How Your Tech Stack Can Help You Hire Top Talent

The great resignation has been on the minds of many IT organizations and their business leaders ever since nearly 4 million people quit their jobs back in November 2021. Consequently, hiring talented tech talent has become a lot harder than before. 

Will 2022 break away from this trend wonder recruiters across the globe. Instead of waiting for the tide to turn, why not step up your game—invest in a recruitment tech stack that turns heads and helps you attract the very best talent out there?

The right recruiting software mix will help you streamline your entire recruiting life cycle, create a strong brand recall, and have potential candidates be excited about working with your company! On that note, let’s look at what tech stacks are and how do you choose one that caters to all your needs.

What is a recruitment tech stack?

A tech stack is a collection of technologies that are used to create a product or service. A recruitment tech stack would consist of a set of automated tools and technologies for every step of the hiring process—right from sourcing to onboarding. Your tech stack should have strong built-in analytics, seamless integrations with other apps, and be mobile-friendly.

We are talking sourcing tools, applicant tracking systems, screening and assessment software, engagement tools, coding interview platforms, automated background checks, onboarding software, and so on. 

However, your recruitment strategy might not require all of these tools. There is no silver bullet that works best for everyone. The modern recruiter is always trying out new technologies to see what combination of resources suits their ever-changing needs. 

Having said that, to stay relevant in this post-pandemic world, you need to prepare your recruitment tech stacks for the new normal, which is mostly remote. Be equipped to conduct fully remote hiring drives and successfully hire candidates without ever meeting them.

Recommended read: Boolean Search Strings – 5 Essential Tips For Recruiters

How tech stacks matter in technical recruiting

There are multiple benefits to having technology be the frontrunner of your recruiting strategies. A tech-enabled recruitment experience goes a long way in attracting and retaining top tech talent.

• Saves time and improves efficiency in the overall hiring process.
• Keeps large volumes of candidate data organized and ensures nothing gets lost.
• Creates a pleasant candidate experience.
• Keeps your talent pool warm and nurtured.
• Eliminates bias in hiring decisions.
• Better communication between candidates and recruiters.

A carefully curated recruitment tech stack can slash your time-to-hire and cost-per-hire metrics by a significant amount. Let’s look at the most important elements of a tech stack next, to better your hiring processes.

Recommended read: 21 Tech Recruiting Tools To Scale Your Hiring

4 must-haves in your tech stack

Here are some technologies to keep in mind when building your tech stack:

#1 Applicant tracking systems

The first thing you need to think about is an applicant tracking system. By investing in the right ATS you’ll be able to reduce your overall time to fill roles. You’ll also be able to create and nurture a pool of passive candidates that you can call upon in the future. 

An ATS can go from simple (collating all the candidate information) to quite complex (with various approval levels and AI-enhanced searches). An ATS is also more secure than a spreadsheet or email.

A good ATS has features like:

• job posting across multiple job boards and websites
• automated screening of candidates’ resumes, which also lowers human bias and errors
• database assistance where you can store all applicants’ information
• view the status of each candidate throughout the interview process 
• send out assessment invites from the ATS itself to the selected candidates and prepare a performance report in real-time
• initiate offer letters directly from the ATS, get them signed by the candidates, and save the documents digitally on the cloud 

#2 Automated employee referral programs

Investing in an ATS has multiple benefits as seen above but the real advantage is you can set up a robust employee referral program with it. Studies show referral hires stay at a company for longer on average with 47% staying longer than 3 years.

Employee referral programs promote company culture and build better-engaged tech teams. Leverage existing data in your ATS to reach a wider audience.

Here’s how:

• Implement auto-posting where you send job openings to your internal employees on an ongoing basis
• Automatically use the data in your ATS to suggest the right people to your connections
• Keep track of where the referred candidate is in the hiring cycle and send updates to the referrer
• Link your ATS to your payroll system, so any referral bonus can go straight into your employee’s salary
• Assess the success of your employee referral program and tweak accordingly—number of shares via email or social, number of referred candidates, number of successful hires, and the quality of those hires

#3 Chatbots for better candidate experience

Adding a chatbot to your careers site or investing in an ATS that comes with one takes your candidate experience to the next level. Chatbots can bring your website to life where candidates can strike up a conversation with the bot to clear any basic queries and frequently asked questions. 

You can also leverage natural language processing and train your bots to pre-screen candidates, answer candidate queries, and schedule interviews. Some even offer candidates the ability to check the status of their applications. 

This vastly decreases the burden on recruiters and frees up time for them to take on other important tasks.

#4 Screening and virtual assessment tools

Virtual assessment tools are how you can better hire candidates for jobs, reduce employee turnover, and improve the quality of hire at your organization. These coding tests are where you get to see if what the candidate mentioned in their resume pans out. 

A live coding assessment tool helps you with an objective evaluation of each candidate, provides detailed reports, and instant feedback—all with minimal technical know-how!

HackerEarth Assessments offers plenty of useful features. Here’s how HackerEarth does it:

• Provides a rich library of 13,000+ questions across 80+ programming skills to create highly accurate assessments
• Enables you to create your own assessment for any role in under 5 minutes or based on job descriptions, with the option to devise custom questions
• Gives you the choice of creating different types of questions like MCQs, subjective questions, or project-type questions that simulate on-the-job problems
• Allows seamless integration with popular ATSs like LinkedIn Talent Hub, Lever, Workable, and more, which means you can sync all your candidate data with your ATS
• Sends out invitations for candidates to take the assessment you created on our platform. You can also see at what stage each candidate is in throughout the hiring process, and avail performance reports, all from your ATS—without swapping between multiple apps
• Provides deeper insights into a candidate’s capabilities with summarized, automated performance reports

The use of AI in recruitment continues to spread and it is expected that the modern recruiter is savvy with the latest recruiting technologies and strategies. In 2022, change the way you hire and build great tech teams—and the first step is to start with building your dream recruitment tech stack!

Ruehie Jaiya Karri Author 57 Blogs