Hiring trends seem to follow the flow of life — vacation schedules, holidays, and budgets influence when people look for jobs and when companies are most primed for the task. If you have some flexibility in your hiring goals, consider the following data about peak recruiting season.
When Is the Best Time to Hire?
Much of the conventional wisdom around hiring relies on the common patterns people follow, which means companies are more or less prepared to focus on acquiring new talent. Let’s consider aspects of hiring in each quarter:
January through March
The new year represents goal setting, fresh starts, and new ideas. When people return to work after the break of the holidays, they are often prepared to jump into projects put on the back burner at the end of the year. Scheduling in December can be a tricky prospect, so interviews may have been pushed to the new year, when people have renewed work focus. Budgets that follow the calendar year reveal available funds, allowing departments to create positions to fill.
In the hiring pool, people look to make career changes that match their new year goals and resolutions. Those who took a break from the search over the holidays will refocus their energy on making connections. Mid-January through February marks a time when companies are ready to hire.
April through June
The start of year hiring push can often extend into March or even April, because hiring is time-consuming in many industries. Entry-level positions can often be filled quickly, but replacing top talent requires some extra handling time. The end of the second quarter may see a push to hire before summer vacations start.
July through September
Summer is a slow hiring time with staggered vacations making scheduling a challenge. The early-year push often means that hiring budgets are spent, and you don’t have the funds to create new positions. With the exception of industries that see year-round growth, summer is typically a slow time for active recruiting.
October through December
Starting in mid-September into October, the end of the summer slowdown brings HR and hiring managers back to the table, and candidates are primed for one last hiring push before Thanksgiving, the start of the holiday season that lasts through December. This is a good time to reevaluate and use any available hiring budget dollars.
Industry-Specific Hiring Trends
Depending on the industry, other factors may influence the best times to hire, says career coach Margaret Buj:
In healthcare, hiring is year-round to fill frequent vacancies, with a peak in April after the graduation of new medical professionals
In retail, peak hiring times are April to September to match shopping trends, with a push in November to prepare for the holiday season
In education, hiring follows a traditional school calendar, with a push from April to June for the fall start and January for mid-year replacements
In marketing, hiring aligns with kick-offs of annual campaigns and holiday marketing, from January to March and August and September
In hospitality, April to June and October to November see hiring pushes to accommodate the busy tourism and holiday seasons
In landscaping, hiring follows the growing season, with an early spring push to cover work into the fall
In the government, the fiscal year starts October 1st, which puts hiring budget renewal at a different time of year
Hire When It’s Right for Your Business
General trends can be a useful tool in your arsenal, especially when you’re trying to stretch your hiring budget. Knowing how people behave helps you be organized and prepared for good times to post open jobs. Planning time allows you to evaluate and edit job descriptions and put people in place to communicate with and interview potential candidates. Take advantage of tools like ApplicantStack, which allow you to readily organize the resumes as they come in and manage candidates more efficiently.
There’s also room to trust your instincts about your company and its personnel needs. According to Indeed, reasons you may need to hire at anytime include:
Current employees depart. Crucial roles at a company can’t wait for the best possible time to hire. When you lose someone, from resignation, retirement, or promotion, the right time to hire is now.
Preparing for busy seasons. As discussed above, some industries have their own critical hiring periods in advance of increased volume or strict deadlines. You know best how your industry operates.
A specialized skill is critical. If your organization identifies the need for a highly-skilled person, starting that job search immediately is vital.
When preparing to hire new talent, it’s helpful to know when job seekers and companies will most often align. By pushing when the time is right, your company can attract top talent for open positions.
Ghosting isn’t just a frustrating occurrence in the dating world – it’s become an all-too common practice in recruitment, and it can hurt your employer brand. Consider some of the following ways ghosting can cost you in the hiring process, and how to avoid it.
What Is Ghosting?
Ghosting refers to an abrupt end to previously established communication, without explanation or follow-up. It can happen in any type of relationship, but in the hiring process, it can happen on both sides of the table. It may look like:
A candidate who doesn’t show up for an interview
A company who makes promises of a job then doesn’t respond with a formal offer
No response, even automated, to a resume or application submission
Either party not responding to emails
A recruiter dropping a prospective candidate without explanation
Promises to follow up that never happen
Contributing Factors to Ghosting
In theory, every employer looking to hire has a robust and infallible recruiting system. In practice, that’s not always true. Several factors may contribute to your ghosting of applicants, even if that result is entirely inadvertent.
Outdated software
Companies that rely on applicant tracking software may be one step ahead of the curve, assuming the software still fills the company’s current needs. If you’re trying to force something old and outdated into the current market, you may find that your system causes more problems than it solves.
