Recruiting is a time intensive process and anyone that says otherwise obviously has not done the job.  But even so, every recruiting initiative doesn’t have to be time intensive or hands on.  There are a few initiatives where you can use tools and services that can save you time so you can spend it on more important initiatives that cannot be put on auto-pilot.  There may be an upfront cost in time to set these initiatives and tools up, however, once you have them going they should provide a effective way to find qualified candidates with little to no additional time expenditure.

The key is to identify the initiatives that you can put on auto-pilot.  These initiatives should not be time sensitive and obviously will require less need for human engagement (for instance, I would not take your recruiters off the interview process or your social recruiting strategy).  There is no question that some parts of the recruiting process will always require hands on human involvement, but there are plenty of processes that can be put in place that can be set on auto pilot that can have an overwhelmingly positive impact on your recruitment marketing strategy.

Here are a few initiatives you can do today that can be put on auto-pilot and be successful:

Opt-In Talent Network: Whether it’s in your job distribution process, on your career site, in your social profiles or all of the above, you need to include a simple way for qualified candidates to add themselves to your Talent Network through a simple Opt-In form.  This is important as some of your best candidates (and passive ones) may not be ready to apply for the specific job they found on a job board but want to keep in touch with your company.  Make sure to give them an opportunity to do so on all your recruiting portals.

The best part is once you create these forms and have them flow to a database, you will have a simple recruiting channel that is free to operate and requires little to no additional effort on your part to utilize.

Posting to Free Job Boards: Free Job Boards such as Indeed, SimplyHired and Trovit are simple and free ways to get your jobs out to a wider audience.  There’s plenty of free job services that enable you to simply post jobs to your career site and have them automatically posted to these free boards.  Ask your job distribution service about this option as it is simple, free way to expand the reach of your job postings.

Integrated Resume Sourcing: If you have subscriptions to big resume databases on job boards like CareerBuilder and Monster, you know that it can take a while to find resumes that fit the job needs for a particular position.  There is resume sourcing technology solutions that can help you automate this process by putting in the relevant keywords you are looking for in the resumes and providing you with results a few days later.  These tools are for organizations where the time searching through these databases is time that could be spent on more important initiatives.

ATS Status Updates:  Instead of having your recruiters being bombarded by candidates who want to know about the status of their job application, use your ATS to enable candidates to see their own status.  In most ATS systems this is a simple option that can be chosen and can save you from having to get back to candidates who inquire about their status.

Email Marketing Campaigns: After you build up your Talent Network, you’ll want to communicate with them.  Many times this will be done via email and SMS.  In most recruiting CRM or email marketing technologies, you are able to set up automatic email campaigns to certain groups of users.  By setting up monthly email communications to specific users with jobs that should interest them not only do you keep your organization top of mind with these candidates but you probably will be able to fill positions faster as well.

These email campaigns can also be used to verify correct contact and current job information for candidates in your Talent Network.  An automated email to ask candidates for their most current job information can make sure your Talent Network doesn’t go stale and is unusable a year from now.

There are many recruitment initiatives that you can put on auto-pilot and expect success with.  The key is to identify which initiatives you want your recruiting team to focus their time and effort with and which ones are OK to put on auto-pilot.  I encourage you to sit down every 3-4 months and see where your recruiters are spending their time and see if it’s time wisely spent!