2018 was a very busy year for all of us here at Workable. From building new AI features to optimizing existing functionalities and from integrating with a vast landscape of HR tools to safeguarding our platform, we’re dedicated to our goal: to make all-in-one, easy-to-use recruiting software that helps companies scale, no matter their industry, size or location.
Fueled by a new financing round (as our CEO announced a few weeks ago), we’re ready to step into the new year with improved features already in the works. But before we get there, we want to give you a quick roundup of Workable’s major releases of 2018:
We secure our product – you shield your data
We know you can’t focus on hiring unless you’re confident that your recruiting software handles all candidate information securely and maintains data privacy. Add to that Europe’s GDPR regulations, that were put into effect as of May 2018 and made us all rethink how we store and process personal details. Now you understand why data security was one of our top priorities.
Although we are always looking to implement the highest security standards in our product from the get-go and in every new feature we build, in 2018 we went one step further: we are now officially ISO 27001:2013 certified. This means that our customers can be reassured that our tech, our infrastructure and our employees operate safely and securely. And for our customers who use various apps and want to access their data across different systems, our single sign-on (SSO) feature provides an extra level of security and a smoother user experience.
Whether you’re in Europe or elsewhere, we’re sure that you’ve heard a lot about GDPR over the last year. And you’ve probably wondered what you need to do and what you need to change in your procedures to be compliant. In hiring, specifically, things can get complicated considering you manage a ton of candidate data, from people who apply for your open roles to the ones you source or you want to maintain in your databases for future job openings. Workable’s GDPR features, released this year, do all the back-office work for you, so that you can, without any stress, focus on what’s most important: the actual hiring.
But data privacy doesn’t refer only to using secure tech or being compliant with regulations. It’s about ensuring that the right people have access to the right information at the right time. That’s why we built advanced access rights that help you organize your hiring teams and share confidential data only with the team members who need full visibility. For example, you can limit access to external recruiters, if you don’t want them to see financial details or specific terms, and you can hide candidate evaluations from interviewers until they submit their own evaluation, ensuring an unbiased evaluation.
Get better candidates, faster
“Finding qualified candidates.” If we asked recruiters about their biggest pain points, this would be among the top 3 answers – if not the most popular one. As a company that builds recruiting software, we always think of new ways to ease this pain. In 2018, we introduced a new dashboard inside Workable: “Find Candidates”. In a single page, you can see all advertising options to help you maximize your outreach to potential candidates. Here’s what it looks like:
You may have noticed “Campaigns” and “Auto-Suggest” in the above screenshot. “What are these?” you ask? Well, these are two of the AI-based features that we released this year to help you find new candidates beyond your traditional, tried sources. Let’s take a look at them one by one:
- With “Campaigns” you automatically get qualified candidates from Facebook and Instagram straight to your hiring pipeline. Share with us your open role and, based on the job requirements (like experience level and location), we’ll deliver a branded ad to people who qualify for the job. Instead of casting a wide net, we target potential candidates who have the desired skills and are more likely to be interested in your open roles.
- “Auto-Suggest” works behind the scenes, analyzing your job description to automatically generate up to 200 matching candidate profiles. This means that you can diversify your talent pool, as we’re looking for potential candidates in various online sources that you haven’t thought of or don’t have the time to explore.
…and there’s more to come
Stay tuned in 2019 for “Workable Referrals” – an internal job portal that turns your workforce into a recruiting machine. Find, track and evaluate referrals faster all through one standalone platform that syncs with your hiring pipelines and reports.
Interview scheduling takes time?
Not anymore! In 2018, we added new features inside Workable to help you schedule interviews faster and more accurately. These features automate the administrative tasks around scheduling and help you focus on the actual interview:
- Give candidates the option to self-schedule interviews: Why waste time sending back-and-forth emails with candidates when you can do this with a single email? Instead of trying to find a time that works for everyone and calculating different time zones (when interviewing remotely), give candidates access to your calendar: by clicking on the self-scheduling link, they’ll be able to view your availability in real time and book a slot on the spot.
- Schedule multi-part interviews effortlessly: When you conduct complex interviews with multiple stages and interviewers on the same day, scheduling them can get just as complex. In 2018, we took care of this challenge for you. From one screen inside Workable, you can book different meetings with different interviewers in different rooms for the same candidate. This way, you will minimize mistakes when scheduling interviews and create a better overall hiring experience both for candidates and interviewers.
Hiring from A to Z
When we talk about hiring and how an ATS can help with that, we mostly refer to posting jobs, screening resumes and managing candidate profiles. But, here, at Workable, we know that it’s more than that. Hiring begins long before you publish a job ad; first, you need to open a requisition, get approval and agree on budget and timeline. Also, it’s not really hiring until you welcome a new employee on board. And to do that, you need to craft an offer letter, send it to your best candidate and get it back signed.
This year, we released two new features that help you manage the entire hiring process inside Workable, without having to transfer data to and from spreadsheets and other systems:
- Hiring Plan: Set a transparent workflow for job requisitions and approvals and keep stakeholders in the loop. With real-time updates, reports, plans and data all in one place, you can manage and optimize your current – and future – hiring strategy from one centralized workspace.
- Offer Letters and Offer Approvals: From building your own library of offer letter templates, to enabling e-signatures and getting real-time notifications when the status of an offer changes, you can fast-track the workflow. Note that candidates can view and sign their letter from any device (desktop or mobile) to speed up the process even more.
Hiring is not a one-person job
And we’re very well aware of this. That’s why we keep our eyes and ears open for new partners; every time we hear about this great video interview platform that helps screen candidates faster or that coding tool that helps evaluate tech candidates more objectively, we’re working to integrate with them. In 2018 we integrated with 24 (!) HR tools and partners, including Jobs on Facebook and Indeed Assessments. Read all about our integrations.
… and that’s a wrap everybody! We’re saying goodbye to 2018 with 35+ product releases, but already thinking, building and working on our roadmap for 2019. Whether you want to share some feedback on our product, ask questions about existing and upcoming features or book a demo with our sales team, we’re always happy to hear from you. In the meantime, enjoy your holidays and have a great new year!
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