Hiring GlossaryWhat is recruitment automation?
What is recruitment automation?
When you’re a recruiter or talent acquisition (TA) professional, you often feel like you’re being pulled in several directions at once. You want to create a welcoming and personalised experience for candidates. But at the same time, you feel pressure to work faster and more efficiently – and that’s often coming from the top of your organisation. Research from IDC shows that CEOs believe 40% of time spent on hiring processes is inefficient.
Recruitment automation involves using tools to accelerate different aspects of the recruiting process. This might include an applicant tracking system (ATS) that you use to manage job applications and candidate data, review CVs and communicate with candidates. Other recruitment automation tools might integrate with your ATS and help accelerate sourcing or manage certain aspects of the interview process.
How can recruiting automation fit into your hiring process? Here’s how Alex Powell, former Director of Product Management at Greenhouse, described a common use case: “Applying a tool to track and automate processes at the top of the funnel can help recruiting teams manage an influx of applications by filtering candidates on whether or not they have the right criteria required to succeed in a role. This kind of automation is not a substitute for human interaction – it’s simply another tool to help the recruiting process become more fair, consistent and efficient for everyone involved.”
What are the benefits of recruitment automation?
The first and most obvious benefit of recruiting automation is that it can save your company time. Take scheduling, for example. If you’re trying to play calendar Tetris and manually schedule interviews with candidates and hiring teams, this involves a ton of back-and-forth communication. But this is a task that can easily be automated with the right tool.
Here’s how Chanelle Guillaume, Talent Acquisition and Learning & Development Specialist at Bandai Namco Entertainment America Inc., described the recruiting automation benefits she experienced when adopting Greenhouse as her ATS: “Automated stage transition emails and candidate self-scheduling capabilities have saved literally thousands of hours I used to spend scheduling or rescheduling interviews.”
Think of it as a trade-off – automation allows you to swap out manual administrative tasks for ones that are likely to be more impactful. Megan Buttita, Research Director, Emerging Trends in Talent Acquisition, Worldwide Services Group, at IDC, wrote, “Automation should make the recruiting process more efficient – allowing recruiters to spend more time as consultants and candidates to have a seamless and positive experience.”
And let’s not forget about the cost savings you can take advantage of when you automate manual processes. Research from IDC shows that efficiency gains can translate into average savings of $121,000 per recruiter, per year, a 589% three-year ROI and a seven-month payback period.
You can see how faster, more efficient hiring processes can lead to a better candidate experience, too. Candidates will have more control when they can schedule their own interviews, and they’ll appreciate the efficiency of this approach.
Plus, recruiting automation tools can take care of tasks like informing candidates when they’ve been moved to the next stage of the application process. This means they’re never left in the dark about the status of their application, which is critical because today’s candidates have little patience when it comes to lags in communication or unclear timelines. The 2025 Greenhouse Workforce & Hiring survey showed that 50% of US candidates have ghosted employers during the hiring process, up 14% from October 2023. Ghosting is a major drain on a recruiting team and should be reduced as much as possible.
As the quote from Alex in the previous section explained, recruitment automation tools can also support structured hiring and reduce bias by highlighting candidates who have the criteria you’ve defined that will lead to success in the role. This makes it easier to sort through a high volume of candidates in a consistent and equitable way.
And that’s not all! When you use recruitment automation tools, you gain access to more data and insights than when you rely on manual processes. Recruitment automation tools can track your recruiting key performance indicators to show how your TA team is performing and help you identify bottlenecks or areas for improvement.
What are the key features of effective recruitment automation tools?
What should you look for in your recruitment automation tools? Here are a few of the key features to consider.
Automated job postings and candidate sourcing
Look for an ATS or other recruitment automation tool that offers automated job postings and candidate sourcing so you can easily distribute job openings across multiple platforms and increase the chances that candidates discover your open roles.
Candidate sourcing features can use keywords or phrases from your job description to surface candidates from job boards, online platforms like LinkedIn and even your own database, reducing the time you need to spend manually sourcing candidates. Other productivity-boosting sourcing features include the ability to track candidate sentiment and follow-ups and auto-advancing or rejecting candidates based on whether they meet basic criteria for a role.
Automated hiring plans
If you’re interested in structured hiring, it might seem like a lot more work initially. But some recruitment automation tools can expedite parts of the structured hiring process. Greenhouse, for example, offers automated hiring plans that allow you to generate interview stages, questions and scorecard attributes that are specific to each role. It’s the best of both worlds – you get the speed of automation but the benefits of structured hiring, like limiting bias and offering an equitable experience to all candidates.