Updating to a more current solution, such as ApplicantStack, offers built-in automation solutions to modern recruiting problems. Hiring managers can respond to applicants via email or text message within the software, so there’s always a record of communications. Applicants can choose how they want to receive notifications. This effort cuts down on the dreaded response blackout, where the candidate wonders if anyone is receiving their communication, and the company thinks someone else has already responded.
Uncertainty
Sometimes companies put out a call for new positions based on future projections. “The company may be restructuring or switching up its project priorities. There may be a new manager in the group, or economic uncertainty may motivate a pause in hiring,” writes CTO Mark A. Herschberg. For those doing the hiring, this uncertainty may lead to some communication falling through the cracks. Those who remain at the company may feel disappointed about the changes, and avoid sending rejection emails they weren’t expecting to send.
Uncertainty may also look like a change in timing. People assigned to a priority project with hiring needs may be rerouted to something else, causing a delay. Ideally, someone would reach out to the candidates and say “I’ll get back to you,” but often good intentions don’t mean much if they’re not followed up by action.
Technology
Technology, according to Psychology Today, “may contribute to the tendency to ghost: Research suggests that the high volume of potential prospects on dating apps may make each individual person appear more disposable.” Casting a wide net for applicants via the most common job posting sites may contribute to the same phenomenon in recruiting. The sheer volume of applicants reduces people to a faceless set of resume facts, and may prompt a similar reaction: a response to the application just isn’t worth the manpower.
Consequences of Ghosting in the Hiring Process
Ghosting can have heavy consequences, including:
Damage to your brand
Just as your company can cast a wide net for applicants through the internet, your company’s reputation can be damaged on those same job sites. Candidates who feel slighted often have no qualms posting about their experiences, and ghosting is among the most insulting. A Reddit thread discussed being ghosted in later stages of the hiring process. One poster said, “Clearly these companies do not respect the candidates applying. Really the only reason here. Everything else is just an excuse to save face.” It doesn’t take very many negative posts to cement your company’s hiring practices as fact. The work to undo that reputation takes a lot more effort. How many talented candidates might you miss out on in the meantime?
Bad faith
You can’t control someone’s emotional response to being ghosted, even if it was unintentional on your end.
“People respond to being ghosted in many ways, from feeling indifferent to deeply betrayed,” according to Psychology Today. “Others believe that ghosting is emotionally troubling given that it offers no sense of closure.” Even if someone doesn’t publicly post about their experiences, their relationship with your company may be irreprably damaged. You may close the door on future hiring and networking possibilities.
How to Avoid Ghosting
Make your expectations clear: From the beginning, write clear and concise job descriptions. Avoid using clichés like “looking for a rockstar” or “team players wanted” to narrow your pool of applicants to real possibilities. Be specific in your requirements, the job responsibilities, and the salary.
Explain your process: You may even want to explain how the hiring process works in the job posting. For example, “Once we receive your application, you’ll receive an automated response. Within 3-5 business days, you can expect to receive an email explaining the next steps if we are interested in moving forward or if you aren’t the right fit for us.” Even if you don’t choose to post this, include some information in the automated response so candidates have some idea what to expect.
Evaluate your hiring processes: Both candidates and hiring personnel alike may be frustrated by company policies that introduce delays into the process. If all communication must be initiated by HR, be sure you have adequate HR staff to handle both daily tasks and timely hiring communications. Or, consider how to involve others in the hiring process to facilitate effective communication with candidates.
Even unintentional ghosting can have far-reaching effects on your company’s brand. Consistent poor communication can make you appear disrespectful and unprofessional. With some thoughtful evaluation of your hiring practices, you can avoid missed connections and damaged relationships and find the talent you’re seeking.
With ApplicantStack, automating the parts of the recruiting process that tend to fall through the cracks eliminates the risk of ghosting. Consistent communication that requires no manual effort is your best line of defense against this common problem impacting jobseekers. Explore the hiring and onboarding tools with a free trial today.
The rapport established in an interview, whether in-person or via video call, can be a huge determining factor in the possibility of a future working relationship. It’s up to the hiring staff to set the tone for communication. Here are some ideas on how to respond to candidates during interviews.
There are various verbal and non-verbal responses to employ while sitting with candidates during interviews.
