Have you ever heard the term “shelf-ware?”
That’s when your company buys software but no one inside the company really uses it once it’s bought, so it sits on the shelf. Get it?
Shelf-ware is extremely costly to a company. Basically, buying something for a bunch of money, never adopting it, and likely renewing it at the end of the contract.
No one wants to throw money away. So how do you make sure that the software you invest in actually gets used and doesn’t become shelf-ware?
Here are three important factors to consider when you buy recruitment technology.
#1: Integrations with your current recruiting stack
Make sure whatever you are considering purchasing integrates with your existing workflows.
Unless you are going to completely reinvent your systems, any recruiting software is going to need to integrate with your current ATS.
Researching integrations is crucial because people become comfortable in their workflow and process. You can’t completely upend that so you need to make sure the new tech will be seamless for existing employees.
#2: Evaluation of tech by actual end users
While the decision-maker can ultimately approve the spend, a larger group needs to evaluate the tech. Ideally, this should be comprised of people who will use the recruiting software daily.
As Fast Company advises:
Regardless of their team affiliation or experience, a diverse group of employees from across your organization can often evaluate your current systems and choose new ones more effectively than a room full of IT managers. This way your decisions about technology actually reflect realities of the organization — and the needs of the people who’ll use it.
#3: The user experience with an intuitive interface
Consider:
- The light bulb was introduced in 1879; we didn’t see major productivity gains from it until the 1920s
- Computers existed in the 1950s and 1960s; we didn’t see major usage until the 1980s
- The Internet theoretically existed in the 1960s; we didn’t see it widespread until the 1990s
People like to think that technology moves fast and disrupts everything, but in reality it’s a pretty slow arc a lot of the time.
The reason is pretty logical: when something new appears, we (a) probably don’t know exactly what to do with it and (b) our friends and like-minded peers probably aren’t using it yet.
This happens at companies too, especially with new tech. The innovation adoption lifecycle theorizes there’s a “chasm” between innovators and early adopters of a new tech. 
A good user experience with an intuitive interface helps your recruiting team “cross the chasm” and start using the tech in their daily routine.