Explaining Headless CMS to your human resources manager

Is Headless CMS the next generation of HRMS?  No, it’s definitely not! Headless is a content management system that can help you find adequate answers in ​​a fast-growing and changing environment such as the Internet. While being an effective manager who facilitates a positive employee experience is no small task, understanding current HR challenges and opportunities can be challenging. Glassdoor’s research and reports bring some undeniable facts that show that the HR industry goes through evolving changes and craving new technologies.

Looking at these numbers, it is time for hiring managers to get acquainted with modern technologies, such as Headless CMSs, which are necessary for their further development and sustainability in the market.

Look at this examples of modern technology:

- NextJS headless CMS
- NuxtJS headless CMS
- Gatsby headless CMS

Unlike the traditional approach, where you need to develop an architecture, prepare content, and configure the interface for each platform, Headless CMS, as a new CMS generation, helps the company tap into a digital platform.  Traditional CMSs combine the back-end and front-end parts of one system. Headless is a different management system, separating the back-end and front-end. With this approach, you can attach different heads to the body, resulting in managing content across all available sites and devices.

So, Headless CMS  solves the problem of content management across multiple platforms. Content is now created, stored, and edited regardless of the technical solutions used to present it on client hardware (browser, smartphone, smartwatch). With this approach, you get:  Cost efficiency in the development process.  Managing different platforms from a single interface Flexibly configured content for each channel/platform.

By adopting and integrating Headless CMS into your SAP,  Workday, Oracle, Carrerix, or any other solution, you will reap the benefits of a headless CMS. The benefits that empower your business and are immediately noticeable are:
Superior editorial experience
Simplified workflows
Easy scaling
Enhance existing and launch new customer experiences
Presence on multiple channels

Further arguments support a decoupled CMS over the traditional one. Identifying reasons for switching to a decoupled content management system is the most effective way to determine if it is the right next step. This is rather than sticking with the traditional CMS. The more targets and goals you know, the more worthwhile it is to set up a headless CMS.

Headless CMS is the best solution for connecting external services. Traditional CMSs like WordPress or Drupal have plugins and extensions to link non-system services to the CMS. The problem with this approach is that many plugins at the same place make WordPress fragile (can make it stop working) and less secure.  Headless CMS with API allows you to choose from various microservice providers that fit your needs and connect them easily. Connected microservices are easier to program, decrease dependencies, and diminish unwanted side effects across the entire system.

Separating the backend from the view and the template engine dissolves the limitations of a traditional CMS. Any device, server, and channel can play the content.  Besides easy content managing, Headless allows content reuse too.

Changes to the system do not require extra effort: the content is stored separately from the front-end in the headless CMS. As a result of the decoupling, there is no need to migrate content when the output system changes, such as for websites or apps. When switching to brand-new systems, this is extremely helpful.

Headless CMS can be helpful in various ways depending on your chosen recruitment method.

Finding appropriate employees to fill a role and get a promotion may be the most cost-effective recruiting method. However, it still requires detailed research of the already-existing employee base and their achievements, skills, education, etc. The headless content management system search options help easily navigate and find things in your content library. With Headless as a content repository, you can quickly find and compare anything you need. Also, by creating templates and groups, different qualities of employees can be entered, saved, and eventually serve as parameters for comparison. Their education, work experience, and achievements in the company can be parameters that will help you more easily find a suitable candidate.

Communication between you as a hiring manager and agencies, organizations, or individuals who recruit candidates for temporary, part-time, and full-time employment opportunities for the job position you have available must be quick, dependable, and continuous.  Did you know that the most popular technology solution for B2B business and communication is SaaS? More than 73% of organizations use all or mostly all SaaS solutions.  And did you know that the most popular SaaS product is the Headless CMS?

There have been seismic changes in B2B business in the post-pandemic era. One of the B2B branches that feels the need for change the most is undoubtedly Human Resources. The first change was in recruiting for small businesses. Namely, the demand for workers in small enterprises increased by 62%. HR faces another much more significant problem finding solutions to recruit diversity and inclusion, which has increased by 119% YOY. After several racist incidents and the emergence of the "me too" movement, they brought a discussion about D&I, so it is an excellent opportunity for companies to pump up their D&I-related content to raise awareness and also gain organic search traffic. Headless CMS as content-first software is an ideal solution for adding entirely new content to platforms and integrating existing content on the HRMS platform.

Source: https://www.conductor.com/learning-center/b2b-saas-trends-2021/

With such tectonic changes, HRMSs can't cope so quickly as software that leverages HR processes. Headless architecture is allowing future-looking businesses to do more with their user experiences. It provides custom experiences for your candidates and powers custom content models for modern, powerful user experiences. B2B businesses can now meet evolving customer demands today and in the future.

Getting new faces, people who never worked before in your company, is challenging on so many levels. The process of selecting candidates takes a lot of time, interviews with them, and constant contact with the entire HR team, but above all, one of the biggest challenges is how to reach potential candidates. Even companies with strong brands (i.e., Facebook and Microsoft) can not depend on posting only on their career page. Typically each country has a market-leading job board where the ad should go, also, LinkedIn is becoming mandatory as more and more candidates come from this area. Sometimes it is not enough to have a position posted. Therefore recruiters would need to headhunt candidates. As you can see, being present on multiple platforms is a must-to-do thing, and Headless CMS is the best solution for that. Luckily enough, headless architecture can offer more extraordinary features for these challenges.