Non-verbal Responses
Active listening
Psychology research into effective communication teaches us that active listening “requires de-centering from one’s fixed position to be fully present with another.” Developing this habit in an interview setting shows empathy and helps the other person see you’re engaged and value what they have to say. Active listening techniques include:
Eye contact: a good rule of thumb is to maintain eye contact for 50 to 70 percent of the conversation, or about 5 seconds at a time
Non-verbal cues: pay attention to the other person’s non-verbal cues. Talking quickly may imply anxiety; folding arms or leaning away may imply discomfort
Patience: Avoid interrupting, and give the person time to formulate their response, even if there is some silence
Withhold judgment: active listening validates the other person’s experience rather than inserting your own opinions or quick reactions
Emotional intelligence
Responding to interview questions with high emotional intelligence can put the candidate at ease and promote a comfortable, conversational atmosphere. It helps you respond appropriately to any potential emotional response to an interview question. First credited to Mayer and Solvey, the principles of emotional intelligence include:
Perception and expression of emotion: understanding your own emotional responses, picking up on the emotions of others, and the ability to discern between emotions
Using emotion to facilitate thought: recognizing how you incorporate emotions into your own reasoning and when it’s most useful
Understanding and analyzing emotions: the ability to make sense of emotions and decode their meaning, especially in relation to each other
Reflective regulation of emotion: being open to emotional responses and the ability to regulate them appropriately
Demeanor
Interviews help both the company and the candidate decide if they will be a good fit. Those doing the interview can help make a good impression with their professional demeanor. Inviting body language includes a warm smile, sitting with arms loose, not folded, and an upright posture. During the discussion, keep phones out of sight and use affirming body language, such as nodding or leaning towards the person. Taking notes is appropriate, and it may be worth mentioning this to the candidate at the beginning of the interview, inviting them to do the same. A pen and paper can help you remain physically engaged and avoid fidgeting.
Verbal Responses
Restate
Restating key points in an interview answer shows you are listening and ensures you understand the candidate’s response to your questions. For example, “It sounds like you found collaborative work in the office more rewarding than remote, am I correct about that?” Restating is an organic way to ask for clarity on a point and to expand on the conversation. It helps you emphasize key aspects of a response and reveal their value.
Follow-up questions
Similar to restating, good follow-up questions demonstrate your engagement and allow the candidate to continue discussing an important subject. While preparing the interview questions, you can also prepare possible follow-up questions. The candidate’s response will determine whether you ask them, but for more common interview questions, they may prove useful. For example, “What do you consider to be your biggest professional achievement?” could lend itself to “Can you talk about your process to achieve that?”
For in-the-moment follow-up questions, jot down key phrases or words from the candidate’s response that help you formulate an appropriate question.
Clarify intent
Some responses might reveal that your question wasn’t crafted well enough to get the response you want. You can use language here that helps clarify your intent. For example, if you asked, “How do you handle stress?” and got a response about hanging out with friends and taking their dog on a walk, you could say, “My intent in asking you was to find out how you handle work stress specifically, which I didn’t make clear. Can you talk about a particularly stressful situation at work and how you handled that?”
Connection to previous answers
Another form of restating is connecting a response to an earlier answer in a positive way. For example, a candidate’s response to “What are your greatest strengths?” might be “I can solve problems when they happen. I know how to remain calm in a crisis.” They may have told you previously about a time when they solved a problem. You could say, “That experience you mentioned earlier, when you had the software glitch at the conference, seems to demonstrate that. Can you talk a little more about your problem-solving process then?”
Commit to answering questions
If the candidate asks a question you can’t answer in the moment, commit to a date or time by which you will get back to them with the answer. For example, “Thanks for your interest in the specifics. I don’t have those figures readily available, but someone will email you a response by the end of the week.”
How to Handle Tension
Sometimes, there’s unexplained awkwardness in an interview. Despite our best efforts to schedule around them, life presents challenges that may arise during an interview. We may bring a bad mood to the room, which has nothing to do with the candidate. Here are some ways to address awkwardness or tension.
Allow for silence. This incorporates an important principle of emotional intelligence. Allowing the candidate some time to formulate a response or gather their emotions shows empathy and understanding. Say “It’s okay” “We understand” or “Take your time” to help the person feel comfortable. You may need to take a longer break and give them a few minutes, or even reschedule. Even if the interview experience reveals them not to be the right candidate for the job, acknowledging each other’s humanity is always an appropriate reaction.
Circle back. If a candidate has a noticeably strange, short, or awkward response to a question, rather than responding with a terse smile and moving on, say something like “It seems like that question may have caught you off guard. I’d like to circle back to it later in case you have anything more you’d like to add. For now, let’s go to the next question.”
Acknowledge the tension. Another principle of emotional intelligence is naming the emotion you’re feeling and acknowledging when it’s affecting an interaction. If the candidate is a promising prospect but the interview just isn’t going well, you could say something like, “I feel like we have gotten off on the wrong foot. I may have brought some negativity in with me, and I want you to know it’s not your fault. I’m going to reset, and I’d like us to continue with more positive energy.”
Job interviews can be stressful for both the interviewer and the candidate. With plenty of preparation and good listening skills, you can improve your interview responses.
Hiring a permanent employee can feel stressful, but recruiting temporary staff often isn’t any easier. There are often tight timelines, uncertainties and applicants with difficult-to-evaluate resumes. However, with the right seasonal hiring strategy—and the right tools—it’s easier to get the quantity and quality of temporary staff your business needs.
