Great Hiring Tech for Less: 4 WordPress Plugins to Simplify Recruiting
What makes recruiting and hiring difficult? Simply sourcing qualified candidates can be a huge hurdle in this tight talent market — as can moving fast enough to assess, interview, and hire those candidates before competitors reach them.
But often, businesses find their most insidious pain points emerge from the seemingly simple matter of logistics. For example, planning interviews often means playing an endless game of phone tag as candidates, hiring managers, and interview panelists all try to line up their schedules. That’s a lot of wasted time, manpower, and money, all for a candidate you may not even end up hiring.
The recruiting process is, almost by default, a time-intensive one. That’s a big part of why it’s so costly, with the average hiring process bearing a price tag of more than $4,000 dollars.
WordPress: An Underrated Recruiting Tech Solution?
But the good news is the process can be streamlined — and you may not even need to invest in expensive tech to do so. Many small businesses and startups can’t afford to shell out for the latest recruitment software platforms, which can put them at a disadvantage in the talent market.
However, many of these smaller companies have also built their websites on WordPress, which means they can leverage WordPress plugins, PHP scripts that enhance and expand the functionality of a WordPress site. Many of these free or inexpensive plugins can actually help you solve some of the biggest logistical hiring challenges for a fraction of the cost of the major software solutions.
Here are four kinds of plugins to consider in particular:
1. Job Board Plugins
There are dozens of online job boards where you can advertise your open roles, but then you have to compete with all the other employers on that job board. These third-party sites can also attract a lot of unqualified candidates, which means you’ll have to spend more time screening out the wheat from the chaff.
Why not create your own job board on your own website with an easy-to-install plugin like Simple Job Board or WP Job Manager ? Just unzip the plugin through your WordPress dashboard and activate it on your site. From there, you can start posting positions and adding application forms for interested candidates to fill out.
One quick note on WordPress plugins in general: You want to be sure to choose one that is being updated regularly. Old, abandoned plugins can pose a security risk.
For more expert recruiting insights, check out the latest issue of Recruiter.com Magazine:
2. Scheduling Plugins
As noted above, interview scheduling can easily hamstring the hiring process. Luckily, you can trade the phone calls for a WordPress plugin like Bookly. These scheduling plugins allow you to preset your interview availability, and then candidates can select the slots that work for them. This self-service approach can shave days or even weeks off the interview phase of the hiring process.
3. Private Portal Plugins
Of course, if you want to set up a scheduling app on your website, you don’t want to post a public calendar that any random person can use to book your time. No, you’ll want to keep that scheduling app in a private portal — and there are plugins for that, too.
In fact, a private portal can be helpful throughout the entire recruitment process. No doubt you’ll be sending candidates plenty of messages and sharing lots of documents, and a private online portal can be a good place to store and distribute those important resources.
Plugins like the WP Private Content Plus and Client Portal allow you to personalize your website for individual users, which is a great function to have when recruiting. You can make your site look more polished and professional, and you can even control what candidates see based on where they are in the hiring process.
4. Onboarding Plugins
When it comes time to make your final decision and extend a job offer, you’ll want an onboarding plugin to help streamline your new hire’s integration into the company. Tools like OnBoarding Plugin or WP-HR allow your business to create training portals for new employees right on WordPress, without having to invest in a pricey corporate onboarding solution.
Moreover, these onboarding plugins can also double as long-term employee development tools. You can use these same onboarding portals to keep distributing training content to employees throughout their entire tenure with your company.
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WordPress may seem like a basic platform, but with the right set of tools, your website can become a powerful, professional recruiting machine. Put your best foot forward, deliver a great candidate experience, and make hires in less time with less money. All it takes are a few plugins.
Anna Johansson is the founder and CEO of Johansson Consulting. Follow her on Twitter and LinkedIn.