Businesses not only can’t find enough quality candidates they would want to hire, but they also can’t find enough workers even if they hired every single candidate who applied.
Taken from our most recent white paper, this statement is a chilling summary of the near-impossible hiring environment companies of all sizes currently face. How is your recruiting team responding? One solution is to up your investment in science-based virtual hiring technology. Here’s how to build a business case for recruitment technology that will prove its value to your organization and help you get the go-ahead.
1. Define the Hiring Issue. This is not as simple as it sounds. There are likely several more minor issues feeding into your challenges. The talent advisor’s strategic role is to dig, ask questions and analyze the situation to solve the right problem(s). If your recruiting team is hearing “we need to improve candidate quality,” your organization may be suffering from issues including employer brand problems, sourcing deficiencies, quality of talent reached, or an outdated candidate experience. Starting your business case with the correct issue(s) is vital to setting the appropriate goals and making the right recruiting technology recommendations.
2. Understand the Larger Business Context. It’s critical to look beyond traditional TA metrics like time-to-fill and speed-to-hire as you define your business case. In this era of data-driven hiring, a science-based virtual hiring platform can help recruiting teams deliver on larger business goals, such as improving new hire performance and reducing turnover. Look for the hiring metrics you can tie to your organization’s bottom-line performance. If you can align recruiting technology outcomes with corporate strategic initiatives, you create a perfect opportunity to push an all-in-one science-based hiring platform through the approval process.
3. Gather the Data. Use numbers and facts to illustrate your current state of hiring and the difference recruitment technology will make. Examine all of your costs, including these:
- the time recruiters spend doing a high volume of interviews but delivering low quality
- the time recruiters spend scheduling interviews
- costs of a bad hire, your own and industry averages
- costs of being in a highly collaborative organization in which many people are involved in each hiring decision
- cost of using several recruitment technology solutions (if that is the case in your organization) compared to the cost of an end-to-end hiring platform
Once you’ve gathered your data, boil it down to the four or five key data points that best support your business case.
4. Know Your Audience. As a talent advisor, it’s important for you to communicate to C-suite leaders the business impact of the recruitment technology in business terms. While you may be concerned about improving your candidate experience or increasing the efficiency of your team with recruitment technology, they need to understand how accomplishing those goals will impact the organization’s overall performance.
One of the strongest areas to start with is the impact of a predictive hiring platform on new hire performance and retention. Check out this case study as an example.
5. Proactively Manage Misconceptions About Artificial Intelligence and Recruiting Automation. It’s likely your decision-makers are not all working from the same starting point in their knowledge of AI and automation in hiring. Therefore, you can level-set the conversation by being specific about their use in recruitment technology. Other points that will provide context either in your written business case, your presentation, or both are:the differences between automation and AI
- the value of predictive AI in candidate selection and hiring decisions
- the value of AI in augmenting human-decision making
- the role of AI in reducing bias and supporting diversity in hiring
- the importance of considering only recruitment technology providers that have a record of good talent intelligence science
- the need to work with a provider that is committed to ethical AI in hiring
If you need to brush up on your knowledge of AI and automation in hiring, download our white paper, Combining Science and Technology to Make Superhuman Hiring Decisions.
6. Work Within Your Organization’s Rules. Familiarity with the financials and knowing how the budget process and approvals work is essential. You may demonstrate game-changing ROI from the data or proof of concept, but you’ll need to work within the system, obtain the right approvals, and submit the correct documents by the accurate dates.
7. Recommend the Right Solution. Show that you’ve done your homework as a strategic talent advisor by presenting the right recruitment technology solution in your business case. It’s helpful for decision-makers to see that you’ve explored the market thoroughly, so be sure to include your reasons for not recommending some of the other top technology choices.
If you’d like help understanding how to evaluate AI-enabled hiring solutions, take advantage of this free download: The Buyer’s Guide to AI-Driven Hiring: Five Key Questions for Evaluating AI Solutions.