Understanding Seasonal Hiring Needs
Seasonal work is very common; perhaps more so than you think. One could argue the oldest job in the world is “farmer,” and that’s a very seasonal role. The modern agriculture business relies heavily on temporary workers, and back in the day, people had to make sure they did the right seasonal labor to keep their families and communities clothed and fed. Indeed, even our nomadic hunter and gatherer ancestors had seasonal jobs: to hunt mammoths, you had to go where they were at the right time of year.
Philosophy aside, seasonal employment is a staple of many businesses and industries today. There are numerous reasons why organizations have seasonal roles. But whatever the reasons, each company needs a coherent hiring strategy to secure the staff it needs when it needs them.
What Businesses Need Seasonal Employees?
Some types of businesses that experience significant seasonal demand include:
Agribusinesses: As discussed, farms are very season-oriented. Individual farmers and giant agribusiness corporations rely on temporary workers to pick crops when they’re ready for harvest.
Holiday-related businesses: Some seasonal festivities are big enough to warrant their own industries. For example, a Halloween costume pop-up shop and Christmas/winter holiday festivals are big seasonal employers. Retail businesses often hire temporary staff to keep up with increased demand in November and December.
Hotels: For most places in the world, there’s a “busy season” for tourism. Hotels and other hospitality businesses often have to augment their staff to keep up with the increased seasonal demand.
Landscapers: In places with significant seasonal variation in the weather, landscapers are much busier when it’s warm. While they may also provide winter services, such as snow removal, they often have to hire seasonal workers in the summer.
Personal tax services firms: Not many people need tax help in November. Come late March, though, financial services businesses field countless anxious calls from folks trying to file before the tax deadline. To meet this demand, businesses often have to hire additional tax professionals.
Seasonal businesses: Whether it’s a kayak rental business or an ice cream shack by the beach, these businesses — and sometimes entire towns — see their customer bases swell in the summer. Many of these businesses don’t even operate year-round, meaning they have to time their seasonal hiring strategy just right.
5 Steps To Recruit Seasonal Employees
Here are some steps you can take to hire the seasonal candidates your organization needs:
1. Assess Your Business’s Staffing Needs
To create an effective seasonal hiring process, you must accurately predict your seasonal demand. You can’t hire the right number of seasonal workers if you don’t know how many you need. Figuring out this number involves analyzing historical sales information, customer traffic patterns and operational needs from previous busy periods. By crunching this data, you can determine exactly how many extra hands you need and for how long.
It’s not just about quantity, however. You need to identify the specific roles you need—e.g., sales associates, stockers, concierge staff, etc.—and the skill sets required for each position. By creating a detailed staffing forecast that accounts for different shifts, potential absences and peak hours, you can develop clear hiring goals and avoid both under- and over-staffing.
2. Craft a Competitive Compensation Package
Money isn’t the only thing job seekers care about, but it’s usually the thing they care about most. Successful seasonal hiring often requires offering more than minimum wage.
If you research local market rates for similar temporary roles and establish a competitive hourly wage, you better your chances of attracting top seasonal talent. Beyond the base pay, a strong package might include incentives. These could be performance bonuses, employee discounts or even a completion bonus for those who stay through the entire season. This last perk is often a prudent offer to make for businesses that hire for physically taxing roles.
Furthermore, clearly articulating these benefits in the job posting demonstrates the value you place on your seasonal team and can be a powerful motivator to both attract and retain reliable seasonal talent.
3. Utilize the Right Recruitment Channels
Finding qualified candidates often means going where they are. Looking beyond standard job boards and utilizing a mix of targeted channels can help you pinpoint and connect with your target demographic for temporary work.
Alternative channels could include:
Posting flyers around colleges, universities and community centers
Leaning on your permanent or recurring staff for employee referrals
Leveraging social media platforms for quick, visual and highly targeted job advertisements
Hosting a dedicated seasonal hiring event or job fair for high-volume hiring, creating a streamlined, one-stop process for interviewing and making on-the-spot offers
4. Develop an Efficient Seasonal Employee Onboarding Process
Seasonal workers often need to be working and up-to-speed quickly, so the onboarding process must be fast and effective. This involves streamlining the necessary paperwork and dedicating time to job training rather than lengthy corporate orientations.
By developing standardized training materials, such as short videos or checklists, you can quickly cover safety procedures, key company policies and the core tasks for roles. This enables your business to onboard and train each seasonal hire fast and effectively. Utilizing the right onboarding solution can be critical for this, too. Explore how ApplicantStack makes onboarding easy and efficient for every new hire.
