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Responding to our latest survey, TA and HR professionals have made it clear: many of the recruiting technologies they rely on every day still lack the ability to integrate smoothly into their companies’ tech stacks. As a result, they’re forced to continue using manual processes and workarounds to get their jobs done.

Just how pervasive is this problem?

• For one-quarter of our survey’s respondents, their ATS (the oldest and most widely utilized recruiting technology) doesn’t integrate well into their tech stack. 16% of respondents called out their screening and assessment tools for poor integration, and 15% cited CRMs, 15% cited background screening systems, and 15% cited virtual recruiting event platforms.
• As a result of these integration issues, 61% of respondents continue to spend 6+ hours a week on manual processes—precious time not spent on strategic activities that add value to the recruiting function (like actual recruiting, for example).

This is only part of the fascinating and somewhat troubling story of recruiting tech and integration. For the full scoop, download our new research report, Are Recruiting Technologies Delivering on Their Promise and Potential?

Published in partnership with JobSync, creators of the first-ever Talent Acquisition Automation Platform (TAAP), the report is based on our joint survey of nearly 250 recruiters and TA/HR professionals across the world. The report’s data indicate that the various recruiting technologies participants rely on—technologies that have, in many cases, been in use for more than a decade—are in desperate need of better integration if they’re ever going to live up to their full promise and potential.

Automation Is the Future Buuut …

There’s no question that TA teams will need to continue utilizing recruiting technologies, especially in a market that’s moving at a million miles and hour and where the supply of talent is waning while the demand goes right on escalating. To compete in this kind of hair-on-fire environment, automation technologies are crucial.

However, as our data clearly shows, leveraging these automation technologies effectively is the real concern. Even technologies that have been around forever—like ATSs and CRMs—still present integration challenges to this day. It’s not viable for recruiters, hiring managers, and others involved in talent acquisition to have to go on using spreadsheets and coming up with MacGyver-level workarounds. That’s no way to operate in the automation age, particularly when you’ve invested in a host of tools and tech that are supposed to lighten your burden.

Check this out: 43% of respondents have automated up to half of their overall recruiting process (a figure we expect will only increase), yet 36% have concerns over the integration of new technologies with their legacy tools and systems. And another 29% are concerned about cost and ROI, while 23% worry about ease-of-use and whether recruiters will actually use new technologies.

So, What’s the Good News Here?

Glad you asked. The good news is past integration efforts that respondents have undertaken paid huge dividends.

For instance, when participants improved the integration of their recruiting technologies:

• 50% said it lifted their company’s candidate experience.
• Another 45% said it enhanced the recruiter experience.
• 44% said it removed manual tasks from the recruiting process.
• And 18% said it pulled exponentially more value from their current systems.

Clearly, given these kinds of payoffs, the integration efforts that so many TA teams need will be a worthwhile investment.

Our survey report also dives deeper into where manual processes and workarounds continue to creep into the work of talent acquisition, which technologies TA teams use most, what kinds of time savings team reap through better integrations, and much more. I’ll share some additional findings in my next post. In the meantime, you can download the full survey report here.

Be safe and well.

Kevin W. Grossman, Talent Board President