Amidst all the differently sized technology ideas incubated in the investment space today, HR technology solutions stands at more than a $15 Billion market in software alone1.
Just the sheer size and the pace has been stratospheric; many startups in social and referral recruiting, assessment science, talent analytics, eLearning, and mid-market core HR systems are rapidly carving out their own space within HR Technology.
What’s even more exciting is that new technologies to help effective employee communications, engagement, recognition, and healthy work environment are vying for an equal share of the investment pie.
As technology continues to be the favoured child of seed funds and investment firms, the world is seeing a commensurate surge in innovation.
According to one research, the top 50 HR technology investment deals amounted over $560 Million.
And the largest chunk from this pool is invested in Recruitment software. However, despite this huge injection of funds, teething troubles and adoption inertia persist amongst users and consumers of recruitment technology.
Even though such questions are raised on why the interest towards this technology is high and adoption slow, the answer does seem somewhat within reach.
Here are some of the major reasons for slow recruitment technology adoption:
Focus on business process design
Technology is useless unless it can solve business problems.
Understanding of the end-user’s business helps in designing an appropriate business process flow for the system. Most of the times the adoption crisis comes into the picture when there is an imbalance amongst business process flow, the core objective, technical design, and adequate investment.
Customers cannot come up with changes in design each time they face an issue and it’s unfeasible for HR technology providers to put re-development efforts for each update.
The key to success is to start with the output a business process needs to give. Recognize and map the individuals, stakeholders, connections and communications needed for the process to work. Accordingly, sketch a blue print. This practice lets the designer to review the existing processes, practices and policies and eliminating the outdated ones and introduce new ones that help in achieving the strategic objective of a recruitment platform.
User Experience is The New Combat Zone
Any technology (be it for sourcing, screening, ATS or any other) is built around two prominent characters – the recruiter and the candidate. And certainly, any technology falls short when it fails to reach the recruiter or the candidate expectations.
Recruiting solution adoption is like sales, whereby if a technology component is not adding ease of use, increasing productivity or ability to integrate and aggregate, the user will find it taxing to involve it in the everyday business process.
For instance, if a recruiter wants to source a position, he/she has to go through multiple channels, filter duplication and obsolete resumes.
If a recruitment software integrates all these activities with easy access, the recruiter will happily shift to using it.
Therefore, recruitment technology vendors have to design the system keeping the user as the center. One cannot just brag about the best features and practices in the system, if the user is unable to understand its value.
Customization – I know my processes best??
Customization beyond the core functionality of the product is a myopic approach.
Lots of buyers tend to ask for the software, which can mold to their way of working (however archaic it could be) rather than accepting new and innovative technologies. These technology customizations do not allow the buyer to use the industry’s best practices which are otherwise enabled in HR SaaS solutions.
Hence, the customized systems become non-usable soon after and users tend to find ways to avoid its use resulting in loss of time and money which is spent.
This exercise, initially consumes too much time and money and over a period becomes a dead part of the software, which, in the long term, minimizes the performance of the product further reducing the adoption rate.
Introducing or updating any technology does not come without risk, but a system focusing on the business needs of the user, their regular challenges and understanding the importance of only specific, need-based customizations will definitely ease out some of the bottlenecks in adopting recruitment technology.
Imagine innovations such as real-time automated processes of scheduling interviews, updating status, blocking calendars, emailing necessary documents, gathering online-search based information about him/her, all happening concurrently through a BOT when an interviewer simultaneously chats with a candidate. These functionalities will aid the recruiter in more ways than one and have a huge potential to connect and scale.
There is a vast possibility of a significant increase in recruitment technology adoption.
But, it is not a one-sided job.
Both buyers and designers of technology need to come together to appreciate the true power of technology.
We only hope that new age HR technology providers are able to bring the two ends together and create products and ideas that are easily embraced and adopted. It is only then that recruitment can become the true flag bearer of HR technology innovation.
Source: Bloomberg
PeopleStrong’s Recruitment Technology (Alt Recruit) is a smart, scalable and one-stop recruitment solution for hiring the top talent. It is not merely an Applicant Tracking System (ATS), rather is AI-enabled, Unified, Intuitive and Intelligent recruitment platform which powers end-to-end hiring processes of 100+ organization across the globe. It is integrated with 50+ candidate sourcing channels, processes over 1 million candidates per year and rolls out 60,000+ joining offers per year.
Get in touch with our recruitment solutions executive to know more about Alt Recruit and how we can manage your Recruitments better.