5. Leverage the Right Technology and Tools
Technology is crucial for managing a temporary workforce efficiently. For example, an applicant tracking system (ATS) can manage the high volume of seasonal applications, allowing for quick screening and communication. An ATS with automation features can scan resumes, cover letters and applications for keywords, such as desired skills or required credentials.
What Are the Right Solutions for Seasonal Recruitment?
An ATS like ApplicantStack can do a lot more than sift through resumes. It can also help with interview scheduling, enabling hiring managers to collaborate with other HR team members and find meeting times that suit everyone. An effective ATS also aids in onboarding, hosting all files in a centralized hub that’s easy to access. Here, everyone can see and share the necessary documents to get a new hire onboard and into training or on the job.
Beyond an ATS, many seasonal businesses or those that experience varying demand can benefit from financial software that allows them to go through data and create sales and demand forecasts. This makes it easier to hire the right number of seasonal employees.
FAQs About Recruiting Seasonal Employees
Here are some frequently asked questions about hiring seasonal staff:
How Can I Retain Employees for Future Needs?
Some seasonal workers are only there for one season, such as a backpacker working at a hostel while in the area. Others might be there for a few seasons, like a college student joining a landscaping team for a few summers before graduating. And some people make seasonal work their livelihood, thriving in the feast or famine lifestyle.
As an employer, how can you pinpoint the temporary workers who might be willing to come back next season and whose work you’ve appreciated? First, an ATS can store workers’ information securely so you can contact them again next season. But also, before the season ends, tell them you admire their work and would love to have them again. They may be happy to have some certainty lined up for their future work. And last, if you can, offering them a bonus and/or a raise the following year is a great way to retain their services.
What Are the Legal Considerations of Seasonal Recruitment?
It’s mandatory to comply with wage and hour laws, such as the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), which establishes minimum wage and overtime pay for most workers. Employers must also abide by non-discrimination laws, workplace safety regulations and tax requirements, which are largely the same as for permanent employees. There’s also the “1,000-Hour Rule.”
What’s the 1,000-Hour Rule for Temporary Employees?
The 1,000-Hour Rule is an IRS guideline that requires organizations to allow every employee, even a seasonal worker, to participate in a retirement plan after they complete 1,000 hours of service in a 12-month period.
This is also called the “long-term, part-time” (or LTPT) employee rule, and it applies to plans such as 401(k)s. It’s approximately equal to working 20 hours per week for a full year. It’s rare that a seasonal worker would log this much time, but it can happen.
What’s the Minimum Wage for Seasonal Workers?
There is no difference between the minimum wage for temporary and permanent employees. In the U.S., the minimum wage is the higher of the federally mandated wage of $7.25 per hour or the minimum wage of the state in which a business operates.
Leverage ApplicantStack To Level Up Your Recruitment
ApplicantStack has all the features a business needs to get the qualified candidates it requires to meet seasonal demand. From automatically posting seasonal positions on numerous job boards and simplifying interview scheduling to facilitating document sharing and onboarding, ApplicantStack can help you secure the best seasonal job seekers efficiently.
Ultimately, an organization is only as good as the people who work there. A company can have a great product, but if they don’t have the right people in marketing, getting consumers to hear about their product and buy it will be nearly impossible. A business might be led by a true visionary, but if that leader surrounds themselves with subpar candidates, then that business is likely to fail. That’s why so many organizations invest so much in finding the right candidates.
Hiring can take a lot of time, though, distracting management from focusing on their core tasks and responsibilities. Many businesses hire a recruiting agency, but then that agency needs all the right tools to simplify the many hiring processes it executes on behalf of its clients. Whether you’re looking to level up the hiring practices at your small business, want a new tool to streamline workflows at your recruiting agency or want to make your work as an HR professional easier, the answer just might be a new applicant tracking system.
What Is an Applicant Tracking System (ATS)?
An ATS is a recruiting solution that can optimize and streamline an organization’s recruiting and hiring processes. A business or a recruiting agency can funnel recruiting and hiring through an ATS, using it as a central hub for job openings and applications.
An effective ATS can make the tasks of hiring managers and recruitment teams much easier and more efficient. An ATS can facilitate an expedited, repeatable way of making effective job postings, bringing in numerous applications. Furthermore, by tracking candidates from when they apply up to the hiring phase, an ATS allows recruiters to identify and engage the best candidates efficiently.
An applicant tracking system can also improve the candidate experience, bringing positive benefits for job seekers and applicants, too, as the best ATS solutions come with scheduling and correspondence tools that make communication and collaboration easy. Lastly, the best ATS solutions are highly integrable, so they work well with other tools a hiring team or HR department might use.
ATS vs. Other CRM Tools
Of course, an applicant tracking system isn’t the only tool an organization might use for communication and workflows. There are numerous customer relationship management (CRM) systems that can have similar features. A typical CRM system centralizes customer data, logs and monitors interactions, and helps sales, marketing and customer service departments improve customer relationships. An effective CRM tool provides a unified platform for managing contact information, tracking sales, automating tasks and analyzing data.