The idea of headless CMS is not to predefine anything but to do everything you need. Thanks to this philosophy, endless CMS features can help you improve your business.

Content modeling allows you to future-proof your content by planning and executing it separately from the structure of your website. It encourages the development of modules for content management that can be customized, reused, and displayed in various formats outside of a website rather than being permanently affixed to specific spots on a page. Despite living on your website, it's structured and stored to allow your audience to access it anywhere.

It is always a hiring manager's responsibility to provide the job description as a requestor of the position and should know what the needs of the team are. On the other hand, the HR team should be there to make job ads more appealing to make them more visible and engaging to the candidates. Thanks to content editing, you can have a standard template for creating ads, but your HR team also has a space to change text/narrative depending on the position-level target audience. Another awesome thing is that Headless gives options to make a job posting more engaging by publishing videos, photos, etc.

Being present in different language areas expands the search for the perfect employee. Maybe the best candidate lives on the other side of the globe, but you can reach him thanks to the headless CMS. An even better thing is that you don’t have to write the exact text for the same ad in different languages. Headless CMS does this for you.

The hierarchy in HR teams is very complex and intertwined. Communication and responsibilities are performed in several different directions. It is challenging to control your team, to balance the plans of the director and the demands of the workers, all at the same time daily. That is why this feature has a significant role in your job.  It is a feature that identifies different roles with different levels of authority and dictates rules for each team member.  This ensures that users without the authority to publish content can still do content creation and submit it for approval.

For any HR team, this feature is like a help button. When the time comes for your campaign, job ads, and open positions to launch, you don't have to be at your computer. If the promotion or campaign ends, you can also retire that content. Scheduled publishing saves valuable time and reduces human errors.  This functionality is becoming highly essential as the company grows and the demand for new employees increases. Headless CMS is a management platform that can make your recruitment process simpler and faster by offering the features you need.

Headless CMS assists and improves your work and provides solutions that make the hiring process more efficient and less stressful for candidates. Site speed, navigation, and design can all have a significant impact on user experience.

Completing questionnaires, taking tests, and preparing for an interview are all stressful steps in the recruitment process for candidates. Do they also need a website that loads slowly and has bugs as they enter their answers and personal information? Keeping the back-end and front-end separate improves scalability and productivity. Two extremely powerful conditions that enhance UX. They are possible first and foremost, because there are no compromising performances. Keeping the back-end and front-end separate improves scalability and productivity. Because content is stored in the cloud rather than on a server, it consumes less bandwidth, conserves resources, and reduces website tensile strength. Many obstacles have been removed due to these functionalities, leaving projects that are predictable and simple to implement.  Second, no CMS is as fast as an API-first one. Implementing and deploying updates to a content management system is quick and easy. Remember, users don’t like when web pages keep them waiting, and headless CMSs as a collaborative tool won’t let that happen.

73.1%of all website visits income from mobile devices, so a huge amount of your candidates expect a site to be mobile-responsive. As a hiring manager, you must advertise job openings across multiple platforms to attract qualified candidates. A headless CMS delivers content to support your omnichannel strategy. With headless, the same piece of content can be served automatically and flawlessly to multiple channels, with the API understanding each's requirements and adapting content accordingly.

Job offers are always a special moment for candidates, and for the HR team can be very stressful, but they also offer a great moment to enhance the candidate's experience. ​​With customized UX, you can positively surprise your candidates and ensure that they accept your job offer by making the moment just a little bit more memorable.  Personalization and customization are not the same in the digital world, but both have the same objective: to tailor content according to user interests. Personalized content is displayed by the system based on the identifiers of all users or groups. The customization process requires user interaction. A user can hide content or fill out the form with their interests, education, etc. It also makes new employees feel welcomed and motivated to begin working for your company. This is an excellent introduction to working for your company, and first impressions are everything.

Headless CMS only gives you technical support for your creativity. You must think outside the box to have unique job offers that stand out. Let's see what technological solutions can help materialize your creativity.

GIFs are great for sending a positive visual message to your candidates. These moving images can be created in minutes. With GIF, you can: 

The whole team generally enjoys creating these GIFs and helping to make them as fun as possible. To surprise your candidate, share a link to your GIF and let the candidate know you have a special message for them.

Candidates like to know in what environment they will work with people and conditions. Building a virtual replica of your office is an authentic way to reach potential candidates. This approach is an authentic way to reach candidates who may have never thought before that they could do the job offered in the ad. This makes it unlikely that they will see a traditional job posting.

As the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. Using infographics, you can help candidates assess their readiness at a glance if the position is challenging, the job description is complex, or special skills are required. Infographics can quickly communicate job location, compensation, and benefits related to creation and termination. Additionally, the post contains large blocks of text that describe the role and its requirements in detail, but bright colors and accompanying graphics make it easier to read. Headless CMS can help you share these infographics on multiple platforms such as job boards, social networks, LinkedIn, etc.

You need to carefully choose the words you use in your job ads. Your posts' visual appeal is also crucial. The visual aesthetics of your post attract readers and inspire curiosity. Photos and videos are ideal for capturing the candidate's imagination about their future career goals. Headless CMS offers an almost unlimited number of design options. Users can create visually appealing and customized designs.  View the BCMS showreel at the following link to better understand what I mean. You can see how functional Headless CMS is for design in this showreel. You should remember that candidates want to work with teams that can help them advance their careers.

The benefits of headless content management are that you can: