Automating Your Recruitment Business: 6 Focus Points

1. Understand your business operations

Before you start, you need to get under the bonnet of your business. You really need a clear picture of the current operations that run daily in your business. Quite literally, map it out!

Draw out all the stages of the business, from sales, to screening, onboarding and ongoing support. Then draw out a second map of what your ideal end result would look like after automation.

Then break down the time for each process. How long does your process typically take…. If you don’t know, then you shouldn’t go any further… You need to figure this out. Admin heavy tasks are obvious ones. How long does it take for staff to administer tasks?

2. Talk to your employees - where do they feel like they are falling down? Where could they improve?

Your employees are on the front line of the business, so when mapping out the process and identifying the areas to improve. Let them tell you what works and doesn't work.

What takes them the most time?

What is their pain point?

What don’t they have time to do?

Human error can be really costly to a business so understanding what they struggle with is imperative.

3. Where do your business operations fail?

Does your business have weak points or areas that are continually causing issues? In the last year we have had WFH, unemployment volumes, reduced roles, key staff redundancies…..unfortunately, you have had the worst from the industry so this should highlight where it breaks.

Highlight these areas, there is no shame in them. If your business was running perfectly, you wouldn’t be looking to automate certain aspects so embrace these weak areas and see them as an opportunity not a hindrance.


4. Are you spending your time wisely?

As a business leader, you can get pulled in different directions and ad hoc jobs slowly creep in to become part of your daily tasks.

Your time is the most valuable asset.

Read that again.

YOUR TIME IS THE MOST VALUABLE ASSET.

There are only a certain amount of hours in the day, make sure you're capitalising on them.

5. Will it create profit, or make me more profitable?

There are two ways to generate more revenue in your business; reduce your costs so you have a larger profit margin, increase your costs but also increase your billings. These two lines are often crossed but there is a clear difference. Some pieces of automation technology can help you save money while others will help you make money.

Both saving and making money are positives when looking at your business, but it is important to know which one you are trying to achieve with each piece of automation technology you’re implementing into your business - align these goals with your process map

6. Don’t Frankenstein your systems

Don’t put plasters over things if the system doesn’t work right in your process map, you can end up spending £1000’s on dev time or lose out on all the commercial benefits due to a bad operating system.

Recruiters are notoriously bad for tracking and admin - don’t make their lives harder. Make sure you put systems in place that remove admin burden, not increase it as automation really only works when you have robust workflows and integrations.

So much time and energy is lost when you have to move from different systems to try and find the information you need - screening tools, social media, video interviews etc.

Make sure you have one true source of information which is your CRM and make sure you choose technology that can integrate with your CRM and equally, choose a CRM that has multiple integrations OR are willing to allow that to be the case.

When done correctly, automation can make your business life a dream.

Done badly, it can be a costly administrative nightmare but, using our method you should avoid the pain!