An ATS offers many of these features, too. However, an ATS focuses on the recruiting process. The data it tracks relates to job applicants. An effective ATS serves as a recruiting software, an interview scheduling solution and a useful tool during the onboarding process.
How Does an Applicant Tracking System Work?
So, applicant tracking systems make the hiring process more efficient and make it easier to find qualified candidates. But how exactly does ATS software work?
An ATS can help a recruiter or hiring manager sift through resumes, CVs and applications efficiently, keeping track of the job candidates with the most promise. A good ATS makes it simple to identify and communicate job requirements and search applications for those requirements, whether they’re specific skills, work experience or education.
Moreover, the best ATS software makes all this information easily digestible, providing an at-a-glance view of each potential employee’s status and offering clear next steps to bring a new hire on board. Let’s look at three distinct phases of the process and examine how an ATS works in the recruiting, hiring and onboarding processes.
Recruiting
With automation tools, an ATS helps post and amplify job openings to multiple job boards. It can collect and organize candidates’ applications, saving hiring managers and recruiters valuable time. Using technology such as AI, an ATS can process large numbers of application documents, searching for keywords in each resume, narrowing down hundreds of job candidates to the select few who have the critical credentials.
For example, a recruiter can use an ATS to refine and collaborate on the perfect job description and then post it on numerous job sites, widening the potential talent pool. Let’s say the recruiter is looking for a candidate who has at least a bachelor’s degree and conflict resolution as a skill. The ATS can automatically search for the keywords “bachelor’s” and “conflict resolution,” and then manually review the applications that mention these.
Application Management
Recruiters and hiring managers can use an ATS to parse, sort and rank candidates. And with a centralized hub for communicating with candidates, recruitment and hiring teams can make sure their top candidates don’t slip through the cracks.
Interviews often come next, and a good ATS makes it easy to schedule these. Whether they’re in-person or video interviews for remote teams, recruiters and hirers can use the hub to coordinate with one another and the job candidates.
Onboarding New Hires
After the recruiters have made their choice and agreed to terms with a candidate, the next step is getting the new employee up to speed. An ATS is great for storing and disseminating all the essential documents a new employee needs to get started. And if the ATS has texting and email built in, recruiters have the necessary tools needed to communicate what they need effectively.
Why Recruiters Use Applicant Tracking Systems
Here are some of the key ATS features that benefit recruiting teams and agencies:
Centralized Information
Centralized information is a core feature of applicant tracking systems. An ATS that provides a centralized hub can collect relevant candidate data, such as resumes, cover letters, contact information, interview notes and communication history. An ATS then stores all that information in a single database.
For recruiters, this means no longer having to sift through emails, spreadsheets or physical files to find what they need. With quick access to a candidate’s complete history, including all interactions with the company or agency, recruiters and hiring managers can deliver a more personalized and informed candidate experience.
It’s possible to see the full context of a candidate’s journey, including interview feedback from other team members, which helps make a more confident and timely hiring decision.
Document Sharing
Document sharing within an ATS allows for easy and secure distribution of candidate-related files among the hiring or recruitment team. This simplifies the process of sharing resumes and other materials, eliminating the need for email attachments that can easily get lost. It also ensures that everyone is looking at the most current version of a document.
This accessibility speeds up the review process and enables faster feedback. It also helps in keeping all interviewers on the same page, as they all have access to the same information before meeting a candidate.
Streamlining
The automation and simplification of repetitive and time-consuming tasks streamline the hiring process. This includes resume screening, interview scheduling and sending automated rejection emails. For recruiters, this frees up a significant amount of time, allowing them to focus on more strategic activities like sourcing top talent, building relationships with candidates and conducting high-quality interviews.
It also helps reduce the chance of human error. For hiring managers, streamlining means a faster and more efficient hiring process. Automated scheduling, for example, reduces the tedious back-and-forth communication required to set up an interview. A streamlined workflow means they get to see qualified candidates sooner and can make a hiring decision quicker, which can be crucial in a competitive job market.
Standardization
Standardization ensures every step of the hiring process is consistent for all candidates and across all open positions. Standardized application forms, structured interview scorecards and uniform evaluation criteria can help ensure a fair and equitable process for all applicants, which is essential for diversity and inclusion efforts.
It also makes it easier to compare candidates because you can evaluate them all against the same set of criteria. Standardized interview scorecards provide a clear and objective way to evaluate a candidate’s skills and qualifications, reducing the risk of unconscious bias. This leads to more data-driven and objective hiring decisions and helps recruiters select the best candidates based on merit and not on subjective factors.