Accelerated CV review
Once candidates have entered your recruiting funnel, recruiting automation tools can expedite the CV review process. And the right tool can help you do this in a way that reduces bias. For example, Greenhouse offers patented parsing technology so you can review CVs quickly while keeping identifying details redacted. This makes it easier to focus on a candidate’s likelihood of success in the role rather than their biographical details.
Interview scheduling and communication tools
Instead of relying on back-and-forth communication to find a suitable time for interviews, recruitment automation tools can allow candidates to select interview times that suit them (based on times when interviewers are available). These tools can also automate communication so candidates receive updates when they reach critical milestones in the application process. This gives your TA team peace of mind that candidates never go too long without receiving an update on the status of their application or what to expect next.
Analytics and reporting functionalities
Recruiting automation software often offers analytics and reporting that allow you to track key metrics like time-to-hire, candidate satisfaction and the effectiveness of different sources. You can use this information to create benchmarks and then continue to refine your processes over time.
How should you implement recruiting automation in your organisation?
When you’re ready to choose recruiting technology for your company, former Greenhouse President and Co-founder Jon Stross suggests outlining the main problems you’re trying to solve: “My recommendation would be to truly understand what you’re trying to accomplish and find a system that will enable it.” In other words, don’t just focus on the features you think you might want, but have a clear idea of the goals you’re trying to achieve.
You might find it helpful to map out your current recruitment workflow. This way, you can see which activities tend to take the most time and where automation can have the biggest impact. Depending on the cost and complexity of the tools you choose, you may need to get approval and buy-in from other teams, like legal and finance. You might also need to allow time for setup and implementation, especially if you’re going to be integrating new tools with any existing ones. Find more tips on purchasing new recruiting automation software here.
Once you’ve gotten your recruiting automation tools set up, you’ll also need to invest in training and support for anyone who will be using them. Many vendors provide training resources and dedicated support to help you make the most of their platform. This can include workshops, webinars and access to a knowledge base that answers frequently asked questions. And depending on the vendor and the tier of service you select, you might also have a dedicated customer success manager who can help you manage rollout and adoption.
Finally, you’ll want to make sure you’re tapping into the power of the data and analytics you now have at your disposal. This circles back to the advice from Jon about why it’s so important to define the goals you’re hoping to achieve with this new tool. Perhaps you’re hoping to make a positive impact on recruiting key performance indicators like time-to-fill or candidate satisfaction. Whichever metrics you’ve chosen, you can start by establishing benchmarks and then measure your progress at regular intervals to identify potential areas for improvement.
What are some common challenges you’re likely to experience with recruitment automation (and how do you overcome them)?
Any time you’re changing a tool or process, you can expect to encounter some resistance. Your co-workers are not necessarily trying to make your life more difficult – they may just be struggling to change their habits. You can help by connecting the new process to the benefits you’re expecting to get out of it. Acknowledge that the effort they’re putting into adopting this new tool will ultimately save them time and lead to better team performance and candidate satisfaction.
With any new tool – especially those that make use of artificial intelligence, which is often the case with automation tools today – you will want to address data privacy and compliance concerns. When you’re evaluating different vendors, make sure to ask about how they’re protecting user data and maintaining legal and regulatory compliance. If you’re ever unsure, your legal team will be a helpful resource throughout this process.
One of the biggest misconceptions about recruitment automation that can lead to resistance is the idea that your team is outsourcing decision-making to the technology. But you can – and should – maintain the ability to make critical hiring decisions. This is why it’s so important to select technology that will automate tedious and manual processes while still empowering people to make the decisions that matter most.
What can we expect to see in the future of recruitment automation?
Recruiting technology – especially when it comes to recruitment automation – is being transformed by AI. In fact, this landscape is changing so fast that we’re hesitant to write in too much detail about it since anything we publish is likely to be outdated almost immediately. So what should you know about the (not-so-distant) future of recruitment automation, especially when it comes to AI?
In a discussion about the future of AI recruiting technology with former Greenhouse President Jon Stross, Kyle Lagunas, Head of Strategy & Principal Analyst at Aptitude Research, described one of the biggest changes in the way TA teams choose technology: “It’s important for TA leads to understand what the innovation roadmap looks like for their current vendors. Before, we would buy software that we could configure to our needs and best practices. Now we are actually looking to our vendors to bring us AI best practices.” In other words, you don’t necessarily have to be responsible for keeping up to date on all the latest advancements – you can partner with innovative vendors who will do this for you.
Jon Stross agreed with Kyle, saying, “The level of partnership we need to be prepared for and leaning into is greater than it has ever been before.” Jon has already observed a change in the way customers are approaching conversations with vendors. The savviest customers aren’t just asking to see the product roadmap for the next quarter or two – they’re asking vendors what their vision is for the next few years. You can take a similar approach to make sure you’re choosing recruitment automation vendors that are aligned with your own company’s vision for the future.
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