Job seekers value communication more now than ever.
Many staffing firms are looking to automation platforms like Sense and Herefish to automate process and engagement tasks and give recruiters more time to focus on the people piece of staffing. However, many firms are discovering the automation journey is a cross-country road trip, not a quick sprint. It’s crucial to have a plan: pack carefully, study the route and know where you want to go. But it’s also important to be open to adventure because unexpected detours might lead to incredible ROI.
Use these five strategies to reach your automation destinations:
Choose a driver. It’s difficult to “step in and out” of an automation platform. A candidate journey may have ten or more touchpoints, each with multiple audience fields. Appoint someone on your staff as your automation driver to keep your project from stalling out. Your driver needs to be in the platform almost daily with their foot on the gas pedal to keep the project moving.
Create a roadmap. Automation offers exciting opportunities for saving time and increasing revenue in the recruiting process. How do you know what to do first? Find the gaps. Look to your internal processes to see how you can save time by automating tasks. Examine your candidate experience to see where creating a candidate journey might improve engagement. Then create a roadmap of possible automations for your staffing firm. Don’t panic if your map is gigantic with dozens — maybe even hundreds — of journey ideas. Rome wasn’t built in a day, but it does exist. So will your candidate journeys.
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Plan your route. And by route, I mean quick wins with easily measured ROI. Where are your biggest gaps? Create journeys to close them first. Do you have a ton of no-call/no-shows? Create a start date reminder for the day before a candidate begins a new role. (Pro tip: This journey will be triggered by the start date, so make sure start dates are created well in advance.) Capitalize on the time you save making last-minute calls by following up on new leads for a double win.
Check your engine. You wouldn’t take off on a road trip with the check engine light on, would you? Heck no — you might not reach your destination. Before you spin up your automation strategy, consider these factors:
- Is your database full of missing or incomplete data? Create one-off campaigns to fill in missing information or remove outdated records.
- Automation platforms offer powerful analytics. Use them. Unfortunately, you can’t build a journey and then forget about it. You must build it, test it and then fix it. Are you not getting the candidate response you want from an email? How old are your candidates? Maybe you should try sending a text instead. How is your messaging? Do you sound like a person or a robot? Make sure your messaging reflects your business and your brand.
Keep your eyes on the road. You’ve got a map, and you’ve planned your route. But once you get on the road and see the big, beautiful world of automation journeys, you might want to make a few detours. For example, your start date reminder might be so effective that you decide to create a referral journey. Or maybe a weekly check-in journey seems timely. Fantastic — these journeys need to be on the map. However, don’t get lost. Detours are part of the process, but after you explore their value, reevaluate your initial itinerary. You may want to return to your original route, or you might want to rewrite your entire map!
Slow-downs and detours are part of the journey-planning process, but having a roadmap — and sticking to it — will help you leverage the power of automation for your staffing firm.
