Automated recruiting is usually approached backwards, starting from a product and working out what it can do, and it goes better the other way round. The order that works for a small desk follows the money and the days. First measure: work cost per hire and time to hire, which takes a few minutes on the free sheets here and gives you $2,800 and 31 days on the worked example, along with the fact that 54% of the spend is agency fees and 84% of the wait falls before an offer exists. Second, fix the thing that is not software: if agency fees dominate, the agency fee sheet's break-even, 5.7 hires a year on the worked example, is a bigger decision than any subscription. Third, automate the single stage carrying the most days, usually acknowledgement or scheduling. Fourth, put the record in one place so the figures stay measurable. Only then is it worth looking at anything more sophisticated. This page walks that order and what to expect at each step.
Measure first, because the answer is often surprising
Desks routinely discover that the stage they complain about is not the stage holding the days, and that the software budget was pointed at the wrong problem. It is worth doing before any vendor conversation, because a demo is very good at making whatever the product does look like the thing you needed.
Fix the commercial question before the workflow one
No amount of automation changes an agency fee. If more than half your hiring spend is fees, that is the decision to make first, and it is arithmetic rather than software. The agency fee sheet on this site works the break-even directly: on the worked example a recruiter pays for themselves at 5.7 hires a year, which is a decision no workflow product can make for you.
Then one stage at a time
Automating everything at once means you cannot tell what worked. One change, one quarter, one re-measure. Automating everything in one quarter guarantees you will not know which change produced the improvement, and it makes the next decision a guess. One change, one re-measure, then the next.
Questions people ask about automated recruiting
Where do most small desks start?
Acknowledgement and scheduling, because they are pure administration and they act on the part of the process where the days actually sit.
How long before I see a difference?
Elapsed-time gains show up in the next few hires; cost gains show up over a quarter once the hours settle. Re-run the same two sheets to see it rather than relying on the impression.
Do I need to automate at all?
Not necessarily. At low hiring volume the free sheets may give you the whole benefit, and this is a vendor's site saying so.