The Ultimate Guide to Purchasing Staffing Software
Why do you need staffing software?
Staffing software provides solutions that help manage the hiring process for recruitment agencies, contract and temporary staffing services, and third-party recruiters. Staffing software is a cost-effective way for recruiters to improve the hiring process for candidates and clients alike via functionality such as job posting, candidate sourcing and screening, interviewing, and process management for job offers, hiring, and onboarding.
Staffing software provides a combination of applicant tracking system (ATS) capabilities to streamline the recruiting and applicant tracking process, candidate relationship management solutions to improve the candidate experience, and Discover more on this topic
common question.
common question.
How does staffing software address your pain points?
- Resumes — Resume parsing helps save recruiters an incredible amount of time that otherwise would have been spent importing resumes, extracting necessary information, identifying keywords, and more. Staffing software manages this process to make parsing and identifying qualified candidates for particular roles a streamlined process. Resume parsing allows recruiters to search their database of candidates by Boolean, keyword, or fielded searches including experience, skill sets, or education levels, for example.
- Candidate relationship management — A strong candidate experience is essential to enhance the staffing process. If an easy-to-use candidate portal is a must-have feature, make sure the demo includes a view of the candidate portal and their experience browsing, appling, submitting resumes, etc. Understand the staffing software’s communication features including automatic communication to candidates throughout the recruiting process.
- Communication — Communication across various channels including email, SMS, VOIP can be managed through the staffing software. Email marketing, for example, helps recruiters maintain regular, consistent, and clear communication is key. This can help recruiters reach out to both clients and candidates with open jobs, upcoming appointments, and all necessary communication.
- Job posting — Staffing software provides job posting features that allow users to streamline and automate the process of posting open positions across various platforms. These solutions provide integrations with a variety of job boards, as well as automatic publishing on the company’s career websites to enhance the job posting process.
- Diversity recruiting — Sourcing diverse, qualified talent is becoming more and more important to companies. Diversity recruiting software provides solutions that create and distribute unbiased job descriptions, manage and track applicants from diverse job boards, and sort applicants accordingly, to name a few. Staffing software might provide integrations with diversity recruiting software, or include features that focus on hiring for diversity.
- Tasks management — Task management dashboards help recruiters manage and prioritize all staffing related projects. Easy-to-track dashboards provide a clear view of all phone calls, emails, appointments, and interviews associated with all clients, candidates, and jobs.
- Back office solutions — Staffing software reduces the time recruiters need to spend on back-office processes, including but not limited to accounting, invoice, and commissions management. These solutions help recruiters create personalized and professional invoices customized to meet their client’s specific billing requirements.
- Mobile functionality — Staffing software with mobile functionality allows recruiters, candidates, and clients to access branded and customized staffing portals with ease. Recruiters can access client and candidate information, enter new client contact information, update notes on meetings while on the go, and more. Candidates have access to scheduling preferences, upcoming interviews and appointments, contact information, and more. Clients can access invoices, timesheets, and hours billed, to name a few.
- Integrations — Staffing software provides a variety of integrations including but not limited to job boards, payroll, time tracking, finance, expense management, social media accounts, back-office tools, pre-employment testing, background check, onboarding, and more.
- Reporting and analytics — Recruiting metrics and customizable dashboards helps recruiters better understand their business processes and make improvements where necessary. Staffing analytics include cost per hire, time to hire, job board performance, and more, highlight areas of improvement.
- Compliance — Staffing software can help recruiters maintain compliance with both consistent and ever changing laws and regulations. Recruiters must maintain compliance in respect to federal and state laws, GDPR compliance, and incorrect classification of employees, to name a few.
How do I choose the right staffing software?
Choosing the right staffing software to meet the needs of your recruiting or staffing firm is an important process. Staffing software helps staffing agencies and recruiters manage candidates, recruits, and corporate clients, post jobs, and overall handle the demands of a staffing agency.
Perhaps your company is just starting out and you’re looking to purchase your first staffing software, or maybe your organization needs to update a legacy system. Wherever you are in your buying process, G2.com can help you select the best staffing software for your business.
How to buy staffing software
So you’ve identified that you need staffing software for your staffing or recruiting business. Here are some steps to check off to make sure you have met all of your requirements to choose your software.
- Identify needs and/or pain points
- Choose your software selection team
- Create a checklist of criteria
- Research
- Develop and evaluate short list of vendors
- Demo software and assess vendors
- Price negotiation
- Buy-in
- Contract
- Identify needs and/or pain points If you don’t have a comprehensive staffing software, your pain points might be related to all of the manual work you must complete. If your staffing firm has experienced a lot of growth recently, you might need a solution that can grow with your organization. Think about the pain points and jot them down; these should be used to help you create a checklist of criteria. Additionally, determine the number of employees who will need to use this software, as this drives the number of licences you will likely buy.
- Choose your software selection team Before you can get started, it's crucial to create a winning team that will work together throughout the entire process, from identifying pain points to implementation. The software selection team should consist of members of the organization who have the right interest, skills, and time to participate in this process. A good starting point is to aim for 3–5 people who fill roles such as the main decision-maker, project manager, process owner, system owner, or staffing subject matter expert, as well as a technical lead, IT administrator, or security administrator. In smaller companies, the vendor selection team may be smaller, with fewer participants multitasking and taking on more responsibilities.
- Create a checklist of criteria By taking a holistic overview of the business and identifying pain points can then help the team springboard into creating a checklist of criteria. The checklist serves as a detailed guide that includes both necessary features and nice-to-haves including budget, features, number of users, integrations, security requirements, cloud or on-premises solutions, and more.
