10 Ways to Maximise Your Microsoft Investment

Recruitment and staffing firms benefit enormously from seamless and efficient workflows - and Microsoft365 (formerly Microsoft Office) offers many tools to help you stay organised, collaborate effectively, and remove friction from your processes. You're probably already paying for this stuff, so let's look at ten ways you can get more from your Microsoft 365 investment! Streamline Communication with Microsoft Teams Microsoft Teams provides a platform for communication and collaboration with your team. Use channels, chat, video calls, and file sharing to stay connected and informed. Integrating Microsoft Teams into your recruitment process can help you effectively manage communication with clients, candidates, and colleagues. At Mercury, we bring Teams chats into the CRM so you can collaborate with colleagues in one place and bring better context to conversations. We encourage our clients to use Teams to deliver notifications and facilitate approvals without the recipient even needing to be logged in to the CRM! Master PowerBI for Data Insights PowerBI is an incredibly powerful tool for visualising and analysing data. Become proficient with this tool, and you will make data-driven decisions to immediately improve your strategies. Bring data from various sources into one place, slide, dice and dig deeper into your data, and present information in ways everyone can understand. Use your data to become an expert in candidate sources, time-to-fill, and other KPIs. With Power BI, you can create interactive reports and dashboards that help you identify trends, patterns, and areas for improvement. Leverage Microsoft Forms for Candidate Applications Create custom application forms with Microsoft Forms to collect essential information from candidates. This can help standardise your intake process, and the data collected can be easily pushed to your CRM. Organise your information with OneNote OneNote is a versatile note-taking app that helps you stay organised with easy access to your notes. Create notebooks with sections for client briefs, internal meetings, interview notes, and other relevant information. Share these notebooks with your team to improve collaboration and decision-making. Open your calendar with Bookings. Microsoft Bookings opens up the empty slots in your calendar to allow people to self-serve when booking meetings with you. Use this tool to assist with client meetings and candidate interviews and remove the time-wasting back-and-forth of agreeing meeting times. If you're currently using Calendly, save some money and switch back to this tool you're already paying for! Use SharePoint for Document Management SharePoint is an excellent tool for document management and collaboration. Create a central repository for candidate resumes, job descriptions, internal documents and other essential files. With version control and permission settings, you can ensure your team has access to the most up-to-date information. Automate Processes with Power Automate Power Automate (formerly Microsoft Flow) allows you to create automated workflows between different applications. Use Power Automate to automate repetitive tasks, such as sending follow-up emails or updating candidate status in your CRM or ATS, freeing more time for strategic decision-making. Mercury Automate is powered by Microsoft Power Automate and includes more than 60 configurable automation specifically for recruiters. Get your projects under control with Microsoft Planner Microsoft Planner is a powerful task management tool. Use it to create plans, organise tasks, and assign responsibilities to team members. Visualise your projects and track progress more efficiently with Planner. Get in the Loop Microsoft Loop is a cutting-edge collaboration tool that streamlines information-sharing and teamwork across various platforms. Described by Microsoft as an integrated productivity tool, it’s a digital workspace that seamlessly connects content, people, and tasks, enabling recruiters to effortlessly collate and work on projects in a single space and in real time. Loop components can be shared on MS Teams and across other documents or by simply sharing the hyperlink (url).Microsoft Whiteboard Whiteboard is an interactive canvas that can be used during meetings or brainstorming sessions, enabling the team to visualise ideas, map out processes and share information. OK, so that’s ten, but we could let you go without sharing this simple yet brilliant tool that you already have as part of your Microsoft license subscription… Microsoft To Do To Do is a simple task management app that helps recruiters prioritise daily tasks, set reminders, and ensure follow-ups are done in a timely fashion. The best thing is that the tasks automatically sync with your Outlook, OneNote, Loop and other Microsoft tools to give you an easy-to-manage To Do list. Oh, and you can use it on mobile devices too and even create separate To Do lists for home or personal use. These valuable tools emphasise Microsoft's expansive capabilities, enabling you to do less admin while allowing you to be better organised, automate tasks, improve communication, optimise your workflows, and enhance every step of the recruitment journey. For more information on how to get more from your Microsoft licenses, please get in touch. Written by Daniel Fox