Companies should invest in technology according to their size and needs. Choosing the right product and vendor will require due diligence from the HR teams, says Nitin Shimpi, Co-founder & CEO, Nitman

When companies are looking at increasing productivity and efficiency internally in the way they manage their resources, what are the technologies available to support this goal?
Every organization needs to manage its employee information effectively to make the most of its internally available talent. And HRMS, or Human Resource Management Systems are the best way to do this.

How to decide which technology/product suits each company’s requirement? How to choose the right vendor?
There are plenty of choices available in the market, and what is right for an organization would depend on its size and needs. But essentially, any software should help it communicate better with employees, empower them to help themselves, boost HR administration productivity and make reporting easy.

Before you decide on the vendor, you should definitely make a list of things that you need most from the software. Call a few known vendors, get a demonstration of their software and ensure that it meets your needs and then make your decision. Personally, I believe in buying best of the breed software for each of my needs as opposed to trying to buy an all encompassing, jack-of-all-trades large system.

When it comes to return on investment in technology, how to set a realistic target? How does one measure it?
Measuring return on investment on technology is not as daunting as it sounds. Essentially, any new investment helps an organization cut costs and/or earn more.

Take for example calculation of return on investment for recruitment software. The software helps cut down the time spent by the recruitment team in mundane tasks such as maintaining excel sheets for tracking candidates, creating reports for the management, coordinating with technical managers and communicating status to placement agencies and vendors. It helps increase revenues by cutting down on time to hire. Calculating ROI then becomes a simple matter of adding [recruiter hours saved x hourly cost of recruiter] to [employee billing rate x reduction in time to hire] and subtracting the cost of software from it.

Most vendors will provide an ROI calculator for their product if you ask for it. The key is to plug in realistic numbers in the context of your organization to ensure that your expectations are realistic. I would also recommend tracking the numbers you expect to save on for some time, before and after, the adoption of the new technology.

Can you give us an overview of the different offerings of technology in the area of recruitment and what offering suits what type of companies?
What recruitment technologies to adopt would depend on an organization’s size and needs. But broadly speaking, the technologies that are available in the area of recruitment are firstly the job boards or job portals, where organizations can advertise their openings. Some of the social networking sites are also entering this field, allowing organizations to target their advertisements to people with specific skills. Then there are Applicant Tracking Softwares (ATS) that help organizations track candidates and manage the recruitment processes internally; Candidate databases provided by few job portals to find the right candidates; Online testing and assessment tools to help organizations assess a candidate’s skills and personality before calling him for an interview, et al. In my opinion, all organizations hiring more than 2-3 employees a month should invest in an ATS. Those that do a lot of lateral hiring should invest in subscribing to candidate databases and leverage the power of social networking sites, while those that hire in bulk should use job boards and online testing tools to pre-qualify candidates before investing further time and effort on them.

After the downturn, what do you think has changed in the recruitment space? What is the role of technology in this new environment?
I think the downturn has taught organizations to focus on efficiency of recruitment. So many organizations that cut down recruitment team size during the downturn are now investing in technology to streamline their processes before going out to hire new recruiters.