It is not a secret, we have a recruiter shortage. What are the most helpful tools to make your recruiters more efficient?

In today's war for talent, speed and a frictionless applicant application and onboarding experience are vital to helping recruiters be more efficient.  The less time a recruiter needs to hold a candidate’s hand through onboarding, the more time they can focus on ensuring they can make suitable matches for customers and applicants.  Automation in “hands” work is also essential.  I refer to hand’s work as any repetitive tasks, that automation can take over without negatively impacting the candidate's experience.  This leaves more time for the “heart” work, such as; getting to know candidates and clients better, spending more time marketing ideal candidates to clients, and following up with those workers who are on ongoing assignments.  At Integrity, we use tools like Sense to help automate communications to our associates at scale through their text messaging and chatbot tools.  Sense also helps to maintain database integrity.

Buzzwords like Meta Verse, AI, automation are used at the moment to describe the future of work. From your point of view, which staffing technologies are overhyped and which are here to stay?

I think they are all here to stay.  We continue to see the pace of change grow exponentially each year in areas like AI and automation.   It’s critical to evaluate these tools and, rather than adopting the next “shiny new thing”, understand the ROI to your business and how you can gain adoption throughout your organization through effective change management.  It’s also vital to success to understand your workforce and what they need and want.  While some skill categories might be ready for a 100% automated engagement, others are just not there yet.

Especially in today's market it is important to stay ahead of the curve. Where do you go for market intel and news? Which newsletters, blogs, conferences, podcasts etc. can you recommend?

I follow both Staffing Industry Analysts and the American Staffing Association closely.  Their data and webinars are informative, and both also have great newsletters with relevant information and tremendous conferences.  One of the best sources of information and learning for me comes through peer group interaction.  ASA offers a great CEO peer group for companies of similar sizes, and firms like Visus Group have excellent round tables.  I recently joined the ASG group with over 40 staffing company owners who meet quarterly to discuss industry trends and best practices.

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