Evaluate Your Automation Process

This is a guest blog post, written by Kandace Miller, Global Marketing Director at The Cluen Corporation. 

As the executive search industry becomes inundated with software solutions, it’s important to remember which tools truly allow you to automate administrative tasks while leaving the human element intact.  A good executive search system will help you manage your time effectively, enhance employee engagement and most of all increase your firm’s revenue.

There are many ways to simplify your process with automation. First, you need to build a technology strategy roadmap. What tasks are the most administrative? What activities take the most clicks? What actions can be utilized as a trigger to generate and execute another administrative action?

As an executive search consultant, you cannot develop all of your relationships using technology alone. You can, however, focus on maximizing your time and streamlining the administrative tasks associated with your executive search process. Recruitment automation will help your researchers and administrative teams free up more of their time for more professional tasks. It will also create more opportunity for business development and relationship building.

Here are some examples of automation:

1.    When an interview is scheduled, automate a “debriefing” activity for post-interview.

2.    When you change a candidate’s status to “declined”, automate an email with pre-set (for early candidates) or automate a meeting invite to the candidate for a conference call.

3.    When you create a business development activity, automatically schedule a follow-up call.

4.    When a candidate has a status change to “offer-pending”, have a pre-set email message pop up to schedule a phone discussion.

5.    When you categorize someone as a source, have a thank you email generated with pre-set text that can be altered if needed.

6.    Track referrals and utilize reporting tools to send annual gifts or thank you notes.

7.    Automatically push all new entries of people and companies to a long list so a researcher can fill in the blanks or populate missing data or information from LinkedIn.

8.    At the end of a search, automatically schedule a follow-up at 30/180/360 days (duration may vary).

9.    When a search is closed, automate an email to everyone that participated in the search.

Executive search consultants cannot be replaced by computers. Your firm should maintain focus on building and maintaining business relationships, business development and completing successful projects. Automation will allow you to allocate more of your time to things that are less administrative and more relationship-driven. There will always be talent shortages and a need for succession planning. Where are you spending most of your time these days?

Evaluate whether your current software offers these tools and functions to you. Start designing your technology strategy automation plan. Spend less time managing administrative tasks and more time on recruitment.

About Cluen

Cluen has provided software to executive search firms globally since 1990. Cluen’s cloud-based solution, EncoreOne, allows you to administer data security settings and audit users accordingly. Cluen’s experts consult with search firms around the world on matters of information security and disaster recovery. Contact us today for more information.