From sourcing to onboarding: how recruitment technology is transforming the hiring process

In today's competitive job market, recruitment teams face mounting pressure to fill positions quickly while maintaining quality hires. Recruitment technology can help improve the process from start to finish, helping to make hiring more efficient, as well as reducing the administrative burden on your team, and improving the candidate experience.  

Let’s take a look at how solutions like Vetting Gateway and other recruitment technologies are revolutionising hiring efficiency. 

What is recruitment technology?

Recruitment technology is a pretty broad term, which can encompass a diverse range of digital tools, platforms and software solutions which all have a common goal: to streamline and enhance the hiring process. 

From creating job descriptions and sourcing candidates to background checks and final onboarding, this technology can help to make it quicker and easier to find the right candidates and get them started in the role sooner. 

Some of the most common types of recruitment technology include candidate sourcing software, applicant tracking systems (ATS), interview software, background vetting software and analytics tools that measure recruitment effectiveness and candidate experience.  

Why recruitment technology is critical for modern businesses 

The recruitment landscape has changed quite dramatically in the past decade, shifting from a largely manual process to one that’s driven by technology. It’s important that businesses today incorporate technology into their hiring processes for several reasons: 

• Improving speed to hire: It can take a long time to find the right candidates and get them up to speed in the role. Technology can help you to find the right people for the role faster, meaning less disruption to your business, lower costs, and a better candidate experience. 

• Access to a wider talent pool: Using technology can help you to cast the net wider – especially important for remote-first companies. 

• Improving diversity through reduced bias: You can use technology for blind CV screening, ensuring that all candidates are judged fairly on their skills, rather than their demographic information. 

• Reducing recruitment costs: Automated processes can significantly reduce the per-hire cost by reducing the administrative overhead. 

• Compliance management: Make sure you’re adhering to industry regulations, reducing legal risks. 

• Improving the candidate experience: Top talent today expects a streamlined, transparent recruitment process – something which technology can help you achieve. 

• Learning through data: With advanced analytics, you can better keep track of what’s working and what isn’t, so you can further refine your recruitment strategies. 

The biggest recruitment challenges tech can solve 

As recruitment becomes increasingly competitive, there are certain persistent challenges that HR teams struggle with. Modern recruitment technology has evolved specifically to address these key pain points, some of which we already touched on above as reasons why businesses need to invest in technology sooner rather than later. 

Time-consuming screening processes

Background checks are an important part of the recruitment process. They’re crucial to make sure that your potential new employee is who they say they are and doesn’t pose any risks to the organisation. This is especially important for high-security industries like aviation, finance and healthcare. But when done manually, background checks can take a long time. That’s because: 

• It’s labour intensive: Manual checks can be incredibly time-consuming for your teams. Take reference checking, for example, which often needs to be chased up, meaning your teams need to spend time sending emails and making multiple phone calls. 

• There’s a risk of errors: There’s always a risk of human error when manually doing background checks, which could further delay the process. 

• There may be inconsistencies in data: This means that your teams may need to spend time resolving conflicting information between documents and statements. 

Compliance and risk issues

There are other pitfalls to manual background vetting. If you use shared online documents, for example, it could put sensitive, personal candidate data at risk of security breaches. 

Using secure technology mitigates this risk, making sure that your data is always safe and secure, while also ensuring that you comply with regulations in your country and industry. 

Poor candidate experience 

When recruiting, it’s important to remember that you’re not only interviewing candidates – it’s also their opportunity to decide whether they want to work for your business. That’s why it’s so important to provide a great candidate experience, but unfortunately this is something many organisations struggle with, due to issues like: 

• Lengthy application process 

• Lack of transparency about the overall interview process and timeline 

• Poor communication about next steps after interviews 

• Time-consuming interview tasks or assessments 

• Lack of feedback after interviews 

• Delayed background checks with little transparency 

• Slow to generate offer documentation after a verbal role acceptance 

• Lack of clear information about a new employee’s first day 

  
  

Individually, none of these might seem like major issues – but they all add up to create a poor impression of your business. A study by PwC found that 49% of job seekers working in in-demand fields like technology have turned down an offer because of a bad experience during the hiring process – so it’s important to get it right.  

Recruitment technology can help with these challenges, by helping to speed up the process and offering more transparency and better communication throughout the entire process. 

Sourcing quality candidates

While there are often a huge number of candidates applying for open roles, it can still be difficult to find the best candidates, with research suggesting that 74% of employers struggle to find ‘quality’ candidates. 

Recruitment technology can help to address these challenges through AI-powered sourcing tools, programmatic job advertising, talent community platforms, and advanced candidate matching algorithms that identify potential fits based on skills rather than keyword matches alone. 

