6 Steps to Optimizing Your Hiring Tech Stack

The COVID-19 pandemic has created a massive labor shortage, but finding top talent is something HR teams have been struggling with long before the global emergency. According to the Allegis Group’s Global Workforce Trends Survey, 79 percent of respondents in North America and 80 percent of the global subset experience challenges acquiring critical talent.

Companies need to do whatever it takes to attract candidates, and those without a digital-first strategy will be left behind. This requires building an HR infrastructure that can streamline your hiring processes, drive efficiency and reduce costs.

And while time, money and top talent are on the line, investing in technology without any sort of strategy could lead to more inefficiencies down the road. Yet many companies are doing just that; according to a recent HR Technology Pulse Survey, only 15 percent of employers had a comprehensive plan guiding their approach to HR tech that aligns with organizational strategies.

Don’t get stuck in this situation. Get ahead of the competition for talent by following these six steps to help optimize your hiring tech stack.

Your HR team might be operating just fine with the current software they’re using—but just fine isn’t good enough in today’s tight labor market. That’s why you should take stock of the systems you currently have in place. Determine what’s working, what isn’t, and what’s potentially redundant. Ensure you have a holistic view of any and all technology being used by your team for an accurate view of your HR infrastructure. 

Some of the most common HR systems in use by organizations include Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Candidate Relationship Management (CRM), employment screening/background check technology, video conferencing, and AI-led chatbots.

Next, we’ll introduce a strategy to effectively evaluate the success of your current tech stack. 

Once you’ve developed the comprehensive list of HR products in play, you’ll want to create a scorecard to grade each tool.

General questions you should ask yourself include:

Product-specific questions to consider include:

Engage the end users of these systems in this exercise, since they’re the ones with firsthand knowledge and can give an honest assessment of their experiences. By reviewing each product individually, you’ll find any  gaps and overlaps and how you can streamline your processes to create an enhanced workflow. 

Now that you’ve assessed your existing technologies and determined areas of improvement, it’s crucial to look to best-in-class HR programs for inspiration. 

In the investigation stage, get inspiration from peers, partners, and competitors who are leading the way in the digital space. These companies don’t have to be in your field or industry for you to learn from their investments in HR.

Conduct research to determine which types of tools they’re using, how they run their recruitment process, and any training mechanisms they have in place to help with tech adoption. Even if your company can’t scale in the same way as these digital innovators, you can still apply lessons learned from their success to your own HR process. 

Armed with the knowledge of digital innovators, it’s time to research.

Review your tech scorecard and determine which tools in each category received low grades. From there, see where certain operations could be combined into one solution for maximum efficiency. Then, begin your search for alternate vendors who can provide systems catered to your company’s needs.

Perhaps its companies selling products to replace your current ones, or new vendors with ideas for integration. Keep an open mind as you hear from these vendors, since they may bring a new solution to the table that you wouldn’t have previously considered.

The point of this exercise is not to wipe the slate clean and start from scratch with an all-new tech stack. It’s about being smart in your decision making. Chances are, some of your foundational tools are working well and just need additional investment to become more efficient.

Take your ATS, for example. Perhaps your vendor is now offering your ATS as part of one pre-hire solution. That way you can use your legacy system while reaping the benefits of additional integrations. Talk to the Customer Success Managers at your existing vendors for recommendations on using APIs and other software to minimize time spent between platforms.  

An essential piece of optimizing your tech stack is communicating the necessary changes and making the case for improvement.                                                               

Now that you’ve done an internal and external audit, it’s time to formalize the process and gain adoption.

Make sure you’ve documented your learnings about the current state of your organization’s HR systems, and then sketch out a roadmap of the changes you plan to apply and the timeframe for implementation. Within that roadmap, make clear where you believe new investments should be made, along with ways for better implementation of your current software. Note: it helps to have data to back it all up. 

When it’s time to take your roadmap to leadership, focus on how these changes will positively impact the bottom line. Share how current systems are wasting time and resources—and how these new systems can resolve that problem. It’s also wise to bring your IT team into the conversation early, because they’ll be the key to a more successful implementation.

While it may take some investment upfront to clean up your tech stack, it’ll pay off in the long run. By streamlining your HR processes, you’ll create a much more efficient, effective recruitment strategy, which will lead to better hires, smoother onboarding, and higher retention.

Checkr can be seamlessly integrated with other systems, so your recruiting team can easily order background checks in their existing workflow. If candidate information is already stored, Checkr minimizes the information requested from that candidate in the apply flow and identifies possible duplicates—reducing time to hire, candidate churn, and candidate acquisition cost.

Interested in learning more about Checkr background checks? Talk to Sales today.