At Scout Talent, we continuously improve our product suite to make recruitment easier and help in-house recruiters make the best decisions, faster. What will these developments look like in the year ahead? Our Product Manager James shared Scout Talent’s product roadmap for the improvements you can expect to see.
At our Recruitment Insights event, we spent time with our Brisbane guests, sharing knowledge and new tools, gaining feedback, and speaking about the latest recruitment marketing data and insights. Our Product Manager James shared exciting technological innovations, from AI to fast and accurate behavioural testing, as part of our Scout Talent roadmap for how our product will continue to develop and evolve, to simplify recruitment.
Here are the improvements you can expect to see in 2020.
A blend of software and services
Scout Talent has a unique opportunity to offer recruitment services as well as software.
“Services-enabled-software fills in the gaps and bolsters the recruitment process to give in-house recruitment teams access to support when and how they need it,” said James. “It provides flexibility through choice, and expertise when required.”
One of our predictions for how the industry will evolve is that recruitment will become more specialised, so there will be more areas recruiters will need support.
“For example, you may need assistance with behavioural testing or reference checks. You may have someone going on leave, or need some help writing a great recruitment advertisement, or shortlisting a lot of applications. You may need psychometric testing to ensure you are choosing a candidate who is the right fit, or just to feel confident in your decision-making. Our Specialists are there to bridge the gap to help you deal with those peaks and troughs.”
Recruiters can’t be all things at once, and they shouldn’t have to be. Scout Talent has experts in a variety of recruitment services to assist, augment and bolster recruitment processes.
As part of our roadmap, clients can expect to see this blend of software and services, and seamlessly attach desired services to their account at the click of a button.
“Technology is constantly evolving, so our product will constantly evolve. It will be a continuous process.”
Updates to Candidate Management System, :Recruit
Our Candidate Management System, :Recruit, will have a new look, with a streamlined menu for clients to seamlessly access services.
“It will be a 12-month journey to completely overhaul our UI (user interface) for people to order services at the click of a button to augment their recruitment process, and determine which system integrations are available. Our service and integration offerings will continually expand! Other pages will also be developed with a better look and feel, to create an improved experience for users to navigate.”
Updates to :Onboard – improving the way you welcome new team members
With custom forms (a digital process for requesting documents and information from new hires), the improved ability to send bulk offers, automatic reminders and managing acceptance statuses, our :Onboard module has come a long way.
“No one wants to download, print, sign, scan and return contracts, offers or documents. Digital signatures are now a reality. Recruiters can now send additional, customised smart forms to collect essential information from candidates prior to their start date. The software hands digital contracts, signatures, acceptance of terms and conditions, and notifies the right people along the way. Through :Onboard, contract creation, approvals, acceptances and tracking is made simple.”
Updates to :Engage – improving the way you talent pool
Instead of posting recruitment advertisements and hoping for the best, recruiters need to develop more long-term, proactive talent attraction methods. Therefore, being able to build and communicate with talent pools with engaging, personalised content is critical.
But talent pooling, engagement and attraction is now more challenging than ever.
“We need to reach candidates, fight for their attention and get the right opportunities in front of them. :Engage is a talent pooling software solution that allows recruiters to intelligently engage with candidates across platforms. Upcoming developments will evolve to allow recruiters to communicate with candidates through a number of channels, from email marketing, to social media and SMS.”
The :Engage platform has two components. Recruiters can create and manage talent pools through search functions, candidate tagging, and criteria that continually adds new talent to specific pools. :Engage also creates opportunities for engagement. James shared the exciting potential for new engagement methods, including SMS.
“SMS has been categorised as older technology; however, it is an extraordinarily effective way to reach talent. Think about how much more likely people are to read a message on their phone than open an email! Our plan is to enable recruiters to have a two-way SMS conversations through (Y/N) decision tree responses and increase their opportunities for engagement.”
The :Engage talent pooling module will also be developed to help recruiters optimise their content for different social channels.
“For example, Instagram typically uses a different aspect ratio for images than Facebook. Different word counts optimise posts for different channels. We want to help automate these minor details so recruiters can focus on what’s important.”
When writing a recruitment marketing email in :Engage, developments will be made to allow recruiters to auto-format and preview this content for different social media platforms, knowing that it will be optimised.
Integrations – so you can use the best of the best
Recruiters choose open platform systems over all-in-one HRIS so they can use the right software fit for purpose and not compromise on quality. It’s difficult to excel in every niche, which is why software from different vendors helps organisations build the best enterprise via integrated applications.
In 2020, Scout Talent’s integration API will be completed faster and easier.
“We will integrate with Zapier, which will allow us to integrate with 1500 other platforms!” said James. “This will enable recruiters to gain choice through flexibility and allow their best suite of software to come to life.”
Scout Talent will continuously build and offer new integrations each month.
“That doesn’t mean we won’t be selective. The providers we integrate with will be important to us. They must complement our product suite, and our clients’ needs and industries.”
Machine learning and AI – helping you make the right decisions faster
“Our goal is to implement machine learning, AI and automation into our software. In doing so, we won’t remove the human element. Instead, we will provide more opportunities, enabling humans to make better decisions faster with the best data, and help them have real conversations sooner. People will always be part of the process.”
Great screening questions will play an important role. As James shared, machine learning and AI software can analyse a sample of candidates’ responses (ideally 800-1200 words) to determine personality traits, and benchmark and compare them to other candidates.
“This enables recruiters to form more in-depth interview and follow up questions.”
“These tools will remove unnecessary administration for recruiters, so they can get to the real conversation and build relationships sooner. We want recruiters to be able to have real conversations, at the right time, and eliminate wasted resources. Hopefully this will mean less phone tag, and better conversations!”
Improving the candidate experience
As leading recruiters know, the candidate experience is more important now than ever. At Scout Talent, our goal is to help recruiters improve their candidate experience.
“If candidate application times are taking too long, we want to help clients reduce that to simplified one-page applications. We want to remove as many barriers as possible to obtain candidate details so organisations don’t miss out. Our plan is to create ways to remove barriers for entry and speed up the application process to gather details.”
James looks forward to the year ahead and is optimistic about the improvements to come.
“I’m excited about everything, every day! I love my job and making cool improvements, and it’s satisfying when people are happy with those improvements. I wear many hats, there is so much variety and a lot to look forward to.”
Stay up to date with the latest recruitment news and insights by connecting with us on LinkedIn, and check out the complete album from the event.