Tracking of Metrics
Metric tracking enables an ATS to collect and analyze data on various aspects of the recruitment process. This includes metrics such as time-to-hire, cost-per-hire, candidate source effectiveness and offer acceptance rates. For recruiters, this data provides valuable insights into what’s working and what’s not in their recruitment strategy. It helps them identify bottlenecks in the process, determine the most effective sourcing channels and optimize their efforts to be more efficient.
These metrics can help you understand the efficiency of the recruitment process for specific roles. For example, you can see how long it takes to fill a position and identify areas for improvement. This data helps you make better resource planning decisions and justifies the need for additional recruiting support or changes to the hiring process.
What To Look for in an Applicant Tracking System
When evaluating different ATS options, it’s important to select a solution that can meet the needs of your organization or recruiting agency. Here are some key features that are valuable to many recruiters and HR teams:
Applicant tracking and recruiting: An effective ATS allows users to create and manage job postings, distribute them to multiple major job boards and social media platforms and track applicants through a customizable hiring workflow. Features for screening candidates with pre-screen and knockout questions, as well as interview scheduling tools, can be major time-savers.
Onboarding: A good ATS can facilitate paperless onboarding, allowing organizations to manage new-hire paperwork, create checklists and use e-signatures for documents.
Communication: Email templates and texting features allow for quick communication with candidates and new hires, which can increase response rates and reduce no-shows.
Reporting and analytics: The best applicant tracking systems provide customizable reports and dashboards to track key recruitment metrics, helping businesses and agencies identify issues within their processes and make data-driven decisions.
Customization: Effective ATS software is highly customizable, allowing companies to create branded career pages, tailored workflows and custom questionnaires to fit their specific hiring needs.
How To Choose the Right Applicant Tracking System for Recruiters
To choose the right ATS solution for your recruiting agency or organization, consider following the steps:
1. Establish What You Need From an Applicant Tracking System
With so much business-focused software available, it’s important to invest in solutions that deliver specifically what your company needs. What do you feel is holding your hiring process back? What insights do you hope to gain? Are you focused on making communication and education easier? Or do you want AI and automation tools that make sorting candidates easier? Or maybe both?
Sit down with your team and figure it out. If you’re part of a recruitment agency, talk to the other recruiters to find out where they struggle. For an organization with an in-house recruitment team, find out what aspects of the candidate-sourcing, interviewing and onboarding processes aren’t operating as efficiently as they could.
2. Find an ATS With the Features You Need
Once you know what features you need, you can find an ATS that delivers them. It’s important not to be wowed by chic appearances or brand names if the software itself doesn’t have the features you’ve previously identified as being salient.
3. Prioritize the Ease of Use
Many applicant tracking systems have similar features. Then it comes down to selecting the one that’s easy to use. For this, it’s best to focus on options that come with a demo session where someone from the company that built the ATS can walk you through it and show you how it works.
4. Consider Customization
Whether you run a recruiting agency or HR for a business, you know your organization is unique. The way you and your team do things won’t be the same as another company’s processes. That’s why it’s best to invest in an ATS that’s easily customizable so that it delivers exactly what you need precisely when you need it.
5. Think About Scalability
Most companies want to grow. As you do, will your ATS be able to keep up with you? You don’t want to invest in a new ATS every other year, so it’s best to go with an option that can scale up as your business does.
6. Determine What Integrations You Need in an Applicant Tracking System
One of the great things about an ATS is that it doesn’t silo information; all the information an effective applicant tracking system collects is easily accessible to everyone on the recruitment, hiring and onboarding teams. But that’s of limited use if that information only stays in the ATS. Integrability with other platforms and applications makes for a smoother, more efficient workflow.
7. Examine What Reporting and Analytics an ATS Offers
“Tracking data” is important, but what data, and why? When seeing a demonstration of an ATS, make sure to ask about the analytics features, such as what data the system can monitor and what you can do with that information.
8. Factor in Compliance Requirements
If you operate in a sphere with a lot of regulation, or help organizations that do, it’s important to always consider compliance. For example, when hiring in the healthcare sector, it’s crucial that an ATS provides the security and features required to remain compliant.
Why Recruiters Choose ApplicantStack
ApplicantStack has all the features mentioned in the blog and more. It stores all data in a centralized hub that’s easily accessible. Furthermore, all that information is highly visible thanks to an easy-to-read dashboard. We offer demos and free trials, so recruiters can get to know ApplicantStack and how it works before making a commitment.
See ApplicantStack in Action
Words are great, but if you really want to understand how a top-of-the-line applicant tracking system can help your recruiting efforts, you should see how ApplicantStack works. Schedule a demo today and see for yourself.
Workers in the healthcare industry face a variety of stressors: understaffed workplaces, budget shortfalls, insurance conflicts, and physical and emotional demands. Maintaining a well-run healthcare institution starts and ends with ensuring the staff receive the support they need to manage the challenges of their work. Here are some ways to help healthcare workers manage stress.
