Why Recruiting Firms are Assembling Best-of-Breed Tech Stacks and Moving Away From “All-in-One” Solutions

There are two main schools of thought when it comes to buying the technology to operate staffing and recruiting firms:

1. I want one solution that does it all. I only want one vendor that controls our relationship and has a roadmap to keep the solution up to date with our needs and our customers’ needs.
2. I want to custom-build a solution that meets my firm’s exact needs. 

I would like to offer you a third option:

1. I want to choose the best applications for my firm's business processes. I want them all accessible on a single, centralized platform and, when my business needs change, I want to simply turn off the no-longer-relevant applications and turn on new ones.

That third option has a bit of an “in-your-wildest-dreams” feel, but this best-of-both-worlds tech stack is very much achievable if you know where to look.

To provide a clearer picture of how it all works, let’s start by breaking down the good and bad of buying or building recruiting technology. Then, we’ll explore the tech stack assembly approach and why it makes the most sense in today’s staffing and recruiting environments. 

The Benefits and Limitations of Building vs. Buying a Recruiting Tech Stack

Technology is an integral part of the staffing and recruiting process. However, in some ways, the industry lacks innovation in this area.

In true “but we’ve always done it this way” fashion, most firms default to either buying a prescriptive, “all-in-one” solution or investing heavily in a rigid, custom-built platform. 

Yes, there are pros to each of these approaches, but they are outdated. New technologies enable a more buyer-centric approach that gives firms the agility and flexibility they need to evolve and stay competitive.

Buying Your Tech Stack

Acquiring your entire staffing and recruiting tech stack from a single vendor sounds appealing on the surface, but what you gain in convenience, you lose in innovation and control.

Benefits:

• Provides convenience
• Ensures a single point of contact
• Allows for less hassle and perceived risk

Limitations:

• Locks you into a vendor-controlled relationship in which your only option is to adopt their workflows, processes, and technology
• Requires complex integrations/customizations to add additional applications
• Provides the same source code for every customer, limiting what workflows and configurations you can achieve
• Lacks a focus on specific needs, as vendors often have limited research and development (R&D) budgets and only focus on their biggest customers

Building Your Tech Stack

Paying someone to build a customized tech stack will give you the solution you want today, but business needs change over time. Then what?

Benefits:

• Includes the exact features and functionality you need
• Provides the opportunity to develop your own “secret sauce”

Limitations:

• Has a high price point to build it, and an even higher price tag to maintain and enhance it
• Serves as a major distraction for the business and generates $0 profit in the time spent developing the solution
• Only represents your firm’s view of the world and lacks the flexibility to evolve along with the industry
• Turns your company into a software company, which detracts from your real business priorities

Why Assembling Your Tech Stack Provides the Best of Both Worlds

Assembling your staffing and recruiting tech stack allows your firm to hand-select and deploy best-in-breed applications and evolve your technology as your business needs and priorities change.

Here are a few reasons firms are making the switch from buying or building to assembly. 

Paradigm Shift

The ability to “bolt on” an extensive range of best-in-breed applications designed to plug seamlessly into a powerful platform like Salesforce gives you the best elements of both buying and building your tech stack, including: 

• A single platform, meaning a single source of truth
• Unsiloed data that lets you track the complete customer and candidate journey from sales through to the back office
• The freedom to choose a tailored application suite that supports your users' needs—not what a vendor thinks they need

Competitive Advantage

Using Salesforce as a foundation for your staffing tech stack gives your firm a competitive advantage by increasing its security, stability, and access to leading-edge innovation.

Salesforce-native applications are thoroughly tested before being listed on the AppExchange which are updated three times a year. 

Access to Salesforce Tools and Technology

Assembling your tech stack on the Salesforce platform enables your firm to harness the full power of Salesforce products—from its unparalleled CMS to Sales Cloud to Einstein AI—to get a 360-degree view of your customers and the customer journey. 

Seamless Connections Across Applications

Integration tools, like MuleSoft, allow you to seamlessly connect Salesforce Data Cloud to any data source. Data Cloud unsilos and centralizes your firm’s structured and unstructured data, making it accessible to AI predictive analytics tools and workflow automation that increase productivity and profit.

Innovation

In fiscal year 2024, Salesforce’s annual research and development expenses totaled $4.906 billion. This investment in innovation far exceeds the budget even the leading "all-in-one" staffing and recruiting solution providers have available to develop new technology—and the gap is evident.

Cost Savings

All-in-one solution providers often erroneously claim that modular solutions are more expensive because you have to purchase applications separately. However, when you look at real numbers, the assemble approach is more cost-effective than a single-vendor solution.

You not only get the blended rate of all the apps, but you also amplify your ROI because you only pay for the applications you need for the users that need them. 

Additionally, you are selecting from best-of-breed specialist applications, not general-purpose applications, which increases user adoption by giving them the tools they need to do their jobs without the bloat of irrelevant functionality.

Let’s Put an End to the Build vs. Buy Debate

Many firms still cling to the build-or-buy narrative, despite having the option to assemble a best-in-breed, specialized tech stack that works better and costs less than buying a solution off the shelf or building a custom solution. 

Asymbl’s bolt-on approach empowers staffing firms to create the most effective staffing tech stack inside of Salesforce. 

Learn how to leverage Asymbl plus the full power of Salesforce, including automation and AI for staffing and recruiting. Click the link below to speak with the Asymbl team today.