Recruiting is dynamic and complex. It is simply too important to get wrong, because when your recruiting fails and your business is understaffed or not staffed with the right people, operations and results suffer.
When it comes to recruitment software, the best-of-breed versus full-suite argument is a tale as old as time. For large, enterprise businesses, using the applicant tracking system that comes bundled with your Human Capital Management (HCM) or Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) might seem like an easy, economical solution for your recruitment quandary. Unfortunately, this might not be the smartest move. If your organization values recruitment and understands the impact people can have on overall business success, using your full-suite provider for talent acquisition will be a recruitment nightmare. Here are three reasons why your ERP or HCM just won’t cut it for recruitment…
- It’s Not Focused on Recruitment
Oftentimes, recruiting gets overlooked as just another part of HR, making it an easy thing for ERP and HRIS vendors to just “tack on” into their bundled software suite. While this might seem like an easy and affordable solution for your talent acquisition strategy, these applications are often diluted compared to best-of-breed vendors, who have a true focus on recruitment. Think about it like this: you wouldn’t see a general practitioner to treat a broken bone – you’d visit an orthopedic specialist who’s a seasoned expert in their specific field. Recruitment should be treated the same. Rather than taking your talent acquisition strategy to a vendor that focuses on higher-level HR strategies, such as payroll and attendance providers, give your recruitment the attention it deserves with a company that is dedicated to mastering the talent acquisition landscape.
- It Leaves Your Recruiters Hanging
This circles back to the fact that ERPs and HCMs are designed to improve general HR operations and have no real commitment to talent acquisition. Their applicant tracking systems and hiring applications might be easy to switch on or heavily discounted as part of their full ERP package – but they’re offered as an afterthought, and often fall flat in their features and functionality.
Recruiters have one goal – that’s to find the right people to fill their open roles. Without the proper tools, they can’t do their jobs effectively, which can have some serious, long-term implications on organizational success. From quality-of-hire to time-to-fill, insufficient recruitment software can make or break the bottom line. Recruiters’ needs are the top priority for best-of-breed technology, offering them the robust toolbox they need to find, attract, and hire the right talent.
- More Importantly, It Leaves Your Candidates Hanging
Today, candidates are more powerful than ever and won’t hesitate to make their next big career move if a better opportunity comes along. In fact, 63 percent of full-time employees are looking for a new job, according to an iCIMS survey, and with candidates in the captain’s seat, companies are rethinking their application processes to ensure they’re aligned with what job seekers want. Gone are the days of long-winded, manual job applications. Now, candidates are always on the move, researching jobs from their mobile phones and applying automatically using their social profiles.
Unfortunately, ERPs and HCMs don’t offer the right tools employers need to serve up an attractive, easy job application, and can put your candidate pipeline at risk. Full-suite providers are concerned about the HR landscape in its entirety – not the little things, like if candidates can apply via Twitter, or if they can access career portals from their mobile phones. If you want to attract the right people, trust a best-of-breed recruitment provider that knows exactly what job seekers are looking for in an application experience, and offers the right tools to give them what they want. Otherwise, your candidates will turn their attention elsewhere.
The moral of the story is that your HR provider can and should manage other areas of your business – just not recruitment. The good news is that you can integrate your pre-existing ERP or HCM with a best-of-breed recruiting solution to forego a major software overhaul and start recruiting better. Best-in-class companies are choosing to extend their core HCM technology with a robust best-of-breed recruitment platform. With this type of technology, organizations have an integrated recruitment hub to manage their end-to-end talent acquisition lifecycles that speaks directly to their full-suite technology for better data governance, scalability, and ROI. Integrating an HCM or ERP with a dedicated recruitment platform truly gives your organization the best of both worlds – your recruitment gets the attention it deserves, while your HR software handles the other areas of your business for a single, holistic experience.
Francesca Krempa is a Content Strategy Associate at iCIMS.