There are a growing number of marketing technology tools out there for your staffing agency. But are they really helping you? Chances are, over time, you and your team have added several tools that either duplicate tasks, create a bad candidate experience, or are racking up a costly tab while you’re trying to run your business.
This new year, we suggest doing some nerdy housekeeping. Mapping your technology stack will help you start your year free and clear of unnecessary, inefficient, and costly tools. They aren’t doing your staffing firm any favors. And, when you’ve mapped out and optimized your tech stack, you’ll be poised to:
- Streamline and update your internal workflow with automation and data integration
- Eliminate time-wasting recruiting efforts
- Attract better candidates (and avoid the less qualified ones)
- Provide a legendary candidate experience
To help us understand the ROI of mapping your tech stack, we tapped Toby Hoskins, our marketing technology expert. He gave us five easy tips for mapping out your tech stack and how it can make your staffing process leaner and meaner for the new year.
Why Mapping Your Tech Stack Is The Best Housekeeping Your Staffing Firm Can Do In 2022
If you need to travel two miles, you’re not going to take an airplane. You’ll want to take a car.
In the same way, mapping out your MarTech stack can make your recruiting efforts leaner, cheaper, and more effective. In short, you’ll be able to do more with less. You’ll use your platforms as they were meant to be used. It all begins with a simple question: what are your business needs?
It’s a simple question, but often, staffing agencies lose sight of their ultimate business needs – especially over time. They’ll adopt new technologies without getting the results they’re looking for. They’ve heard about the incredible capabilities of recruiting technology and they’re always chasing the newest, shiniest platform, and they’re not getting results. But why?
Adopting a new platform means dealing with change, and change is hard for many businesses. Many other businesses may be acquiring the right technology to solve the wrong problem. Eventually, businesses are finding their marketing efforts are being driven by their technology, rather than the business driving their tech stack.
To avoid going into a tech spiral, and to get the most out of these incredibly powerful tools, Toby has created five easy steps to help staffing agencies optimize their tech stack.
1. Determine Your Goals: Don’t Let Technology Drive Your Business
Many recruiters are finding their staffing efforts are being driven by their tech platforms when it should be the other way around.
When you determine your business goals you’ll be able to identify the gaps in your Tech stack. For example, maybe you have a great ATS system, but you don’t have texting. Or, maybe you have several tools that do the same task.
We’re finding many staffing agencies have, over time, gathered several tools that have outlived their usefulness. This is especially true for legacy tech that was acquired long ago. Maybe the employee who pushed for a new tool has moved on. Or, you might just forget how to use it anymore.
You’d be surprised how common time or continual misuse can sabotage your recruiting efforts. And you’d be even more surprised at the amount of overlap between the tech you have that are duplicating tasks and complicating things. By determining your goals, you’ll be on your way to discovering where those overlaps are, and where you can begin paring down your stack to cut down on time-wasting tasks.
Better yet, you’ll be in the driver’s seat again, instead of your tech platforms.
2. Compile A Current List Of Your Recruiting Technology
Whether you’ve been at your current company for many years, or you’re in a new role, making a current list of your tech platforms is an essential step for any staffing agency.
By helping recruiters make detailed lists of their tech platforms, often we’ll find they have an ATS or CRM platform, but they’ll also have Sense which offers so much more.
But making a list of your platforms doesn’t just identify redundancies in your stack. It could help you better understand what the platform is and what it can do. Even if you aren’t very excited to go down the rabbit hole learning everything there is to know about one tool or another, you’ll still benefit from finding out where that technology overlaps with others.
Ask yourself these essential questions for gauging the capabilities of all your platforms: What can it do? And what are we using it for? You might find some platforms overlap so much you could drop one that’s being outperformed by other programs.
3. Create A Visualization Of Your Stack
Even a moderate collection of tech platforms can be confusing, even in a list.
After making a list of your platforms, use the list to create a visual graphic to map out what you’re working with. Toby suggests creating a bubble chart because it’s such a visually simple way to understand your stack of platforms.
With a bubble chart, you can illustrate how each platform connects to and works with each other. Any graphic will help you visualize things like two-way integration, where your data is flowing from and what platforms it’s going to.
One of the key benefits of visualization is how it not only makes your MarTech stack very simple to see. But it can also help you notice gaps such as two platforms that can be integrated but aren’t yet. Do you have data aggregation tool? If so, is it integrated to other platforms to ensure you’re making the most use out of the your most critical information?
Creating a visualization of your tech stack can also help you actualize your business goals. You can find new ways to create better, more efficient ways for your recruiters to source and communicate with candidates. Or, if you’re considering adopting a new platform, you can drop that into your visualization to determine if it’s the right fit for you.
If your new software creates redundancies with other platforms, visualization will help you gauge whether you could drop one that doesn’t ladder up to your goals as efficiently as the other.
4. Optimize Your Tech Stack
To continue the metaphor of comparing your tech stack to a car, if you had a Ferrari, you wouldn’t only drive it at 25mph. You’d want to take it out on the freeway where it can perform like no other car could.
Optimizing could mean a lot of different tasks. Whether that’s comparing and contrasting platforms, eliminating duplicate tasks, filling the gaps in your stack, or dropping one platform that doesn’t perform as well as another. But whatever steps you’re taking to optimize, they should all help you to getting the most out of your platforms.
Optimizing will put you in a better place to drop the tech that’s not working for you. You can also save money getting rid of the tech and the subscriptions that aren’t being used to their full potential.
5. Maintain Your Tech Stack For The Long Term
The platforms available to recruiters are a highly effective way to achieve your business goals and deliver the results you want. But the tech will only perform as well as you treat it.
After you’ve defined your business goals, made a list and a visualization of your tech stack, and optimized your platforms, you’ll be in a great position to maintain your stack for the long term.
Mapping and optimizing your tech stack isn’t just nerdy housekeeping for your company, it can deliver a real ROI with the time you spend and the clarity and efficiencies it can bring.
A healthy tech stack is going to perform the best, and revolutionize the way you recruit. Imagine optimizing your tech stack to the point that, instead of hiring more recruiters to expand your capabilities, reach more candidates, or execute your strategy, your marketing technology could do all that and more at a fraction of the cost.
Ready To Discover The Recruiting Capabilities In Your Tech Stack?
Never before has recruiting technology provided more tools to help you work smarter, not harder. If you want to leverage your MarTech to reach more candidates, fill more jobs and grow your agency, contact us today.
