What really matters in hiring is meeting the right person and getting them excited to join your team. But, in today’s job market, it’s a race against the clock and your competitors for the best candidates. The quicker you can move through a hiring process, the better chance you have of making the best hires for your business. 

From distributing your job posting to reviewing resumes, communicating with several candidates all in different stages of your hiring process and trying to coordinate schedules between busy managers and busy job seekers – there are many time consuming tasks within the hiring process that can and should be automated. 

Hiring automations can be a game changer for businesses of all sizes. Here are six ways to start automating your hiring process so that you can hire more efficiently. 

How to automate the hiring and interview process 

1. Job board distribution 

A great recruitment process starts with a strong job description. But a great job posting is useless if it doesn’t get in front of the right eyes. You could manually post your job on different job boards, but why not automate this first and highly important step toward making the right hire

A great applicant tracking system (like CareerPlug) takes your job posting and automatically sends it to all the major job boards like Indeed, ZipRecruiter, Glassdoor, Simply Hired, and others. This automatic distribution saves you time and ensures that more job seekers will be aware of your open role. 

Better job posting distribution gives you a larger applicant pool to choose from – which means you’re going to need some more hiring automations to make sure you reach the best candidates before the competition! 

2. Pre-screen questions on your application 

On the one hand, it can be pretty exciting when applications start rolling in, but sifting through dozens of unqualified applicants for one right person can feel like looking for a needle in a haystack. 

Save yourself some time and include a few pre-screen questions in your application to quickly weed out unqualified applicants. 

CareerPlug offers pre-screening questions to ensure job applicants have the skills, availability, and work authorization to be eligible for your roles. Pre-screen questions allow you to collect critical candidate information easily, whether they’re applying on a top job board or directly on your website.

Here are some prescreen questions you might use to narrow down your applicant pool: 

• Are you legally authorized to work in the US? 
• Are you available to work Monday through Friday? 
• How many years of experience do you have in X industry? 
• Describe your experience with X software. 

3. Automatically reject applicants that don’t have the right qualifications 

In our 2023 Candidate Experience Report, 45% of candidates said that they have been ghosted by an employer – i.e., never heard anything back after taking the time to apply or interview. This isn’t a good look! 

Employer ghosting creates a negative candidate experience and could do damage to your employer brand. Even if you don’t want to hire someone, the experience you create for them could impact your ability to hire other top candidates in the future. 

For those applicants that don’t meet your bare minimum requirements, you can use an ATS like CareerPlug to automatically send a polite rejection email. Automating your rejections can be one small thing that saves you time while maintaining your business’s reputation. 

4. Fast-track top candidates early in the hiring process 

You can’t automate every part of the hiring process – nor should you! For example, when it comes to candidate evaluation, you’ll want to have a real human hiring manager making decisions about a candidate’s fitness for a role at your company. 

However, you can use software to automatically identify the most qualified candidates as soon as they apply. This way, you can find out early in the hiring process which candidates you should focus your time and attention on and spend less time on less-qualified applicants. 

CareerPlug’s applicant tracking system has a built-in Fast Track feature that lets you specify your most important criteria for a role, and the software will automatically contact new applicants who meet that criteria, so that you never miss out on the best candidates again.

5. Candidate communication

There are plenty of reasons why employers should automate communication with candidates:

• It saves time for busy hiring managers.
• It keeps candidates engaged throughout the hiring process.
• It creates a better candidate experience.
• It allows you to move fast with top candidates before your competition does.
• It reduces candidate ghosting and interview no-shows.

So why is it that employers still insist on communicating with candidates the old fashioned way? Automating communication allows you to have the prompt and frequent communication candidates are looking for. 

Stop juggling multiple programs for email, texting, candidate contact information, calendar scheduling, etc. Instead, use a hiring software like CareerPlug that includes built-in email and texting tools so you can contact your applicants directly within a single app. Create email and text message templates you can use over and over again with just a single-click. 

Pro tip: Data shows that texting is the preferred method of communication for candidates, with a response rate 8x higher than email. If you’re consistently being ghosted by candidates, texting may be the strategy missing from your recruiting efforts. Learn more about how text recruiting works in the video below.  

6. Automated interview scheduling 

Most automations will save you time – but they can also be the difference between engaging a great candidate and losing them to another potential employer. 

Top talent always has their choice of where to work, and great applicants are rarely on the market for long. The sooner you can get a candidate to the next stage of your hiring process, the better. 

Enter automated interview scheduling – a solution that’s more convenient for both busy employers and busy candidates. 

Automated interview scheduling allows candidates to schedule an interview with you based on your availability. Applicants can schedule the interview when it’s convenient for them, so your calendar is working for you 24/7, without you having to manage it. Say goodbye to endless scheduling back-and-forth with your best candidates. Plus, automatic interview reminders can help reduce the annoying problem of interview no-shows, freeing up even more time in your hiring process. 

CareerPlug clients that use Autopilot, our automated interview scheduling tool, spend up to 91% less time scheduling interviews and schedule up to 8x more interviews than those that don’t. This is what one Autopilot user had to say: 

Automate the worst parts of your hiring process so you can focus on the rest

When it comes to hiring, you’re probably most excited about meeting a great new employee to join your team and bring fresh new energy to help grow your business – not all the tedious administrative work that goes into it. By taking advantage of the latest automated hiring technology, you can spend less time hiring and more time focusing on getting your next great team member in front of your customers.