efficiency and ease is the goal, it’s important to have a quick and simple way to access all of your client and candidate data. From job posting, to communication, to documents and compliance tracking, to invoicing and payroll, you can have all of your recruitment tasks in one place.  

A temporary staffing software that collates timesheet distribution and submission, job vacancies, candidate recommendations and databases, communications and feedback will help you save time, effort and money. The automation of these systems also improves both the candidate and client experience, as transparency is increased and communication is faster and easier.  

Using automated push notifications directly through the software itself and through email, you’ll be able to acquire increased engagement from your candidates and clients, with far less work from you. Without the time spent on following up through different platforms, and ensuring all of your documents and information are in order, you’ll be able to work on less tedious and more important tasks, which will save you money in the long run.  

Streamlined services also significantly decrease administrative costs. The cost of an assistant and the cost of wasted time administering communications or trawling through your candidate database are entirely avoidable. Using client and candidate portals, all of these tasks can be automated and completed remarkably more efficiently.