Checklists for Automating Your Hiring Process

Let’s face it: The hiring process can be a hassle.

There are so many steps and substeps — from qualifying quality candidates to interviews, background checks, and onboarding — that it’s impossible to manually keep a clutter-free process. In light of the Great Resignation, the hiring process needs an upgrade.

A hiring manager or HR professional shouldn’t have to laboriously shuffle through potential candidate resumes or spend afternoons scheduling interviews. There are so too many other things on their plate. And forget manually onboarding, adding the new talent to payroll, and communicating benefits.

The good news is, technological advances such as automated HR systems have made it possible to cut down on the grunt work required during the recruitment and onboarding process. Automated HR administration is efficient and allows HR staff to focus on other tasks.

Checklists for automating your hiring process

From receiving qualified candidate resumes and CVs to scheduling interviews and onboarding ideal candidates, HR professionals can streamline most recruitment activities through automation technology. Here is what you need to know about optimizing your recruitment and onboarding efforts through automated hiring processes.

HR professionals can streamline most recruitment activities through automation technology.

Recruitment automation and record-keeping

The first step towards recruitment automation is to create a clear recordkeeping system.

An HR system of records is the complete digital warehouse that stores the employee record for every employee in your organization, including all full-time, part-time, and freelance workers, as well as potential source candidates. This digital HR system of records will act as the backbone of your HR operations.

This information needs to be securely stored, either on your own servers or on the cloud. Only certain users should have permission.

After employee records are digitized in a cloud-based HR system of record, it’s a cinch to start organizing your current workforce or shift through qualified candidate resumes.

Through your recruitment automation tool, you should be able to:

• Creating an organization chart with real-time directories.
• Update employee information such as personal email addresses, phone numbers, and job titles in real-time.
• Allow employees and new hires to update their information, review company materials, and contact other team members directly.
• Store potential talent pool information for later candidate rediscovery.
• Define worker proles and job descriptions.
• Maintain notes from the recruiting process with new hire files.
• Review applicant tracking progress.

Once you have mapped out what records you need to keep, what your recruiting process is like, and how you plan to execute candidate communication and onboarding, it’s far easier to pick the right automation software for your needs.

Choosing the right automation technology

With the rapid rise of remote or hybrid work, most companies will prefer cloud-based automation software compared to storing files on their own servers.

By using the cloud to store employee documents, you can upload important documents such as confidentiality agreements, sales compensation plans, employee handbooks, or policy updates in your HR system. A cloud-based HR system also captures e-signatures directly from employees equipped with vital policy information as well as keeping the company in legal compliance.

However, data security can become a costly compliance issue. You safeguard employees’ and job seekers’ sensitive data by setting up user permissions. Base your user permission on how much access each user needs and create a tiered system. For example, HR employees and auditors will be administrators. Managers are usually set as editors and employees as users.

Giving users permission to access their own personal data eliminates the need for paper copies and inefficient back-and-forth emails. This takes the load off of HR employees to create work emails for each employee and it allows employees both new and former to access and change their information without any hassle.

This recruitment automation software should also be a platform for candidate communication. This can streamline application-based notifications and later onboarding directions. Again, this reduces the workload for applicant tracking. But it also improves the candidate experience.

In other words, at this step, you want to find an automation software that:

• Provides functions for employee and candidate engagement, such as a self-service portal.
• Allows in-office and remote team members access to the HR or recruiting software.
• Safeguards sensitive data to maintain compliance standards.
• Offers an array of user permissions to enhance security.
• Maintains a communication channel to improve the candidate experience and applicant tracking.

Refining the hiring and onboarding process

After you’ve finished scheduling interviews, met with job seekers, and reduced your potential candidates, it’s finally time to hire and onboard your newfound talent.

This is why it’s important to have an onboarding process that is efficient, accurate, and simple to use. This is because onboarding is can be even more intensive than recruiting. On average, new hires need to complete 54 activities throughout the process, most of them related to paperwork. A successful hiring and onboarding process is all about retention and performance. In fact, 77% of employees who went through a structured onboarding program in 2019 met their first performance goals.

Once an HR system of record has been successfully set up, your hiring and onboarding process can be automated.

Once an HR system of record has been successfully set up, your hiring and onboarding process can be automated. An automated onboarding system makes the process simpler for new hires which in turn helps prevent employee turnover, promotes growth, and helps boost profits. In addition, an automated onboarding system reduces the workload on HR employees.

Some documentation that can be shared with the team’s hiring manager and the new recruit are:

• Offer letters and acceptance letters
• Background checks
• Electronic signatures
• Federal and state tax details
• HR compliance regulatory forms (W-4’s, W-2’s, NDA’s, etc)
• Employee handbooks

You can often save and use templates to further accelerate the process. Your template should contain legal language that is consistent for all candidates along with editable text fields that allow for personalization for each new candidate. Have a specific template for each employment type you hire. Another hiring template that should be implemented includes non-disclosure agreements for those with access to sensitive data.

In short, at this stage, you’ll need:

• Templates of essential paperwork documents
• IRS compliance forms
• New employee payment information
• An updated version of the employee handbook
• Federal and state tax and compliance notices
• An onboarding schedule that can be mapped to your digital HR automation tool

Next steps

While it may seem daunting to create a digital hiring and onboarding system it’s an investment that pays off ten-fold. Automation improves the employee experience, simplifies record keeping, frees up more time for HR employees, and reduces the risk of lost documents.

To learn more about how you can automate your hiring process and streamline your manual HR tasks, check out our eBook on digitizing your HR.