Disorganised workflows and data management  

When you’re hiring staff – particularly if you’re recruiting for multiple roles – it can be challenging to keep on top of everything. That means that your HR teams may struggle with: 

• Having candidate information spread across multiple systems such as email, spreadsheets and paper files 

• Inconsistency between the processes used by different hiring managers and departments 

• Tracking where candidates are in the hiring process 

• Limited visibility into recruitment metrics and the health of candidate pipelines 

All of this can mean slow hiring cycles, potentially missing qualified candidates, and difficulty in scaling recruitment efforts during periods of growth. 

Key types of recruitment technology and what they do

If you’re facing any of these challenges, investing in recruitment technology can help to address them head-on. Depending on what issues you’re facing and what your business priorities are, one of the following solutions might be the answer you’re looking for. 

Vetting software 

Once you’ve found the right candidates and taken them through the interview process, the final piece of the puzzle is doing background checks – but this can often delay the process. Background check software like VettingGateway can help with this, through: 

• Automated checks: This reduces the need for manual data entry and follow-ups 

• Candidate document upload: Candidates can submit required materials in a self-serve portal, eliminating the need for HR teams to manually collect and process verification documents 

• Compliance features: Audit trails document all verification activities and results, ensuring you meet all EU and UK regulations 

This can drastically reduce the verification timelines, reducing what once took weeks into days or even hours. It also reduces the risk of applications being rejected and provides a great candidate experience.  

By automating your pre-employment checks, you can save admin time, allowing your team to focus on building client pools, developing strong relationships with clients, and focus on other tasks. For example, when Crewlink standardised its vetting process with VettingGateway, it reduced resource needs by 65% and an enormous 804% return on investment, with £8 reduced for every £1 spent. 

Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) 

ATS software helps employers to efficiently manage job applications, storing candidate information, tracking their application status and automating tasks like screening and sorting CVs. 

Some of the key benefits include: 

• Centralising all candidate data, eliminating the need to juggle different files and systems 

• Automation of repetitive tasks like reviewing CVs and scheduling interviews 

• Scanning CVs to help you identify the best candidates 

• Tracking candidates throughout the hiring process, so it’s easy to see their status at a glance 

• Creating audit trails, helping to ensure you stay compliant 

• In-depth analytics to help you better identify bottlenecks and inefficiencies in the process 

With all of this in mind, companies that implement ATS solutions typically report significant reductions in time-to-hire and cost-per-hire – which means that modern ATS platforms like Greenhouse, Lever, and Workday Recruiting have become an essential piece of the recruitment puzzle for companies serious about talent acquisition as a competitive advantage. 

Candidate Relationship Management (CRM) systems 

CRM tools help recruiters and HR teams to manage the entire recruitment process. Unlike ATS platforms, which primarily help with workflow, CRM platforms can help to build and nurture talent pools over time. That means they can make it easier to source qualified candidates by creating a pipeline of engaged candidates before you even have open positions. 

Some of the key features include: 

• Talent pool management: Build and segment talent pools based on skills, experience levels, locations, and potential fit for future roles. 

• Engagement: Create personalised emails to nurture relationships with passive candidates. 

• GDPR and data compliance tools: Manage candidate data in accordance with privacy regulations, including consent tracking and data retention policies. 

• Candidate tracking: Easily track the progress of candidates through the recruitment funnel.  

• Data-driven insights: A good CRM will give you all the data you need around candidate engagement, sourcing effectiveness, and overall hiring outcomes.  

All of this leads to a more streamlined hiring process and reduced time-to-hire. Recruitment CRMs like Vincere and Recruit CRM can help your business to move from reactive hiring to a more strategic approach by proactively building relationships with potential candidates before positions even open up. 

Recruitment Process Automation (RPA) tools 

RPA tools can automate repetitive, rule-based tasks across the recruitment process, reducing the administrative burden on your team – freeing up their time to focus on high-priority tasks. 

An RPA can help you to streamline tasks like: 

• Automatically posting job openings across multiple platforms 

• Scheduling follow-up reminders 

• Screening applications against minimum requirements 

• Sending acknowledgements to candidates when they apply for a role 

• Sending automated interview reminders to candidates and hiring teams 

• Scheduling interviews and follow-ups 

• Sending personalised rejection emails after interviews 

• Scheduling follow-up interviews 

You can even use all of these technologies together (RPA, CRM and ATS tools) to make the process even more efficient. 

Implementing recruitment technology that works for you 

In today’s competitive landscape, recruitment isn’t just a nice-to-have – it’s essential for businesses that are serious about creating a more efficient hiring process that benefits both your HR team and candidates. From sourcing quality candidates to streamlining background checks, the right technology can make the entire hiring process smoother and easier for everyone involved. 

By choosing the right recruitment technology, you can lower costs, reduce time-to-hire and make sure your organisation can secure the best talent for your open roles. 

If you’d like to find out how VettingGateway can streamline and enhance your background checking process, get in touch to speak with one of our vetting experts today.