Signs of Healthcare Worker Stress
To adequately support healthcare workers, be aware of the signs that they may not be coping with job stress. According to the CDC, watch out for workers:
Feeling irritated, angry, or in denial
Feeling uncertain, nervous, or anxious
Feeling helpless or powerless
Lacking motivation
Feeling tired, overwhelmed, or burned out
Feeling sad or depressed
Having trouble sleeping
Having trouble concentrating
When left untreated, early signs of stress can lead to the more serious state of burnout, which the CDC describes as “a long-lasting state that can seriously impact workers’ abilities to respond to normal life activities adaptively and effectively, in and outside of work.” Burnout can lead to serious mental health challenges like depression and anxiety. People are likely to become emotionally disengaged from their work and life, and may even leave the profession altogether.
There is also an issue known as “compassion fatigue”, a state where “exposure to patients or clients experiencing trauma or distress can negatively impact a professional’s mental and physical health.”
In healthcare, where compassion and empathy are the guiding stars, managers should set a good example by reaching out to workers under pressure. Hospitals and healthcare facilities are vital to public health, and support for worker mental health contributes to productivity, efficiency, retention, and ultimately, better patient care.
Ways to Help Healthcare Workers Manage Stress
Use these tips to help your healthcare workers manage stressful situations.
Identify Stressors
When people are in a state of high anxiety, they often have trouble identifying specific reasons. Managers can be available to discuss the aspects of someone’s job they find the most difficult. Are they having trouble sleeping? Maybe a shift change could help. Are they finding a certain procedure challenging? Maybe those procedures can be assigned to someone else temporarily or permanently.
Sometimes, just naming what’s going on and having someone to listen can reduce feelings of stress. Approaching these concerns with understanding and an effort to apply actionable solutions can help the person feel heard and understood. Ideally, these check-in meetings will occur at regular intervals rather than in response to distress. With discussion, a relatively simple solution to a problem may reveal itself.
Offer Scheduling Flexibility
Shift scheduling – especially at large institutions – can be a tremendous challenge. Still, the CDC suggests that one way to reduce workplace stress is “implementing policies that provide workers with increased flexibility and control over their work and schedules.” Having a policy that allows workers to easily trade shifts can improve the work-life balance. Parents can attend kids’ school events, caregivers can respond to emergencies, and employees can take allotted PTO more easily.
When at-home scheduling stressors are more manageable, work stressors may also be more manageable.
Provide Support Groups
According to Krystal M. Lewis, PhD of the Anxiety and Depression Association of America (ADAA), an important part of stress management is to “start with just being aware of the physical and emotional signs of stress. Pay attention to how your body talks to you—whether you’re having physical symptoms, when you’re feeling fatigued or overwhelmed, your muscles are aching, you’re getting sick more often, or you’re irritable.” To respond properly, “it’s important to be aware of your own unique response to stress and to address the symptoms right away.”
Given the unique pressures of healthcare, it’s likely colleagues and co-workers are experiencing similar signs of stress. Organizing support groups at work can provide workers with an outlet for processing difficult shifts or intense events. You may consider outfitting an inviting space or the guidance of a mental health professional to lead a support group.
Give Adequate Breaks
Federal and state laws outline the required breaks in shift work, but that doesn’t mean every employee takes them regularly. You can establish a company culture that encourages employees to take their required breaks. This policy can help workers disrupt negative thought patterns, sit down if they’ve been on their feet for hours, and take time for nourishing food and hydration.
Taking regular breaks doesn’t mean workers are lazy; in fact, breaks contribute to more positive attitudes. Studies have shown that “Rest breaks are effective in decreasing professional burnout among registered nurses, especially when combined with management support, staffing support, and complementary strategies.”
Offer Perks and Benefits
Work that’s demanding physically and emotionally can make it difficult for healthcare workers to find time and energy to exercise. Yet studies show that “exercise can relieve stress, reduce depression and improve cognitive function.” Providing incentives like free or discounted memberships to gyms or yoga studios may be the push some employees need to cope with their stress. You may try contests or competitions among the staff, offering rewards for consecutive days with exercise or trying new forms of movement. Create a culture that values holistic physical and mental well-being.
Especially since the pandemic, healthcare workers have carried tremendous burdens for the public. Every day, their work involves compassionate care that can take a toll on their own emotional health. Management should take a multi-pronged approach to create a culture of support and caregiving.
Hiring healthcare workers is also a uniquely challenging situation that is easier to manage with the right tools. ApplicantStack includes functionality that streamlines finding qualified individuals and bringing them onboard in a consistent and engaging manner. Explore how ApplicantStack can help your organization improve hiring and retention rates.
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