HR professionals have been hampered by slow and expensive recruitment processes for far too long. Worse still, they’ve become desensitised to how painful traditional hiring processes are – these processes are simply no longer fit for purpose. Recruitment is one of the few remaining industries to be truly transformed and empowered by digital technologies.  This delay has hurt businesses badly.

Our UK research reveals that almost half (41%) of hiring managers have compromised on the quality of recruits because they couldn’t find suitable candidates. It’s time for HR professionals to embrace technology to help ease their recruitment pains and ensure businesses remain as profitable and productive as possible.

The good news is that more and more businesses are starting to realise that an average of 60 days to hire someone is too long. Many hiring managers we spoke to (42%) said that reducing the time it takes to hire staff was a top priority this year.

So how can HR professionals use technology to reduce the time it takes to hire top candidates?

First, they need to make an effort to understand ‘big data’ rather than just relying on their IT teams to lead on all things tech. Data science and machine learning are influencing the way everyday processes occur, and on a large enough scale it can enable businesses to hire high quality staff in less than 10 days, instead of an average of 60.

But for this to become a reality, you need amazing algorithmic processes that analyse every detail across millions of CVs and in seconds present a shortlist of individuals that meet all the criteria. It’s the same principle Google applies in quickly sifting through the entire internet to find exactly what you need. In our marketplace, we use it to extract and analyse information from more than 10 million candidates’ career histories. It’s our mission to use these techniques to create a hiring process that’s quick, easy, and relatively inexpensive.

Finding and hiring staff should be exciting and easy for HR professionals. You know what skills you need to bring in to the business but sometimes when you go looking for them you hit a brick wall. All too often your search for the best candidate is like looking for a needle in a haystack and ends with you signing on the dotted line for the best of a bad bunch. Sound familiar?

The best HR teams will use technology that pulls out the right candidates and gives them relevant data to provide the best fit for a position. Technology won’t ever replace the face-to-face interview, though. It’s not about man vs. machine but more of a man working with machine to get things right.

Analytics can be hugely beneficial in terms of helping employers to predict which new candidates are likely to be best suited to a role, based on their career paths and qualifications. HR professionals can really help themselves by being smart in the way they use this technology to help them find the right people who will help their organisation achieve its future vision.

It’s the internet.  It’s here to make life easier, quicker, and better for everyone.