One thing everyone knows about the recruitment industry is that it’s competitive. With an ever-increasing number of recruitment companies out there, the need to gain an edge over the competition has never been greater.

Standing out in what is often a saturated marketplace is tough, with recruiters facing a constant battle to try and streamline the hiring process, win more business, and place and retain high quality candidates.

As a result, more and more recruitment companies are looking to cloud-based technology to digitally transform their business and stay ahead of the curve. Read on to find out some of the reasons why…

Reduced time to hire

Many recruitment companies are still using time-consuming, paper-based processes throughout the recruitment cycle. Registering candidates over the phone whilst writing the information down on a registration form, then manually inputting this into the system is one example. Another is manually sending confirmation to candidates over email that you have sent their CV to a client or have booked them an interview somewhere. This doesn’t have to be the case.

Microsoft Power Platform can help companies build bespoke applications to enable candidates to register themselves and enable to Recruiters to send confirmation emails automatically. It’s important to point out innovation should be used to drive more interaction, not replace it, but this is all about increasing the efficiency of those conversations, and in those industries where it’s all about placing large amounts of candidates as quickly as possible however, streamlining the recruitment process is critical.

Reduced CapEx cost

The cost of paper, pens and general office supplies certainly adds up. When you then factor in the costs of setting up on-premise infrastructure, physically securing it, paying for the power, maintaining and upgrading servers etc, it’s clear to see why some Recruitment business owners would be looking to reduce these. That’s where Cloud computing comes in.

Cloud enables you to only pay for what you use on a monthly basis and allows you to predict your costs accurately. Some companies pay significant amounts of money on their on-premise infrastructure to cover them for when they are at capacity, but they may only get close to this capacity for 1 or 2 months of the year. This means that for 10+ months of the year they are effectively wasting money. Given the recent Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent increase in remote working, reducing the amount of money spent on on-premise equipment has never been more time sensitive.

Increased Flexibility 

As mentioned above, gone are the days when recruitment companies can genuinely expect all of their employees to be in the office sat at their desk every day. There is an ever-increasing demand for flexibility, with recruiters needing to be able to access candidate or client information from anywhere at any time.

This is where cloud computing comes in, it enables universal access meaning that, providing you have your device, your login details and access to the internet, you can access what you need from anywhere. If you’re one of those businesses where your employees need to be at their desk to do their job, you risk getting left behind.

Improved Contractor experience 

Contractors are being contacted by multiple different recruiters every day, often about the same roles, it’s just the nature of the industry. Although that can be a massive inconvenience for them, what that does give them is choice.

The choice more often than not comes down to where they can get the best rate, but if the rate is the same, then what? It’s often who they had the better experience with. Do they go with the company who only pays them once a month due to the time consuming, paper based, timesheet submiting process? The same company whose system crashes every few months meaning they don’t submit their hours on time and don’t get paid? Or do they go with the company that pays them every week, on time, and enables them to submit their hours and have it approved in a matter of minutes, using a simple, easy to use app? Seems like a no-brainer to us.

If your on-premise environment is prone to down time and therefore affecting the payment of your contractors, your reputation is out the window and you’re losing money. The Microsoft Azure uptime SLA is 99.99%, which is much higher than any on-premise environment can offer, so much less likely to suffer with costly downtime.

 

Growth with the pace of technology advancements

Everyone is aware of the pace of change of technology, and in an industry as competitive as the recruitment industry, agencies need to understand how they can use these advancements to their advantage which will allow them to offer candidates and clients a new and improved experience.

The age-old saying “time is money” has never been more relevant.