Salesforce for Recruiters: The Benefits of a Totally Integrated Recruitment Software Solution

You've been working through the hiring process with an employer that you absolutely love. Every new bit of information you uncover during your research makes you more and more excited about potentially joining. Each interaction you have with the hiring team has solidified your belief that this is the place for you.

After a few rounds of successful interviews, you get the job offer! Thrilled, you accept it right away. You're ready to get started as soon as possible.

And then – silence. For weeks. Maybe even a month.

Has this ever happened to you? Rachel Bitte, chief people officer at Jobvite, has a feeling it has.

"We've all been really excited about accepting a job – and then you don't hear from them for a while," Bitte says. "You're like, 'What's up? What's going on?'"

It's bad enough when you're the job seeker who runs into a brick wall, but if you're the employer subjecting ecstatic candidates to abrupt radio silence, you're doing yourself a major disservice. That's a great way to kill all the momentum and turn an enthusiastic candidate into a disappointed and disengaged employee.

What was the fabulous candidate experience for if you're just going to shut it off the minute the candidate becomes an employee?

It's critical to keep the momentum going, but it can also be quite difficult. The transition from candidate to employee isn't always a smooth one. You're probably not trying to squander all of your good will – you just don't have a better way to hand the new employee off from the recruiting team to HR and the new employee's department.

According to Bitte, it doesn't have to be this way. A more holistic, comprehensive recruiting software could be just the solution you need to make your new employee's transition just as exciting as the candidate experience.

And Jobvite believes that the recent announcement of its fully integrated onboarding solution means it has the comprehensive software organizations need to manage the entire recruiting process from initial engagement to settling employees into the company without a hitch.

But why does a comprehensive, all-in-one software matter? There are plenty of solutions for each component of the recruiting process out there, and many of them can integrate with one another. Isn't that the same as an all-in-one? Bitte doesn't think so – and here's why:

1. Fully Integrated Solutions Keep the Entire Organization Informed

You have to remember that your candidates aren't just joining one team – they're joining the whole organization. If you can integrate new employees into the entire organization more easily, they'll have a better shot at becoming productive and engaged members of the company.

Plus, an integrated system also takes a lot of work off of people's plates, which means that the company can "spend more time and energy on qualitative outreach and keeping the employee engaged throughout the entire process," Bitte says.

2. Fully Integrated Solutions Make for a More Efficient Recruiting Funnel

Jobvite calls its integrated system "Salesforce for recruiters," and that's not just a publicity stunt.

"The recruiting funnel ... is very much tied to marketing and sales funnels," Bitte explains. "The recruiting funnel is very similar to the acquisition of a customer."

Much like companies need to raise awareness around their products, get leads, and convert leads into customers, employers need to raise awareness about their jobs, find candidates, and convert candidates into employees.

With a fully integrated software, Bitte says, you have more control over every stage of the recruitment funnel.

"You can expand your possible candidate pool at the top of the funnel," Bitte explains. "And then, at the bottom of the funnel, you have onboarding, which is a major piece. The hand-off between departments here is really critical. You've invested so much time and energy into hiring this person, and you don't want to lose that momentum."

By smoothing the conversion from prospect to employee, an integrated system can help you maintain more of your candidate's momentum.

"The synergy you can have inside an organization is really important, especially in the hand-off between the recruiting team and the HR team," Bitte says. "As a candidate, you can have an incredible relationship with a recruiter — and then you never see them again."

An integrated system allows a recruiter to check in on the new employee's progress and make sure that the vision they sold the employee actually comes to fruition.

"And for HR, it allows them to be a bit more involved with the interviewing process so you start to build a relationship [with the new hire] earlier," Bitte adds. "It allows you to bridge the candidate experience and the employee experience."

3. Fully Integrated Solutions Are More Efficient

Tactical and operational tasks can take up a lot of time during the hiring process. Integrated systems that automate many of these tasks are supremely helpful.

What's more, there's one especially unnecessary operational task that fully integrated systems can do away with completely: making sure all your third-party apps and integrations work properly.

"The most important component [of an integrated system like ours] is the seamlessness," Bitte says. "You don't have to double-check if the API works or if you lost data in transition [from one software to the next]. In-app systems ensure you're not going to have anything slip through the cracks."

Furthermore, Jobvite's software in particular can help talent acquisition teams become even more efficient by allowing them to leverage critical recruiting data.

"We're able to help the heads of HR and talent acquisition see how they are performing in their recruiting funnels and how optimized they are in both candidate experience and new hire experience," Bitte says.

This data gives talent acquisition teams the ability to zero in on strategies that work and jettison the ones that don't.

4. Fully Integrated Solutions Improve the Candidate Experience

Think about it: When a candidate only deals with one software instead of three or four during the hiring process, they're likely to be much less stressed about and/or frustrated with the hiring process.

And if your integrated software has a mobile component like Jobvite's does, then your candidates will be especially happy.

"If you can apply for a job on your phone, why can't you do the other end of it once you've accepted it? Why can't you pound out a couple of W-2 forms on the go?" Bitte asks.

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Will a fully integrated software solve every one of your recruiting woes? Probably not. Recruiting is a bit more complicated than that. But it does have the potential to make sourcing, recruiting, hiring, and onboarding much easier for you and your candidates – so it's something you may want to look into soon. Why keep juggling all those software platforms when you could find one that does it all?