- Research
- Develop and evaluate short list of vendors
- Vendor assessment
- Price negotiation
- Buy-in
- Contract
Begin by researching staffing software to develop a long list of potential vendors. Conduct general browser searches, review staffing software websites and social media, read online reviews, download white papers, watch product videos, read case studies, review product feature lists, and consult G2.
Identify 3–5 vendors who meet requirements that you want to engage. For vendor engagement, consider sending a request for information (RFI), request for proposal (RFP), or request a free trial.. Let’s break down the difference between RFIs and RFPs.
Request for information (RFI) — A one-page list with a few bullet points describing what you need from a staffing software.
Request for proposal (RFP) — A document providing staffing software vendors with all pertinent details of what software your company needs. It includes but is not limited to: main objectives and needs, desired timeline, existing software and licenses, existing hardware, availability of IT personnel, and operating system. Smaller businesses might want to skip the formal request and contact a few vendors with their brief list of requirements.
RFIs and RFPs might not be necessary if you are considering solutions that offer free demos or trial periods. Instead of a formal proposal and evaluation process, live demos can help you determine if a solution meets your needs. Additionally, many software as a service (SaaS) vendors offer free trials.
Software demonstrations provide prospective buyers with a walkthrough of the staffing software. This allows vendor acquisition teams to experience the product and ask all relevant questions. Make sure you prepare for the vendor presentation using a demo review plan based on your essential list of criteria.
Demo review plan:
From meeting your functionality needs to training and implementation, vendor evaluations are an essential part of the software buying process. For ease of comparison after all demos are complete, it helps to prepare a consistent list of questions to ask each vendor that address your needs and concerns.
Create a working document or score card for every vendor in your short list to include the following information:
Financials and legal — Look into the financial and legal stability of each vendor in question. Some things to consider include whether the vendor is public or private, if they have been involved in any litigation, and whether they are facing outstanding financial or legal issues.
Product overview — Consider each potential staffing platform with the same sense of scrutiny. Some considerations to address during the demo include customization options, the frequency of software updates, and how the vendor differs from its competitors. In addition, ask about general functionality: items such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, speed, and general reliability.
Features — Determine if the product will provide your team with the features you need. Staffing software typically offers a combination of prospective candidate sourcing, ATS, and candidate relationship management features. Ask each vendor feature-based questions that speak to the core functionality you need to determine if the product meets your company’s needs. G2 provides a list of common features found in staffing software for guidance.
Performance — From web-based to mobile access, the performance of the staffing solution is key. Determine if the staffing solutions provide support for mobile users, and access on premises or via the cloud. Additional areas of concern include the limitations of users permissions, national and multinational support, system update and release processes, configurations and customizations, and system scalability.
Training and support — Implementation and training won’t just occur without some guidance. Find out what kind of support staffing software vendors provide—this might include self-help; online case submission; or online, recorded, or in-person training sessions, to name a few.
Vendor security and privacy — It’s important to determine how much effort software vendors put into security. A few areas to assess vendor security include a vendor's methodologies used for security testing, whether a vendor uses third parties to conduct security checks, and application security training for internal development teams. Determining and documenting a vendor’s data security practices are requirements for complying with many data privacy regulations, such as GDPR and CCPA.
Deployment — Determine if each vendor offers the deployment options you need, including on-premises or cloud-based SaaS.
Implementation — Ask how much support the staffing software vendor provides and how many users implementations support among other questions.
Reference checks — Ask the staffing software vendor for a few references. If possible, arrange a site visit to review how the application is used and by whom. If a site visit is not possible, attempt to speak with a few people from the reference companies who have firsthand knowledge of the software.
Pricing models for most software are either based on a subscription, perpetual license, or open-source models. Overall, pricing depends on the number of user licenses or “seats" needed, and then there are additional costs to consider.
| Read more: A Complete Guide to SaaS Pricing Models → |
Subscription models consist of a recurring fee that is typically paid monthly, while perpetual licenses require businesses to pay a cost to acquire the software indefinitely. Open-source and free staffing software are also options.
Depending on the pricing model, it may hit capital expenses (CapEx) or operating expenses (OpEx). CapEx is hit with large, upfront purchases of software/hardware, whereas OpEx is hit with monthly recurring subscription models for SaaS. This may make a difference to some companies. Most companies opt to shift to an OpEx strategy because it is less risky (get rid of software licenses you don't need in layoffs or add licenses when you're hiring). CapEx and OpEx also have different taxing advantages/disadvantages.
Additional costs types to consider include upfront, recurring, and avoided costs:
— Upfront costs include perpetual licensing fees, setup charges, installation fees, integrations, implementation, and customization.
— Recurring costs include subscription fees, maintenance, training, and support.
— Avoided costs can be calculated by the business improvements gained by implementing the staffing software, this might include streamlined candidate sourcing, automated resume parsing, and improved business intelligence.
There are many tips to negotiating the best deal for vendor contracts. Researching various aspects of the market—including the current demand for staffing software, how the vendor is performing financially, and how in demand the vendor is—will help inform if there is room for negotiation. Obvious costs to focus on are additional costs as ongoing maintenance fees can add up over time.
It’s important to get buy-in from stakeholders for budget and resources. Identify relevant stakeholders: These will include members of management, relevant software users, and IT or software administrators. It’s necessary to understand and address their own pain points and motivations. Explain why the staffing software you chose is the best one to meet the company’s needs, share users' pain points to strengthen your business case, and show all of the information collected throughout the demo process as to why this solution is the best fit.
If possible, seek assistance from attorneys that work in computer software contracts, or your in-house attorney. Make sure the contract is straightforward and includes all of the negotiated or agreed upon features. Review staffing software schedule of payments and term of contract, price escalator causes, agreed upon discounts, legal expenses, and contract terms in the case of a merger and acquisition.
