Talent Relationship Management, Explained: A Guide for Recruiters
For the third quarter in a row, Lever has won two Comparably awards!
If you’re old enough to remember this, you’ll understand why my experience as a vendor in the recruiting software space sometimes makes me feel like a certain undervalued paper delivery boy:
I was asked about Lever’s competition the other day. (I get asked that a lot. It’s a test. It’s a way for practitioners to learn who else is out there that maybe they haven’t heard of… and also to learn how confident we are in our applicant tracking product. I get it, and it’s a smart strategy. I use it, too.)
I told this particular prospect that I understood the question, and I’d give them the expected answer in a moment, but first I wanted to give the real answer, which isn’t another vendor at all.
It’s the jigsaw puzzle of spot solutions larger companies have pieced together to do all the things they need done, including plugging holes in technology solutions that only get them part of the way there in some cases. Over time, companies can wind up with dozens of recruiting solutions, each of which is used to maybe 30% of its capacity, all of them in a delicate balance that no one really quite understands.
How to Evaluate Recruiting Software: Things to Be Aware of
Evaluating a new solution requires a mental commitment to understand—and subsequently dismantle—that puzzle, keeping all the pieces organized so that some of them can be put back together later. And that’s just the easy part; when it comes time to put the puzzle back together, there are conditions: The head of TA must put the new picture together in way that…
- Doesn’t trigger any massive change management effort, either amongst the recruiting team or amongst hiring managers
- Doesn’t raise costs without also improving functionality
- Doesn’t raise bigger questions about the company’s HR tech stack that cause the head of HR to step in and take over the process
- Doesn’t push the TA team to circumvent the system, say by eliminating beloved features or standardizing processes in a way that impedes top performers
- Doesn’t make the phone blow up with vendors!, vendors!, and more vendors! who heard that the company is considering a change and want the opportunity to pitch
- Definitely doesn’t cause current vendors whose contracts are being cancelled to try to “sell around” the head of TA—which can wreak organizational havoc.
Evaluate Recruiting Software: Types of Recruiting Software
One of the first things you need to do when buying recruiting solutions is understand the different types of recruiting software. Here is a quick list of the different types of recruiting software that are available:
- Candidate Sourcing Software
- AI Sourcing Software
- Candidate Database Software
- Interview Scheduling Software
- Applicant Tracking Software
- Video Interviewing Software
- Social Media Recruiting Software
- Reference Check Systems
- Background Check Systems
- Talent Acquisition Software
- Job Board Software
- Employer Brand Software
- Careers Page Systems
- Human Capital Management Systems
- Recruiting / Talent Analytics Software
Creating Your Recruiting Software Feature Pick-list
After you understand the different types of recruiting software that exist, you’ll want to begin understanding the needs of your recruiting team. Understanding the needs of your talent acquisition team will help you create a feature pick-list. Here are a few questions you should ask yourself as you evaluate recruiting software:
- Who will be using the recruiting software?
- How will hiring managers interact in the system with recruiters?
- What is the candidate experience?
- Where will we source / market our open positions to candidates?
- What is the biggest challenge our company faces when it comes to recruiting / hiring?
- What are the current processes in our recruiting process that can be improved?
- What areas of recruiting does our internal team love / hate?
- Do we need to integrate our recruiting software with any other systems?
After asking yourself these questions, you can begin to make a feature pick-list. As you make this list, mark different items as must-have, nice-to-have, and don’t need. This will let you look at every system on the market and compare it against your current feature list.
Final Thoughts: Buying Recruiting Software
The worst part of buying recruiting software isn’t buying recruiting software at all, it’s thinking about buying recruiting software.
And that brings me to the answer to the next question, which is, What can I do about it? Frankly, I think the best thing you can do is laugh at the ridiculousness of it all, and make sure that when you do buy something, you buy it from a company you like working with, filled with people who will send you love notes on Valentine’s Day and genuinely mean it when they call you to ask how you’re doing, who also happen to have a great product that they’re proud of. Because there’s nothing you can do about having to navigate the jungle of technology buy cycles; but you can sure as shoot choose who you take that journey with.
