Finding, engaging, and retaining qualified talent have always been the top challenges in the staffing industry. The talent shortage was a major issue years before the pandemic and it’s expected to be for years to come. But its rapid growth, combined with unprecedented attrition, has every agency looking for innovative ways to differentiate their candidate experience from beginning to end.

Staffing leaders talk about the candidate journey as their agency’s own path to success and growth. And that path is increasingly leading to one place – talent enablement technology. The pandemic forced agencies to adopt a more tech-focused mindset overnight to keep candidates engaged and the long-term benefits have become clear.

63 percent of leaders say COVID-19 made their organizations embrace digital transformation sooner than they had expected and were making greater investments in technology as a result. “Figure out your tech stack” resounds in many heads today.

Talent Enablement Lets Candidates Own Their Experience

Staffing firms of all sizes and stages of growth use a CRM to automate recruiting tasks and an ATS to source and onboard candidates. Many use other tools for background screening, engagement, interviewing, onboarding, human resources, payment, and business intelligence.

Often these systems are not integrated, hurting work and sales flows, costing the agency efficiency, productivity, and money. Finding solutions to better integrate tech or even ones that can do it all on one platform is a major focus for staffing agencies these days. But there’s another tech investment agencies are starting to make.

The candidate journey has many steps. Each one is a chance for talent to engage or disengage with your firm.  The goal is to make the process as easy, smooth, and fast as possible. Agencies are finding the best way to do that is through Talent Enablement. Candidates want a consumerized process where they own their experience and have less back and forth with recruiters. Why not give it to them?

Mobile Apps Increase Engagement Throughout the Candidate Journey

Mobile apps are a highly efficient, cost-effective way to give candidates exactly what they want and keep them engaged throughout the candidate journey. They can search for jobs, apply, interview, get hired, get paid, and redeploy all in one place.

When candidates are empowered to steer their own experience, they are more accountable for their own engagement in the hiring process and less likely to become frustrated with different steps along the way. Both of these are critical today with ghosting at crisis levels in the industry.

As mentioned in “The Rise of Talent Enablement: What Staffing Agencies are Doing Today to Increase Engagement and Improve the Candidate Journey,” positive onboarding experiences directly correlate to higher acceptance and retention rates. The more you enable your talent the more advantages you give your brand.

Talent Apps Optimize Work and Sales Flows for Staffing Agencies

Some staffing providers are now seamlessly integrating robust candidate apps into their tech stacks. In fact, apps become integrators in their own right, effectively de-siloing CRM, ATS, and other third-party tech agencies commonly used. They can be as big a game-changer internally as well as externally.

A great example of this is WorkN, acquired by Avionte.

WorkN provides a seamless CX for candidates while also automating recruiter tasks, giving them more time to spend using the tool to generate interest and distribute offers. Algorithmic matching and push notifications make it fast and easy for recruiters to hire and redeploy talent. Live dashboards provide data and analytics that drive decision-making and revenue.

We’ve all learned a lot in the last year and a half. The silver lining for staffing agencies is that the pandemic provided a proof of concept for how technology can positively affect the entire candidate journey moving forward. Finding the right tools to complement and even accentuate the high-touch recruiters provide is essential.