How investing in recruiting software improves ROI

June 29, 2023

 

Rachel Findlay

5 min read

Investing in new recruiting software can be daunting. There’s a lot at stake – your time, energy and, of course, your budget. But you can’t let the fear of a new investment hold you back from pushing the business forward.  

One of the most common hesitations (especially among executives) to investing in a new system is that it won’t deliver the ROI promised during the sales process. 

In this post, we’ll outline the key steps you can take to help ramp up ROI when migrating to new recruiting software and how you can achieve growth across your organization.

Set out the purpose of new recruiting software

The first step when investing in new recruiting tech is assessing your pain points and building a clear business case with your needs in mind. This helps outline the purpose of your new tech and sets you on a path for growth. Three key objectives you should assess when looking at your new investment are:

1. Increasing velocity

Homing in on the recruiter experience, increasing velocity is all about efficiency and how you can improve on it. Whether you’re hiring a senior manager or an entry-level graduate, candidates expect the hiring process to be fast. According to the iCIMS Class of 2023 Report, 2/3 of this year’s graduates expect the entire hiring process, from application to job offer, to take three weeks. This is about half the actual time (six weeks).

But that’s just expectation versus the average. How long does your recruiting process really take? To build efficiency you need to start by being realistic about how many employees you bring on board each year, how long it takes to fill your roles and the time you take to hire. This can help you understand your challenges and which tools will help.

For instance, an effective career site combined with employee onboarding and talent assessment technology can help move candidates through the recruiting process later in the talent journey and can cut the time it takes to hire.

2. Reducing spend

Employers estimate the total cost to hire a new employee is up to three to four times the salary of the position. The job market has changed dramatically in recent years, and talent acquisition teams are feeling the pressure. Leaders are asking you to do more to source and engage talent with smaller budgets and leaner teams. But how do you reduce spend without damaging the quality of applications or the experience candidates have with your brand?

Whether it’s advertising costs or job board spend, you should assess your overall recruiting budget and how new recruiting software could help you cut costs. For instance, marketing automation tools can help you build in-demand pipelines for future openings by nurturing the candidates already in your database. Think about it, your total addressable market is the same as a similar role you previously paid to advertise.

Implementing automation could help you build and manage pipelines for future openings and spend less money on advertising costs.

3. Quality of hire

According to the iCIMS 2022 Workforce Report, 92% of C-level business leaders say their organization wouldn’t be able to meet goals without the right talent. Hiring quality talent is, arguably, the most important factor in growing your business and meeting organizational objectives.

To attract candidates with the skills needed to support your business, you need to assess the experience candidates have with your brand. Slow career sites and laborious onboarding processes aren’t going to cut it in this digital era. You need to look across the talent journey and assess where you are losing your candidates. Is it in the early stages of the job search or maybe it’s later down in the hiring process?

With a talent suite, you can find the products you need to help you at each stage in the talent journey. For instance, recruiting chatbots and text engagement can help engage candidates in the early stages of their recruiting journey. Technology like this means that candidates can communicate anytime, anywhere streamlining the process for everyone involved.

New recruiting software can benefit more than just your team

To truly understand your ROI, you need to know the benefits of new recruiting software not just for your team, but across the organization. Whether it’s the IT team or the finance department, business leaders favor technology that increases productivity and reduces costs. But you need to identify what each team really cares about and how it will aid them in achieving their goals.

Improving efficiency for the IT team

A recent CIO.com article states that the key priorities for CIOs are enhancing digital dexterity within the IT department, improving cybersecurity skills and advancing automation. The IT team look for technology that offers secure, agile, and compliant platforms. They understand that the future is ever-changing and want technology that can grow with the evolving needs of the business.

Cloud-based recruiting software can streamline processes and saves money by requiring less tech and fewer on-site staff to maintain the infrastructure.

Cutting costs for the finance team

As the team responsible for protecting the company’s vital assets, the finance department is willing to spend money when they feel confident that the investment will pay off – and when that is likely to happen.

With new recruiting software, your organization can save money by consolidating existing costly technologies and can improve ROI through more efficient recruiting practices. By outlining the total cost of ownership, integration, data migration and staff training you can create a holistic view of the ROI you will see.

The right technology can move your business forward

The hard truth is that you simply cannot afford not to invest in new recruiting software. AI and automation tools are becoming more popular than ever, and advanced technologies are on the up. By delaying your investment, you put off the key benefits new tech can help you achieve – improving quality of hire, speeding up processes or cutting costs.

Read our blog post to learn the differences between ATS and HCM.