In today's age of human resources enterprise technology, everything seems to revolve around utilizing software to get ahead in the business world. Whether it be making work flow more efficient, cutting costs, or organizing team collaboration- there are a myriad of functions that enterprise recruiting software and applicant management systems can serve. However, with the number of options for software out there and the number of features per piece of software, it can often be a daunting and confusing process to pick and set up the perfect solution for your company.

We need to remember that the technology is there to serve us- not the other way around. So the question is, how can we create a work environment where our recruiting software is serving us, making us more efficient, and boosting the collaboration our company requires?

The first step is to find recruiting software that is dead simple to set up. The setup is often telling of how smooth the whole process will go- so make sure your recruiting and hiring solution fulfills the requirement of simplicity first. No matter how many bells and whistles the software touts, if the process is too complicated for your hiring managers and recruiters to utilize, nothing else matters.

In today's technological age, software that you need to install directly to your hard drive (the type that comes as a CD installation disk) is an artifact of the past. Utilizing HR software that lives in the cloud (or online) will save you a ton of hassles and will work to keep your company's applicant management process simpler. There are a number of reasons that working online can save your company time and money. It is as simple as your employees logging in and accessing data from any computer that has internet access. Greater access to your applicant management system means greater efficiency- whether a hiring manager is working from home and needs to collaborate with a recruiter downtown, or a manager is away on vacation and needs to deliver urgent data.

Collaboration is king in the recruiting software field, I cannot stress this enough. No matter how fast a piece of software runs, or how many bells and whistles it has, its primary function needs to be a conduit that your employees can communicate through.

Sometimes it helps to look at your recruiting software like any other nifty online applications or social networks that people utilize on an everyday basis for communication. Imagine if Facebook or Myspace lacked the functionality to make it super-easy to communicate, message, post and browse. No matter how many other bells and whistles the social network had (video uploading features, location based technology, etc.) it wouldn't matter- the application would not get any users.

Recruiting and Applicant Management software should not differ from your everyday social networking site in this manner. It needs to fulfill its basic needs before it can offer anything beyond that. When you are shopping for an enterprise HR software vendor, make sure you keep this in mind as you demo and preview their product.