ERE.net recently posted a blog outlining four strategies to implement as we face the War for Talent. This War for Talent has been blogged about and tweeted about ad nauseum and will continue to gain hype as the days and weeks go by, that is for certain.  Don’t get me wrong, it was a very well written and easy to understand blog with several high level strategies to think about and implement before a company invests in what the author labeled, “new-fangled” technology, and I agree.  A solid foundation of basic recruiting principals should be identified and carried out to all levels of the organization.  But assuming (and you know what they say about assuming)  your organization has an exemplary executive and recruiting staff, your recruitment technology will either help you to triumph over or lose this War for Talent.

As a technology firm that has built our reputation by creating solutions to automate the recruitment, sales, marketing financial & back office processes, we believe  that winning the War for Talent is a combination of  best recruiting practices, strategic business development strategies and of course, technology solutions to support both strategies.  
The Cloud has made it possible for a staffing company, or any company for that matter, regardless of size, not only to compete but Win this War for Talent.

Here is our own list of technology strategies to consider once you have re-solidified your value proposition to candidates and clients and thoroughly developed your enterprise business processes so that they encourage efficiency to lower the operating costs of doing business.

1.  Invest in the Cloud.
2.  Consider Internal Collaboration Tools.
3.  Advanced Candidate Search Tools.
4.  Technology Marketing Tools.

1.  Invest in the Cloud. It takes time and money to make the switch, but many times, not a lot.  Find a consultant to advise you or conduct a thorough Technology Inventory Review if you are still on a server based model and plan on crawling not sprinting to the cloud. The benefits far outweigh any of your current fears about privacy & safety and besides, you can back up everything so if you’re an organization that needs safety nets, “it’s all good” as they say.
Staffing firms must at least consider the cloud to stay flexible and accessible to new applications that will empower them with increased efficiency.

2.  Consider Internal Collaboration Tools.TargetRecruit is built on the Salesforce.com platform so in terms of internal collaboration, Salesforce’s highly acclaimed Chatter feature creates a way for your entire organization from recruiting to accounting to collaborate on accounts, documents, business deals in progress and the approval processes that so many organizations have implemented. In addition, it creates a level of accountability that is critical in an organization with so many moving parts.  Now, many companies wish to limit the transparency from business unit to business unit and permissions are in place to limit accessibility.  You must be prepared internally to compete externally.

3.  Advanced Candidate Search Tools for Sourcing. Technology makes it so that searching for candidates has become an artform, not just a job within a recruiting firm.  In layman's terms,   Boolean searches allow you to combine words and phrases using the words AND, OR, NOT and NEAR (otherwise known as Boolean operators) to limit, widen, or define your search. There are also toolbars that have been created to enhance the search process.  Are you using a Social Media technology tool for sourcing hard to identify candidates?  Is it integrated in your ATS?
Does your database have a search function that automatically matches open job orders to candidates in the system and vice versa?  The technology is available!

4.  Technology Marketing Tools.  The recruiter that gets to the candidate first ...wins.  So, marketing open job orders as quickly and efficiently as possible to the pool of qualified candidates in your database or on social media sites is way too important to ignore. Email marketing that gives you the ability to mass email candidates for jobs, and similarly, templates that give you the ability to conduct a business development campaign for clients are a step in the right direction.

Questions for you:  

What cloud based technology tools have made your staffing company more efficient?

Let us know!