HRM takes a look at some of the new recruitment tech platforms on the block, designed to keep the “personal touch” in automating HR functions.

At the Sydney Xref RecTech Symposium last week, six companies pitched their services to a group of HR professionals. The topics included providing digital solutions for nurturing new hires, managing a mass inflow of CVs and building and maintaining your talent pool. Here’s our breakdown of what we considered to be the top three:

A fresh way to welcome your new hires

Does your organisation’s onboarding process leave something to be desired? Or perhaps it’s non-existent. Onboarding tool Enboarder hopes to put the “human feel back into the onboarding process”.

When welcoming new employees to your team, their first day experience should be more than just a pile of paperwork. Enboarder wants to engage new employees before they’ve even walked through the door via a simple process, fit for even the technologically challenged.

The platform offers a timeline, with a drag and drop interface, allowing managers to set goals and track the onboarding process. For example, you could place a reminder on your timeline to check in with your new hire at the two-week mark.

A favourite feature, according to Cat Rutledge, account executive at Enboarder, is “the 3pm munchie question”.

“We ask the new hire, ‘what’s your favourite snack?’ We’ll then prompt the manager to have that snack waiting for the new hire on their first day.”

In the pre-boarding stages, you can also welcome the new hire with personalised messages from their manager, order their technology/uniforms ahead of their arrival and even embed videos to show them around the office. All within the same platform. “You’re giving them something more than just asking for their bank details,” says Rutledge.

Enboarder cleaned up to two of the three awards of the evening for “the best pitch” and “best overall product”.

Talent and acquisition consultant at Medacs Global Group, Jamie Cutler, says Enboarder was her favourite demonstration of the evening, describing it as a “game changer” for HR.

“Enboarder creates a really engaging candidate experience when it’s most crucial. I have been doing a lot of work to improve our onboarding process and will definitely be getting in touch with them to see if it could be the right fit for our business.”

Sick of sifting through CVs? There’s an app for that!

Hired1st is an AI-driven platform that piqued the interest of the audience when its managing director, Simon Gallagher, said: “If you put an ad up, and receive 200-300 CVs, our AI will automatically summarise the CVs, do an analysis on them and rank the candidates for you”.

When listing your job on the platform, the technology does the recruiting legwork by sourcing the most appropriate candidates from your talent pool.

As one attendee pointed out, the ad would need to be carefully written to ensure you reap the appropriate data. For example, you can’t say you’re looking for an “Apple Genius” you’d have to call them a “phone technician”, much like a Subway “sandwich artist” would have to be referred to as a “food preparer” or “cashier” in order to show up in the Hired1st system. A potential issue for the corporate world, which is populated with many jargon-laden titles.

The system’s bots are designed to continuously learn and adapt to the new profiles that are uploaded, which means they’ll get better and better at profiling your candidates.

Gallagher also touched on some interesting add-ons currently in development, including a natural language system that would allow you to have a direct conversation with the system. You could say, “I’m looking for a business analyst with three years experience” and voilà, the top candidates in the field will materialise.

Utilise your talent pool

LiveHire is designed to manage the sourcing and recruitment landscape. It’s a candidate centric platform; the control is in their hands. They can update their profiles as their skills change, which automatically updates their records with the various employers they’ve applied for in the past.

The platform allows you full visibility of your current and future workplace, offering pre-prepared talent pools that you can dip in and out of as required. It streams your candidates into sections: new, current employees and alumni. So, depending on the job you’re looking to fill, you can pull from the appropriate pool.

“The thing about LiveHire that’s truly unique, is that we’re the only global platform that’s built around a unified profile. What that means is that we’re solving a frustration both at a candidate and customer level,” says Alastair Schirmer, head of customer solutions and technology partnerships at LiveHire.

LiveHire’s communication platform mimics that of a social messenger service. Applicants will receive a text message saying they have a response from a potential employer and will then log into the LiveHire website to start a “thread” conversation with the specific hiring manager. This could potentially be a drawcard for younger applicants, who often favour tech-based workplaces.

“Historically, ATS platforms were built 20-30 years ago and have been designed for the procurement departments; they’re process heavy and it’s quite clunky to move through them. We’ve spent a lot of time on our user interface to make sure that it’s easy and simple to use,” says Schirmer.

Jamie Cutler was impressed with LiveHire. “It’s something I will be looking into more, as we’re in a candidate short market and are interested in other ways of attracting more talent”.

Image: fancycrave.com via Pexels.