This is a post written by Colleague Software about a survey we are helping them with.
One of the challenges facing recruitment technology suppliers is the constant need to adapt and evolve their product to meet – or even stay ahead and predict – the needs and wants of an ever changing and diverse industry.
At Colleague Software we are engaged in an on-going effort to discover what recruiters want and need the next generation recruitment system to do. As well as talking to our customers and attending events we have also been slowly collecting responses to our aptly named ‘Little Recruitment Software Survey 2012’, through Twitter, LinkedIn groups and the recruitment press.
It’s been hard work getting respondents to take part, especially as we wanted to avoid spamming our networks on a daily basis. So far we’ve received 43 responses from a range of recruitment software users – but we aim to continue the survey until the end of 2012.
Patterns, however, have begun to emerge about what is important about recruitment software to the participants. We thought we would provide a sneak peak of these results to the readers of Louise’s blog.
We asked respondents whether they were satisfied with the services and functionality related to their current recruitment software provider and gave the options of ‘Yes,’ ‘No’ or ‘Not Applicable.’ eds.
Respondents were most satisfied, by a clear majority, with the applicant tracking (65%) and record/history keeping functionality (69%) of their recruitment software.
A slim majority were satisfied with:
– Usability (58.1% said Yes. 11.6% said NA)
– Email integration (57.1% said Yes. 14.3% said NA)
– Cost (55.8% said Yes. 27.9% said NA)
– Search functionality (53.5% said Yes. 11.6% said NA)
The following received more positive than negative responses. However significant numbers were not satisfied or did not see these features / services as relevant to their recruitment database ne
– Job posting functionality (48.8% said Yes. 16.3% said NA)
– Candidate sourcing functionality (48.8% said Yes. 16.3% said NA)
– Diary functionality (47.6% said Yes. 14.3% said NA)
– User and technical support (45.2% said Yes. 16.7% said NA)
– Reports/Analytics (45.2% said Yes. 14.3% said NA)
– Training (41.9% said Yes. 23.3% said NA)
– Back office (40.5% said Yes. 26.2% said NA)
– CV Parsing (38.1% said Yes. 31% said NA)
Surprisingly there was an even split over satisfaction with cloud and third party software integration (30% either way). In both cases most respondents actually selected not applicable!
Most respondents were unsatisfied with the ability of their recruitment system to integrate with social media (42.9% said No, whilst 28.6% said NA) or their website (42.9% said No, whilst 26.2% said NA) – or they did not consider it relevant to their needs. Large proportion were also unhappy with email marketing functionality (40.5% said No. 42.9% said NA), or considered it irrelevant. Is this a sign that recruitment software providers have failed to keep up to date with the need to dynamically integrate with communication and marketing channels?
Respondents were also given a chance to provide more details on how they would like to see recruitment software change and improve during 2012. I’ve highlighted the most interesting below:
• “Better use of social media’s such as LinkedIn incorporated into the framework of the software – adaptable as social media develops over time.”
• “More user centric. integrated with standard profiles such as iProfile and LinkedIn. Pricing options based on usage. Mobile enabled. Integration via HR-XML standards. Standard CV and Job description extraction and matching.”
• “Like to see a provider offering the full 360 package as a one stop shop and more transparency on websites about what packages actually can do.”
• “Cloud and mobile integration, the creation of the mobile CV.”
• “I’d like my software to work more like social media and be more interactive with my candidates.”
• “I would like to see full integration across the marketing mix and reporting. My database needs to be able to track web candidates, integrate into social media and email marketing and be able to report back effectively and quickly. Users need to be able to see how their (and mine) actions on the database affect the bottom line in the long term. Mobile will also need to be a key integration in 2012.”
• “More cloud-based CRMs, more integration with 3rd party software providers and more social media developments.”
What do you think of the responses that were given? Do you have any suggestions of your own?
We would love to receive your input so we can publish a comprehensive and reliable report at the end of the year. To add an incentive, Louise has kindly offered a free ticket that respondents could win to the UK Recruiter’s Directors Learning & Networking Event on 5th July. There are also other prizes to be won.
You can take part in the ‘Little Recruitment Software Survey 2012’ here. It only takes 2 minutes!
Written by Louis Welcomme – Marketing and PR Executive at Colleague Software.
An interesting set of responses for the first pass. What surprises me is how many people are asking for what should be standard features in any quality recruitment system. Does this mean they don’t have it on their platform? Or do they just not know how to use what they have?
Look at Traiing: 1/4 of your respondents are unhappy with the training and 1/4 don’t even think it is applicable. If 50% of respondents don’t know how or don’t want to know how to use their current system (or perhaps don’t want to pay for updates/advanced training), then all of their other ‘complaints’ should be placed in that context.
Keep up the good work.
Cheers
Alan Whitford