Charles Hipps concludes his feature about technology and the talent acquisition process.

Reading time: 4 minutes.

Embrace technology to make apprenticeship, internship and campus programs interactive

Having battled for the position, an employee wants to feel welcomed from the start. Once you’ve sent the offer letter, your candidate is engaged and excited. Automated onboarding checklists helps maintain a high level of engagement while beginning a faster onboarding process.

Before day one, firms can embrace technology to run onboarding checklists and help make inductions that little bit more tolerable and not have new starters arriving to no desk, no IT or where relevant no uniform! Instead of providing reams of paperwork on the first induction day, technology can gather information online straight away from payroll information to official documentation.

Some organisations like to gather desk requirements and provide access to elearning modules to help assist the completion of the forms. This is balanced with the mandatory training that companies have to deliver in person and on company time.

In essence, without the delays of printing and postage, you’ll be able to snap up first choice candidates before anyone else does and on-board them in the best possible way. Where there is a significant gap and risk of reneging, encouraging cross-team collaboration through activities, missions, meet-ups and tasks, means you’ll make sure your prospective candidates feel welcome and empowered faster than ever.

Companies can also benefit internally. Technology can ensure a business is ready for new starters be it an individual or a group of new recruits. Efficiencies can be realised in simple ways such as creating a detailed checklist of tasks and notifications for different types of roles to streamline the provisioning process. 

 An automated program can help reduce the initial recruitment costs and also helps in improving employee retention and productivity in the long run.

The ability to check in with new hires before and then throughout an induction program means you can always collect data to help inform your future recruiting. Insights and intelligence can be gained through basic initiatives such as fast, simple surveys or direct questions to make sure they’re engaged.

You can then use this feedback to drive changes and improve future programs based on real data. This can also be used in intern programs to monitor placement management based on competencies or preferences or to plan and monitor rotations across an organisation.

Tracking performance management to ensure candidates are on track can also help to make decision making easier for eventual converting into a full time offer.

Such processes are more rewarding for employees as well as for the company. An automated program can help reduce the initial recruitment costs and also helps in improving employee retention and productivity in the long run. Employees get a clear view of the company’s processes and what’s expected of them, they are better motivated to perform.

Enrich the candidate experience at every opportunity

Innovations like this can really help a company to reduce the feeling that hiring new employees is a tiring task and make the candidate experience richer and more compelling. By really considering the imperative of making onboarding and then getting new hires acquainted with their work, brand reputation can remain intact and candidates will be less inclined to consider rival offers. 

Cutting the administrative burdens of recruiters in this way is key to helping them personalise the process and interact more frequently with highly sought after qualified candidates in warm, authentic and meaningful ways such as including others involved in the recruiting process (representatives from business units, alumni school teams, or functional leaders within an organisation) and updating candidates on the status of their application or sharing results from an assessment.

On the flip-side, if processes are not planned properly, it can lead to a lot of complications and can make the entire process messy. Programmes must be aimed at getting prospective employees acquainted with the goals and vision of a company and support recent hires as they start on early projects.

After all, the goal of hiring this new talent is to move them quickly up the learning curve so that they may become productive quickly.

Studies from the Aberdeen Group indicate that such technology plays a pivotal role in helping to significantly speed new hires to productivity and improves hiring manager satisfaction. In contrast, employees who are inducted using the sink-or-swim technique often struggle to figure out what is expected and how they can be successful in their new workplace.

So to conclude and summarise, automation streamlines processes, helping the HR department to regain productivity, and eliminate oversights. Reporting and metrics give HR a direct view into tasks that require completion and bridges the gap between departments involved in the induction process.

You can read part one of this feature here.

About the author

Charles Hipps is founder, CEO and Chairman of Oleeo.