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Amidst the employment and recruitment challenges of the past 5 years there has been a large growth in recruiters’ use of CV management systems, offering a range of advanced functionality, such as DaXtra’s world-leading CV parsing, CV search, and CV matching capability, as well as automated CV acquisition. This kind of large scale uptake of new technology is usually associated with a booming economy, rather than one undergoing a major global recession – so here we look at what’s driving this uptake, and whether this is likely to end as the economy recovers.
The Legacy of the Recession
With the recent global recession now officially over and economic recovery taking a firm hold in key regions, now is a good time to reflect on the impact of that recession on the recruitment industry.
For those in the recruitment sector the recession meant two key things:
A large rise in unemployment meant greater numbers of people chasing each job advertised, sometimes leading to hundreds or even thousands of applications per vacancy.
Many recruiters streamlined their operations in response to the reduction in demand for recruitment services, resulting in far fewer people available to carry out CV sifting.
The time involved in processing large volumes of résumés with fewer people resulted in big delays for clients with vacancies to fill.
Recruiters were faced with two options: either reduce the quality and fairness of their CV processing (resulting in a lower quality service to clients), or find ways to automate their résumé analysis process, together with a fast way of matching candidates to vacancies.
Faced with this dilemma, recruitment companies have embraced the CV management system as the only viable way of delivering a high quality service while staying competitive with limited human resources. The very best of these systems offer an end-to-end automation process encompassing accurate CV parsing software, with rich database features enabling fast CV searching and matching, easy shortlisting and provision of support for a recruiter’s own workflows.
But as the economic recovery gathers pace, will this dependence on automated résumé management systems decrease? This seems highly unlikely based on a number of economic and technological realities.
The Post-Recession Recruitment Environment
The recession may be technically over in many regions but there are still significant challenges for employment and recruitment generally.
Although employment levels are moving in the right direction, the pace is slow and there are still many applications per post, particularly in some sectors.
At the same time, recruiters have become used to the many efficiency and quality advantages offered by CV technology, and have learned that it allows them to achieve more with less. Growing a recruitment business now means building high quality client lists and expanding globally rather than (necessarily) going back to previous staffing levels. And with modern CV parsing software able to closely match human accuracy (DaXtra’s résumé parser, in particular, can achieve up to 95% accuracy out of the box, for 20+ global business languages), reverting to manual CV processing offers no advantages whatsoever.
The recessionary period has also seen the emergence of social recruiting and online CV acquisition, which further adds to number of CVs to be processed.
At the same time we have also seen a change in the behaviour and expectations of applicants, especially amongst the younger age groups where competition for jobs is fiercest. Job seekers seem to have accepted the automation of the recruitment process – perhaps because it fits their model of how to communicate and network on a more general level. Many applicants now assume that their résumés will be processed by CV software, and prepare their CVs accordingly.
In short, the motivation to use an automated CV management system at the heart of a recruitment operation is just as great, if not greater, than ever before.
The Future of the CV Management System
So with these trends in mind, what developments can we expect to see in recruiting software in the future?
Social networks, including business/professional networks, will continue to evolve and grow as a major tool for both applicants and recruiters. We can reasonably expect there to be a continuing stream of innovations affecting the use of the internet for networking and recruitment, and so résumé management systems of the future will need to keep on evolving to take advantage of these developments.
Another trend which we can virtually guarantee is the high level of competition between recruitment agencies. If recruiters perceive a competitive advantage to using technology as part of the recruitment process, then there will be pressure from recruiters themselves for résumé management systems to become even better, to maintain and improve that competitive advantage. Niche recruiters have already discovered that access to advanced CV technology allows them to compete effectively with larger recruiters on a global scale.
We can safely say that the CV management system is now a permanent feature of the recruitment industry – and DaXtra in particular is working constantly to improve its systems to meet the needs of recruiters, from large corporate recruitment operations to small, specialist agencies.
Find out more about how a CV Management System by checking the “Products” section in our website.