The 3 Essential HR Technologies for Filling Your Talent Pool With the Right People The market for qualified candidates is tightening. Technology similar to those used to find sales leads makes recruiting less expensive but more effective.

Mark Weiser, a wise man who was chief technologist at Xerox PARC in the 1990s, once observed "the most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it."

Technology's higher calling is to act as a seamless extension of ourselves but sheer volume makes selecting it difficult. Pick a business process, any process. Now conduct an online search for technologies that help perform that function. Daunting, isn't it?

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Recruiting and hiring solutions are no different. The marketplace for various types of data mining, search and hiring technologies is nearly overwhelming but the benefits of these tools outweigh the burden of sorting through them. They are becoming critical as the job market improves, .

When a small or medium-sized business thinks "technology," it often thinks "costly." However, many of these solutions are scalable and affordable for businesses of any size. Unfortunately, you'll find that the Human Capital Management Software industry typically offers two extremes: one bulky solution to manage all pre-and post-hire HR technology needs, or niche products that only address one aspect of HR.

There is a middle ground of integrated solutions focused specifically on talent acquisition that balances both stability and innovation to fulfill all business needs and help deliver results. With a full suite of talent acquisition solutions, businesses can ultimately have the right tools to attract, communicate with, engage and retain the best talent.

Given that entrepreneurs often wear the hats of recruiter and hiring manager, a few best practices can help professionals navigate a cluttered technology space and focus on HR technologies that offer real business value.

1. Video candidate screening

Interviews are resource intensive, requiring businesses to make relatively significant investments in pursuit of candidates who may not be best-fit talent. Enter video candidate screening, which allows employers to "test drive" job candidates and review their soft skills virtually before spending time and money associated with in-person interviews.

In just a few simple steps, candidates can use their desktop webcam or a mobile device to upload a short video responding to a company's custom questions. This allows the candidate to showcase strengths while enabling busy hiring managers to more quickly decide if they want to progress to the interview phase.

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Mobile-optimized career site

Millennials matter, as it's predicted that they will comprise nearly half of the workforce by 2020. It's important for businesses to have mobile-optimized career portals and online environments to meet the mobile engagement preferences of these candidates and the growing mobile preference of the entire candidate pool. Research shows that 86 percent of job seekers use mobile devices for job searches.

A mobile-optimized career site can enable job seekers to receive alerts, apply for positions, track application status, share information via email, seek advice and references and share open jobs quickly and easily among their social networks.

Recruitment marketing automation

A core applicant tracking system (ATS) is similar to a sales organization's customer relationship management (CRM): it prevents recruiters from losing good candidates in a stack of files and ensures good notes and appointments are stored and searchable.

Now think one step before CRM. Just as marketing professionals leverage marketing automation systems to help build a pipeline of qualified leads for sales reps, HR technologies now offer similar tools that can build a pipeline of candidates for recruiters to close. Social recruiting via these technologies can build a strong selection of passive candidates while gathering nuanced information about candidate behaviors, preferences and personality to better inform employment matches down the line.

The HR technology marketplace is vast. Hundreds of solutions are vying for attention but not all deserve it. Video candidate screening, mobile-optimized sites and talent CRM tools are essential talent acquisition technologies that HR departments and recruiters, alike, must utilize to narrow the field and fill their pipeline with the ideal people.

Rather than creating confusion, it's tech that actually simplifies the job of filling jobs.

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