The Way of Automation

What will it take for Staffing Companies to truly embrace automation in 2020?

Let’s take a look at each of these.

Standard Job Types

With the onset of automation, we’re going to see the end of unique job posts for every single position that needs filling. Instead, every type of position that your company fills should be consolidated into standard job types. And on the flip side, all candidates in your workforce pool should be easily sortable into the standard job types they are good at and should be considered for.

Yes, it sounds nice to think of every job and every candidate as a beautiful unique snowflake, but the reality is with automation, you should instead think of each of your jobs as a car, and each of your candidates as a tire. Not as pretty as snowflakes, I know, but it’ll all make sense in a moment. See every car in the world has a standard type of tire that it can be fitted with. And, while there may be variations between tires (price, traction, durability, etc…), as long as the tire is the right size, it can be used by that car. Hence, every candidate in your workforce should be clearly designated regarding which job types they are qualified for and those job types should be standard throughout your entire staffing operations. This standardization is what will allow you to reap all the benefits of automation. Easily repeatable and standardized processes are essential for automation and standard job types are the key. In the same way that standardization allowed for automation in the manufacturing industry, so will it allow for automation in the staffing industry.

Staffing Workflow

So now that you’ve standardized your job types and workforce, you’ve hopefully freed up a lot of your team since part of their work has now been automated, but how should you structure the workflow of your staffing operation? While we recognize that each staffing company is unique, we have found that the following division of labor is truly beneficial for your staffing company’s operations. This division splits your operational staff into 3 areas, each with a different goal:

Each of these areas should be kept separate, and while this may seem quite different than the traditional staffing makeup (where the same recruiter finds, vets, and assigns candidates), automation changes the game a bit.

Think of Uber. When you request a ride, there isn’t a person in an Uber office who frantically tries to find a driver, see if they’re qualified, and then assigns them to your ride. That would be ridiculous. And, more importantly, it would take forever.

Dividing up your operations like this is a growth-minded workflow. When staffing companies are small, mixing these areas can work. Only one person is needed to post a link for one job or two, interview 10–15 candidates, and select and assign the worker. But what happens when you have 50 jobs and hundreds of candidates? Suddenly the process starts to break down.

And we haven’t even begun to talk about how slow that previous model is. One of the beauties of automation is how it can complete tasks, that often took hours before, instantly. But that is only if you structure your process to allow it to. If not, the still human aspect of these processes can create bottlenecks. It is by keeping these areas separate that on-demand companies like Uber are able to fill orders in a matter of minutes. All their systems are doing at the moment you request a ride is matching. The sourcing, vetting, onboarding, etc…has already been taken care of before that point. Siloing off these 3 areas into their own teams will let automation run free.

When paired with the efficiency of automation, a workflow like this will allow for exponential growth.

Open-Minded

This is unquestionably the most vital (and often hardest) key to making the most of automation for a staffing company. As the previous two points demonstrate, using automation to its fullest for a staffing company isn’t as simple as automating some tasks so that now the machines rather than a person does them. For automation to really be worthwhile for a staffing company, they need to fundamentally change how they operate. Without a willingness to change, no matter how much new technology and automation they acquire, a staffing company will never be able to break out of first gear. Your entire operation needs to be open to change. Otherwise, even if some changes are implemented, but not all your staff are totally on board, they will find themselves clashing with the automation and making operations less, rather than more efficient. Sticking with the gear analogy, it’s the equivalent of flooring it but not shifting out of first gear, you’re more likely to trash the car rather than get anywhere.

The Way to Automation

Over the next year, we are sure to see more and more staffing companies embracing automation and finding new and creative ways to apply it. To not be left in the dust, staffing companies can begin to standardize their job types and separate their operations into the 3 areas of Marketing, Vetting, and Assigning. Most importantly though, as we enter this new age of automation, staffing companies will need to be open to changing and modifying their processes in order to best utilize automation. Otherwise, it’ll be like having a Jaguar but never taking out of the garage.

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