Pixentia Insights

8 compelling features of an effective Applicant Tracking System

Written by Pixentia | Nov 5, 2015 11:57:00 PM

You can use job boards, social media and different avenues to attract your talent. All this can be of no use if you don’t have a proper Applicant Tracking System(ATS) in place to effectively manage your hiring process that is flexible for your staff members and new hires. When you pick up a right Applicant tracking system, you will able to manage the end to end process with more better results, provide enhanced user experience for your new hires, review only targeted resumes and results in improved productivity in hiring rates. If you don’t set up a strong Applicant tracking system, you might have adverse effects in your hiring process and leads to negative impact for your new hires.

You need to be more strategic towards your organization needs and also have complete understanding of your business goals .There are lot of vendors in ATS segment, most popular being Oracle Taleo , Greenhouse , Bullhorn ,ICIMS , Workable , SAP Successfactors etc. Most of these vendors have features and functionality which is targeted around various features such as nurturing the talent, connecting with the right talent ,attract and hire the right talent etc.

You need to consider in advance about various issues and challenges that are going to be addressed by the Applicant Tracking System(ATS), so that it reduces the burden on all the users. Based on review over multiple Applicant tracking system, you need to consider the following things while making your decision on procuring an Applicant Tracking System :

  • Get a complete understanding of your organization’s unique talent acquisition business process and custom work flows involved. Some of the questions you need to think about are
    • What is the scope of talent acquisition currently ?
    • What are we trying to accomplish with the new system ?
    • Hiring rate and volume.
    • Easy integration's with different job portals.
    • Technical capabilities and skill set of People.
    • Can we build custom work flows ?
  • Ease of use and collaboration. All stakeholders in the acquisition process need to have access to right information at the required time to make informed decisions.
    • Check if your recruiters can attract the right talent easily.
    • Validate if interviewers are able to engage or schedule conversations as per schedule availability.
    • Engage in conversations with candidates and provide them with all the required information.
    • Ease of navigation and setup of work flows.
    • Snapshots and dashboards of acquisition activity at different stages in the process.
  • Candidate experience is crucial requirement for good ATS. If candidates have poor experience with your system they will give up and leave your site. There are chances that you might overlook on this, but this is crucial for success of ATS.
  • Modern-day recruiting is incomplete and ineffective if it does not leverage the power of social media networking. Social media hiring review on the possibilities of integrating tightly with social media, sites for effective posting as well as evaluating the candidate profiles. This has become crucial requirement for all the ATS, as this would allow the recruiters to reach the right talent at the right time and easily collaborate with the applicant.
    • Ease of communication with candidates.
    • Keeps candidates posted with updates.
    • Easy chat and real time communication options.
  • Posting and Integration's, play a crucial role in the success of your ATS. Few things to consider are :
    • Evaluate the job posting sites which has tight integrations with ATS, make sure that the top boards and niche boards that are being targeted for your business areas do exist and have substantial presence in workable scenario .
    • Ease in integration with your website’s careers section.
    • Good compatibility in integrations with your HRIS and Human capital systems.
  • Accurate search results lead to proper management of your applicant funnel with the ability to quickly and easily search, screen and filter through the large numbers of incoming applications that your organization receives.
    • Adequate search functionality
    • Efficient resume parsing capabilities.
    • Targeted keywords search.
    • Deep insights and analytics.
  • Work flow Automation of end to end talent Acquisition process would assist in improved efficiency and help in better decision making.
    • Tracking, feedback and efficient decision points.
    • Notifications and reminders.
    • Targets and goals.
    • Approvals and rejections.
    • Resume blocks and holds.
  • Targeted portals and addressing the needs of your audience.
    • Portals targeted for Employee referrals.
    • Portals targeted for internal hires.
    • Targeted portals for contingent transitions.
    • Internal transitions.

Apart from above mentioned common areas to focus, try to make sure that you are establishing a relationship with the vendor, you meet with their technical teams, implementer's and customer support teams to assure that all your questions are answered before making the final decision and you feel comfortable about everything .

There is great effort involved to go through and verify all the aspects that are mentioned above. Some of the areas mentioned above can be helpful for you to pick up a good and effective Applicant tracking system. This list is intended for the purpose of making your RFP process as smooth as possible so that you do not have to go through a ton of demos and sales calls.

Pixentia is an enthusiastic family of individuals, fervent to make lives simpler through effective use of technology. Our mission is to implement solutions that drives business results. Know more insights from our thoughts and experience.

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