Recruiting Software: Envision the Final Frontier

“There’s nothing wrong with the bloody thing!” Scotty so famously told Spock (numerous times) in response to his emotionless inquiries regarding the warp drive.

And that’s how many of us feel today. Leave us alone. Our recruiting software is just fine. Well, maybe so, for today’s needs. But what kind of industry leader would Bond be if we didn’t dare to explore a future world of recruiting technology that not only keeps up with, but takes us beyond the “final” frontier of staffing needs.

So give us permission to speak freely as we dare to boldly make four Final Frontier predictions of the future of staffing software.

The Final Frontier of Recruiting Software is ASSIMILATION

The emphasis is on One Place! Yes, that’s right. Assimilation. Maybe the Borg had it (somewhat) right. After all, their vision of collective consciousness was really only to raise the quality of life in the universe. But the Borg’s focus was unfortunately on people and not the disconnected work-processes that breed inefficiency.

Let’s face it: multiple platforms for managing your operation is not the best way to operate a streamlined staffing and recruiting business. A centralized database should be the entire industry’s vision for 2014 and beyond. Future-focused staffing pros should demand streamlined data sharing across departments via a single web-enabled tool.

Imagine – this year – all of your team members being able to engage with intuitively easy access to:

• Candidate contracts
• Job Orders
• Task Scheduling
• Job Posting
• Background Screenings
• Incident tracking
• And even Accounts Receivable

Oh, and by the way, in this vision of Utopia, recruiters and sales reps will have unified interfaces to instantly access 80 percent or more of their daily work. What’s more, none of your team members will ever have to leave a staffing system in order to draft an email. MS Outlook will be truly integrated into their future Recruiting Software.

Like Spock says:

The Future Needs a Smart Mobile & Friendly Applicant Tracking System (ATS)

From an applicant tracking perspective, you have three audiences: your employee, your customers and your candidates. You will be able to have access to all of them (and them to you) in a future which offers a mobile-enabled applicant tracking system (ATS). A mobile system with fewer features than is illogical. The interface will – of course – be user friendly and simple.

It will enable:

–      sales reps to search via keywords for candidates and view their availability;

–      if they wish, clients will be able to receive text summaries of interview times with click-through access to candidate references;

–      and candidates will be able to browse job openings and complete an application, and submit their resume or LinkedIn profile.

Mobile evolution – specifically in support of applicant tracking  – is critical. We must envision the future. Now! Smarter mobile recruiting will open our reach to a wider pool of candidates, help retain our best staffing base and attract even more clients who are living life as “on-the-go” Staffers.

Follow the Enterprise and go where no one has gone before!

The Undiscovered Country of Recruiting Software Offers Quantum Search Capabilities

And we’re not just talking resume search. We’re talking an epic database built on a platform which truly predicts which candidates are the best fit for a position based on skills, education and workplace culture.

This search system will grow your applicants based on job history, specific skills, their references and whether they look left or right when they answer your questions.

This technology will, of course, be mobile-enabled (see the Future of Mobile above) and accessed by SIRI. In essence it will be Google (times 10) for staffers and recruiters.

Who was it who said, “Think and it will become a reality”? Well as Captain Jean-Luc Picard says, “Make it So.” Let’s take our orders from the Enterprise and envision our next frontier of hyper-powered applicant search and resume harvesting.

Engage!

The Future Holds an Integrated Payroll

Double data entry will be a process of the past as we look to what the future holds for recruiting software. A single job order, once filled, will trigger secure, cloud-based, payroll and billing capabilities in an integrated system. Valuable time saved will be reallocated to sales and recruitment efforts. Operational inefficiencies will be eliminated that will thus improve profit margins.

The system will require no need to enter hours and rates into a payroll system with a separate login and interface. Rather, contract employees’ timesheets will seamlessly integrate and require single voice-commanded approval from clients’ cell phones.

Paychecks will be distributed to your temporary or contract employees’ mobile devices so they can bump and spend anywhere.

Integration into third party – if desired – payroll, accounting and billing systems will be plug and play and require zero customization. And of course, payroll will automatically sync your payroll with the latest Federal, State and local payroll tax regulations.

Star Trek’s Data summed up the concept of integrated payroll nicely when he said, “Our neural pathways have become accustomed to your sensory input patterns.” That’s right. Payroll needs to be friends with recruiting software.

The future of recruiting software is (to steal a line from Data) “superior in many ways”, and once achieved will not be given up to go back to 2013.

So let’s do as Scotty does and “Give it all we’ve got”! The future is really not that far off.