Everyone in staffing is talking about the impact automation can have on businesses. From helping improve the candidate experience to measuring NPS and freeing up recruiter and salesperson time, it’s no doubt active automation users see the ROI in these platforms.

But when automation is new to you, starting can feel like a daunting task – not to mention the uphill climb of determining what to build, how to execute, and what signals success.

By following a process (and not skipping any of the steps!) when developing your strategy, you can ensure that you stay focused on building automations that will make an impact on your business.

1. Determine your goals

Are you looking to drive more candidate applications? Do you need more job orders? Is your candidate experience once jobs are filled lacking? Before you start building any automations, it’s important to think of the area where automation can make the biggest impact on your business. This part is either obvious to you or you need to get your team together to discuss current gaps.

Common goals automation programs help solve include:

• Improving the candidate experience
• Redeploying candidates coming off assignments
• Qualifying new candidates before recruiter follow-up
• Reactivating old clients or candidates in your database
• Moving contacts through your sales pipeline

You don’t need to choose just one goal, but it’s important to narrow your focus before you start building so everyone stays pointed in the right direction. Homing in on your business goals can also help you laser-focus on metrics that signal the greatest ROI once your automations do launch.

2. Map out your client/candidate journey

Once you’ve determined the area(s) you want to focus on, mapping out your client or candidate journey is a great way to spark ideas for where to start with individual automations or touchpoints. Getting team feedback at this step is important—what manual tasks can help free up recruiter time? What efforts do your salespeople want to keep personalized?

Once you have your journeys mapped out, take a look at where there are gaps.

Some gaps and ways automation can solve them:

• Delay in response time from recruiters when candidates apply = automate a thank you email once you receive a new application
• Recruiters constantly following up with unqualified candidates = send a survey with an application confirmation that asks qualifying questions
• Lack of follow up with prospects after business development process = create a passive touchpoint journey to send new information to top prospects every month

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