The roadblocks for hiring during a global pandemic are clear—from figuring out how to engage staff that teleworks, to working with reduced staffing levels, to video-interviewing new hires. HR teams have had to modify their usual practices, roll with the punches, and streamline their processes in order to meet the demands of the current moment. While many organizations are finding innovative ways to hire or undertake the process of rehiring, technology has been key. Even so, you want to make sure your new tech isn’t setting up roadblocks in the hiring process.

Integration Is Key

As HR teams explore new ways to connect with candidates and employees alike, they also need to keep an eye on how their various technologies work together, i.e., the tech stack. When you incorporate new technology into your tech stack, you want it to integrate seamlessly into your current system to create one fluid process. This is why it’s important for your new tech to have robust application programming interfaces (APIs), which allow information to flow between one technology and another. This eliminates the extra work of having to consult two systems or manually translate information, which results in data silos, slower workflows, and roadblocks. While the current moment can be an opportune time to retool your tech entirely, every decision-maker at present also has their minds on the budget. This means overhauling the entire system might be overkill. For most organizations, finding technology that seamlessly integrates with your current tech is key to streamlining your hiring.

Look Toward Building Your Ideal Team For The Future

But the demand for new tech right now means that it is also the perfect time to make big investments with an eye to the future and ROI. It’s important to make strategic choices for your tech looking at the bigger picture, rather than finding a band-aid solution until things get back to normal. The best investment will be in tech that automates various processes throughout your hiring, and one of the key places to enhance hiring is at the very start.

Begin with the best candidates. When your hiring process begins with a programmatic job ad platform, you engage better quality candidates more quickly and spend your job ad campaign dollars more effectively. These smart systems, like Pandologic’s pandoIQ, use a combination of AI tech and Big Data for targeted advertising. When you begin with a crop of candidates that are higher quality (and spend your job ad dollars more efficiently), you start the entire process on better, smarter footing to head off issues down the road. This is key especially when your HR team may be stretched thin and is adjusting to a new normal.

Another key tech that can help in this regard is in candidate engagement software. AI chatbots can help keep quality candidates more engaged in the hiring process as they await an interview. When you invest in smart tech like chatbots, you have an answer waiting for candidates as soon as they need it and the ability to streamline time-consuming processes like interview scheduling.

Keep It Simple And User-Friendly

Lastly, finding a video-interviewing platform that is easy for users and saves time for HR will be important in the current moment. Anyone with a laptop has a camera, but how the process goes for your hiring really depends on your software. There are a number of platforms that have a versatile array of features—VidCruiter, for example, features automated scheduling and digital interview guides along with an AI software candidate assessment tool. There are live-streaming features and on-demand video interviews, and there are solutions that integrate into your current applicant tracking system (ATS). If you are currently engaging basic video-conferencing software to conduct interviews, you may be missing out on a lot of helpful features that can enhance and streamline your hiring at the later stages of the hiring process.

Keeping your system smart and streamlined—both for your HR staff and for your users—is key to making your tech stack successful in building and maintaining your ideal team.