Here’s a scenario that happens way too often.  A company buys a brand-new shiny piece of software that they are really excited about all the functionality and think will have a great impact on their organization.  They implement it with their providers help and then a few months later it’s sitting their available but most of the product goes unused.

Does this sound familiar?  No matter if you are large or small this has probably happened at a company you’ve worked for and may be happening right now.  I guarantee with any technology solution you are using that there is some untapped potential that is available that could help your organization.

To identify how you can get more out of your recruitment technology, I advise you to do a few things to better diagnose where you are at and what you want to achieve.

Understand your goals

Right off the bat you should be able to answer what the most used and effective feature in your recruitment technology is.  However, I’d go beyond that.  Why is this feature something you use daily?  Is it easy to use?  Is it crucial to your process?  Does it lead to better recruitment metrics and ROI?  Whatever you the reason, make sure you can communicate the why.  This will help you determine the goals you should ultimately look for when evaluating and choosing other potential features that you want to implement.

Also, be open to hearing new ideas that you haven’t thought of in terms of meeting your goals.  Sometimes the answer to your goals is not what you think it would be and the worst thing you can do is be closed off to ideas from the start.

Communicate what you want to do

In coordination with understanding your goals, you should be able to communicate what you want your process to look like.  Make sure to not make this specific to a feature but to use layman’s terms in describing what you envision the process to look like.

A good vendor should be able to understand what you are looking for and provide insights into what your process should look like and how you can do this in the technology.  Make sure to be flexible, however, as the vendor may have a better alternative way to reach your stated goals.

Stay engaged with your vendors

Over the past few months, we’ve been conducting our bi-annual client meetings on how they use our product.  We love these meetings as it gives us great insight into what offerings have really resonated with our customer base and most importantly it provides us the ability to help our clients realize better ways to execute current and new initiatives using our tools.

These meetings present a great educational opportunity for both sides to work to improve their processes and get some great takeaways on what they need to work on.   And many times it can help you improve tasks that you are already doing but could be doing better.

One example from our meetings was a customer that wanted to provide members of their Talent Network feedback based on specific actions made by the candidate.  They were in the process of setting up a lot of custom email templates and were sending them out manually (which requires a good deal of work).  It just so happens that we’ve just been adding a new trigger campaign feature that enables custom messages to be sent automatically based on different candidate actions, a feature that will help them greatly improve their process and reduce the strain on their recruiters for managing these communications.

Get more out of your existing technology

Getting more out of your recruitment technology is just about understanding your overall goals and improving your communication of what you are looking for in your process.  Leverage your vendors so they can understand your needs and point you in the right direction on how you can implement technology better to serve your organization and improve your process.

Because in the end a good vendor will have just as much stake in your success as you do.

Having any thoughts? Connect with me on Twitter @smashfly.