How RPA can improve your recruiting process

What is RPA?

Companies can use RPA technologies like UiPath or SAP iRPA to build bots that perform activities that are usually time-consuming for humans or which often result in multiple mistakes. An RPA bot for HR can provide a significant return on investment and can enable HR staff to focus more on strategic tasks or simply get more done without increasing headcount.

Recruiting is a particularly good fit for RPA because the process includes many repetitive and time-consuming activities. IT can lead RPA recruiting projects in conjunction with HR, or HR sometimes takes charge themselves.

IT usually works with HR and the company's recruiters to identify current problems in the recruiting process. HR should review each step of the recruiting process to identify time spent on each activity. IT and HR can then build a roadmap of bots to implement.

Often, a specialized systems integration partner with experience in building and implementing RPA bots comes on board as well. IT works with the specialist to ensure compliance with company standards, while HR sponsors the initiative. Recruiters share the different steps of the recruiting process and any other needed information with the specialist.

Recruiters usually execute the bots, but the bots can also operate on a schedule.

Potential RPA uses in recruiting

RPA can potentially take on multiple recruiting tasks. Here are some possibilities.

Mass job posting

Posting to multiple job sites is a repetitive and time-consuming activity that follows a set pattern for every site, so this task is a natural fit for a bot.

Some software can automatically post jobs, but not every type of software can post to every job site that a company might use. In addition, not every type of software that posts jobs works with existing software or processes.

Candidate sourcing

Bots can scrape data from sources like LinkedIn, Twitter and job boards to identify potential candidates for a particular job opening. The recruiter then reviews the candidate data for suitability without needing to manually look through candidate profiles or other information.

Bots can also draw on criteria that applies to multiple organizational roles to identify potential future candidates, then add their data to talent pools.

Talent pool assignments

A recruiter can review candidates that a bot has collected, then execute a bot to assign them into a talent pool.

A bot may have collected so many candidates that manually reviewing them would take a prohibitively long time. In this case, a bot can add the potential candidates to talent pools so a recruiter can search for them later.

A bot can also periodically check that candidate data is up to date and still accurate.

Document validation

A bot can confirm the validity of a document like a degree or ID. For this process, the bot scans an email for the document, then validates the document against the specific criteria or sends it to another system for processing. Once the bot or the other system has checked the document's validity, the bot uploads the document to an applicant tracking system (ATS) or the relevant document store, depending on the company's protocol.

If a company is using an ATS, the bot can also move the candidate to the next step of the recruiting process once these steps have been completed.

Background check verification

Some ATSes can integrate with and process background check results, but sometimes a recruiter must manually verify the results. A bot can carry out this task instead and save the recruiter time.

Candidate communication

Every candidate wants to hear as soon as possible about any hiring process updates, and some ATSes fall short in this area. A bot can periodically check for updates and inform a candidate about any changes, which can improve the candidate experience.