Tired of competing for talent in a job seeker’s market? Learn about the best HR recruiting software to overcome today’s public sector hiring challenges.
Article Highlights
There’s no sugarcoating it: hiring is getting harder. The public sector is experiencing a quiet hiring crisis. Public sector job postings from Q1 in 2021, to Q1 in 2022, have increased by 45%, but the number of applications per open job during that same period decreased by 56%. Furthermore, 20% of state and local government agencies have reduced services to citizens due to staffing shortages.
In this job market, you’re left wondering how your agency can continue to provide the high levels of service residents have come to expect if it can’t recruit and retain top talent. As such, public sector organizations need to use the best HR recruiting software possible to counteract these trends.
In this article, we’ll discuss common challenges public sector organizations face when it comes to sourcing and recruiting qualified employees. Then, we’ll find out how NEOGOV offers the best recruiting software to fight these roadblocks, including the specific benefits of using government recruitment software.
In today’s job seeker market, individuals have the luxury of picking and choosing the organizations they’d most like to work for. Things like your job description, mission, values, benefits, and candidate communication all provide job seekers with valuable information about what it might be like to work for your organization. When your employer brand doesn’t paint a positive or consistent picture though, it becomes more difficult to source, recruit, and retain employees. In other words, if your agency hasn’t cultivated a reputation as an employer of choice, it will lose talent to organizations that have.
To make attracting talent even more challenging, public sector agencies must compete with the private sector for qualified professionals. In addition to offering more competitive salaries, private organizations have hiring timelines that are three times faster on average, putting public agencies at a distinct disadvantage.
This is particularly true if your agency has historically had trouble managing candidate relationships throughout the hiring process. Public sector agencies that don’t foster a great candidate experience through proactive and consistent communication can have difficulties keeping applicants engaged enough to stay in their lengthy hiring process, much less accept a job offer.
In short, if your agency wants to remain competitive in a job seeker’s market, it must use the best HR recruiting software to:
NEOGOV's Attract and Insight are the best recruiting software to help your organization meet these objectives. Below we discuss some of the key features of this recruiting software and how it can benefit your org.
Attract is the best recruitment CRM software for public organizations because it’s specifically created for government HR. While using these candidate relationship management (CRM) tools, your organization can:
Cultivating a strong employer brand is fundamental to any recruitment strategy. With Attract, you can build your employer brand and leverage new sourcing channels for both active and passive candidates. This includes promoting your brand on customized landing pages that highlight departments, events, and initiatives at your government agency. Take things a step further by adding forms and calls-to-action on your website, allowing your organization to quickly capture candidate contact information for future recruitment.
When you use a candidate relationship manager, you never have to worry about losing anyone’s contact information. Our HR CRM software lets you manage your candidate relationships in a single, cloud-based system. Automate the collection of candidate information at recruitment events like career fairs and conferences, then cultivate these relationships over time by sending personalized messages about upcoming recruitment events and job openings.
You can also measure the impact of your candidate sourcing strategy using analytics built into our HR CRM software. These reporting metrics are linked straight to specific candidates to help you measure your ROI of recruitment initiatives from start to finish of the process.
One final reason we think Attract is the best recruitment CRM software in government? It offers seamless integration with Insight, another powerful recruiting software tool that we’ll discuss next.
Insight by NEOGOV is an applicant tracking system (ATS) for government HR that helps automate your recruitment process and provides valuable analytics about your recruitment cycles. Upon signing into the Insight Dashboard, you can view high-level metrics about various recruitments from the moment you post a job opening.
Our recruiting software lets you identify job postings that are trending high or low, so your organization can determine whether it’s received enough applicants to hire a qualified candidate or if it needs to consider alternative recruitment strategies. You can also track the source of candidate applications, so you know which sources provide the best applicants and result in the greatest number of hires.
These tools are made possible by the Insight Career Pages and GovernmentJobs.com. Some of the key features of NEOGOV’s Career Pages are listed in the table below.
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GovernmentJobs Feature |
Why This Matters |
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Mobile-friendly, easy-to-use online application platform |
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Candidate information is stored for future use |
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Customizable pages |
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Required fields and questions |
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Job Notifications |
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Cross-post job advertisements to other job boards |
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Government-specific job board |
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Once individuals have applied to your organization, our recruiting software automates your recruitment process by auto-scoring candidates. This includes disqualifying unqualified applicants based on their answers to job-specific questions. Additionally, you can use recruitment plans to foster a selection process tailor-made for the public sector, such as by maintaining eligibility lists that factor in additional points for veterans or other score banding.
This auto-scoring process drastically reduces the time required to screen all the applications you may receive. Candidates can also self-schedule interviews and upload references to the Insight self-service portal, further reducing administrative time spent on coordinating schedules or playing phone tag. Each of these qualities helps your organization reduce its time to hire and foster efficient hiring and a better candidate experience overall.
The best recruiting software provides benefits to your organization at all stages of the hiring process. From sourcing to recruitment, the integration between Attract, Insight, and the rest of NEOGOV’s talent management suite provides a one-stop solution designed for the specific needs of public sector HR.
Not only can you increase the size and quality of your applicant pool with Attract and Insight, but you can also automate and streamline your recruiting process with candidate scoring and interview self-scheduling. Put another way, the best recruiting software helps your organization save valuable time on burdensome administrative tasks, like:
In doing so, your organization drastically reduces its time-to-hire with a competitive hiring timeline – enabling you to better compete with private sector organizations for top talent. These capabilities give HR and hiring teams more time to focus on important initiatives and objectives that boost employer branding, like maintaining stellar candidate communication or building comprehensive professional development programs.
Hiring in a job seeker’s market comes with a unique set of challenges. Fortunately, NEOGOV’s recruiting software solutions, Attract and Insight, minimize these roadblocks and enable you to secure the best talent for your organization. Book a no-obligation demo today to learn how our recruiting software can help your organization.