By Daria Friedman, Principal Analyst, Talent Acquisition

I attended the SmartRecruiters  Analyst Day at their Hiring Success 18 conference and was impressed by the many ways they’re expanding and enhancing their talent-acquisition platform. SmartRecruiters is very focused on empowering recruiters and making hiring easier and successful.

Two new solutions were introduced: SmartCRM and the AI-powered Recruiting Assistant. Both are add-ons to their platform. SmartCRM enables recruiters to nurture candidates in an automated fashion. Recruiters can send drip email campaigns to specific talent communities/pools utilizing custom-branded emails to drive candidates to relevant landing pages. Recruiters can then compare the effectiveness of their campaigns with provided analytics — clicks, opens, conversion rates etc. While not every recruiter is a marketing expert, this solution makes it easier to market to candidates.

The AI-powered Recruiting Assistant automates screening to determine if a candidate fits a position. This solution helps recruiters prioritize for further evaluation and eliminates the need to spend extensive time reviewing applications and resumes. I like that recruiters can see the basic reasons (years of experience, skills, education) each candidate received their specific score, and can indicate whether or not that score was helpful. The Recruiting Assistant uses that feedback to refine the algorithm. The recruiter cannot directly modify or adjust the algorithm in any way.

One very appealing feature is the SmartRecruiter’s mobility solution to helps employes see job opportunities that might be a good fit for them across an organization. There is an internal (employee) career portal where employees can search for jobs, see skills matches for open positions, add their own skills for job matching and set internal job alerts. Of course, this solution enables recruiters to find the best candidate— an employee or an external candidate — to fit the position.

In terms of extending goodwill, SmartRecruiters supports small businesses (up to 250 employees, filling up to 10 jobs) through their SmartStart program. This program provides small businesses with a free version of their talent-acquisition suite and access to the SmartRecruiters Market Place. If a business subscribes to any of the services in the Market Place, such as background checks, SmartRecruiters receives some share of the revenue.

We discussed much more during the Analyst Day, including customer success stories, GDPR compliance, candidate experience, user experience enhancements, defining hiring success, onboarding, the Market Place, global reach, implementation and business metrics. SmartRecruiters is rapidly innovating and leaving no stone unturned in their drive to be a global leader in the highly competitive talent acquisition market.

Daria Friedman, Principal Analyst, Talent Acquisition, Brandon Hall Group

For more information on our research, please visit www.brandonhall.com.