The best recruiting tool for your business is walking among you: current employees. Happy workers can be cheerleaders for all the good things your company has to offer. Read on for some ways to get more employee referrals.
Benefits of Employee Referrals in Recruiting
One of the biggest challenges faced by small businesses is competing for talent. “Eighty percent of companies say there is a skills shortage,” according to LinkedIn, and competition is stiff. LinkedIn recruiting experts suggest employee referrals are valuable for five simple reasons:
Help you hire faster
Lower your cost per hire
Deliver high-quality candidates
Increase employee retention
Protect corporate culture and build your brand
How to Involve Employees in Recruiting Efforts
It’s important for employees to feel like they work hand-in-hand with hiring managers to recruit qualified job candidates. Employees are likely to bring friends, acquaintances, or even family to the recruiting table, so it’s vital to establish trust and transparency in the process. Ensure the experience is overall positive, even if every interaction doesn’t result in hiring.
Offer Employee Referral Incentives
A company’s average cost to list a job, screen candidates, hold interviews, hire, onboard, and train is about $4,700 according to the SHRM. Investments in software or extra time push that number even higher. Even generous monetary referral incentives can be less, and will streamline the amount of time spent.
Some companies may choose to offer an initial bonus and then further bonuses at intervals if the referred person stays with the company, such as once at 60 days and again at 180 days. Your company may choose to offer bonuses commensurate with skill level or role. HR professional Laurie White suggests setting internal policy on how the incentive structure works. Management positions or roles that need to be filled quickly may come with a greater monetary incentive.
Advertise, Advertise, Advertise
Companies need to get out the word about referral incentives, company policies on referrals, and open positions with urgency. Talent acquisition manager Adam Fitzer offers some suggestions:
Set hours where hiring managers are available to take referrals or answer questions about how it works
Have regular meetings with employees and the recruiting team
Involve employees in the interview process
Bring employees to recruiting events
Encourage employees to share open positions on their personal social media channels, alumni message boards, or personal networking groups
Make Referrals Trackable
Employees who offer referrals likely have a connection to the person they’re suggesting for the role, and want the process to go well for the potential employee. These employees put their trust in the organization to follow through with meaningful contact, so allowing them access to the process shows the referral is valuable, and not just a suggestion that goes into the void.
Immediately flagging referrals into applicant tracking software helps hiring managers prioritize those candidates within the interview process. Laurie White suggests adding the referring employee to the tracking software so “[they] can monitor their acquaintances’ progress as the candidates progress through the recruitment cycle. This transparency is key for keeping employees engaged in the referral program.”
Acknowledge All Employee Referrals
To craft a successful referral program, employees should feel confident that any referral is valuable and desirable, even if the person doesn’t end up getting hired. Some employees have expressed concerns about how they might be judged for their referral. They worry they may be held responsible for how the interview process goes for their referral, or whether or not the person takes the job.
Clear and grateful messaging around referrals can help mitigate these concerns. Every person who submits a referral should be acknowledged and thanked. Adam Fitzer suggests you can even give prizes to employees whose referrals don’t get hired, just to make sure that message is clear.
Make it Fun
Gamification of referrals can lead to friendly competition among employees. Setting time limits on referral events with a leaderboard and frequent announcements about the standings can get people excited about the prospect of bringing friends or acquaintances into the company.
These specific events could have prizes other than monetary bonuses, like extra vacation days, spa trips, golf excursions, or valuable gift cards. You could consider a sponsored lunch or dinner to kick off referral events to get employees excited and help them clearly understand what the company is looking for.
Use the Right Tools
Use the right tools to track referrals and keep all potential new hires together in one, easily accessible place. Stay on top of the hiring process while keeping everyone involved on the same page. These efforts are easier with ApplicantStack, a proven applicant-tracking system (ATS) that is built for today’s business needs.
At both large and small organizations, employee referrals can make up some of the most promising and valuable hires. Molding your company culture to be open to all referrals, along with incentives and encouragement, you can find the best employees to make up your team.
The need for a robust, seasonal workforce is key to many thriving businesses during the hustle and bustle of the holidays. But amidst the scramble to fill critical roles, an undeniable challenge emerges: How do you onboard a high volume of staff quickly and efficiently, without compromising the safety and integrity of your organization?
This is the seasonal staffing catch-22. Although there’s an urgent need for all-hands-on-deck, companies must ensure they bring on quality employees who will uphold their values. As an industry leader in pre-employment screening, Verified First has been helping many companies navigate these challenges by implementing streamlined, compliant background check processes that deliver on speed and security.
The Seasonal Staffing Dilemma: Urgency vs. Quality
Seasonal hiring isn’t just about adding more hands, it’s about adding them quickly and efficiently. Businesses face immense pressure to meet tight deadlines, quickly onboard large numbers of applicants, and get them productive to capitalize on peak demand. The temptation to cut corners in the hiring process, particularly with background checks, can be strong when time is of the essence. However, giving in to this temptation carries significant risks for businesses. Neglecting thorough background checks or rushing through inadequate ones can lead to:
Hiring unqualified or unsafe individuals: This poses direct threats to your existing employees, customers, and overall business operations.
Damage to your reputation: Incidents involving poorly vetted staff can quickly erode public trust and negatively impact your brand image.
Financial losses: Theft, fraud, or damage caused by unchecked employees can be substantial, impacting your bottom line.
Legal liabilities: Negligent hiring claims, where a company is held responsible for harm caused by an employee whose dangerous propensities should have been discovered during the hiring process, can result in costly lawsuits and settlements.
You shouldn’t have to choose between speed and security when it comes to background checks. You can have both.
Proactive Planning is Essential
The time to think about background checks for seasonal staff is not when applications are flooding in, but well in advance. Proactive planning lays the groundwork for a smooth and efficient process. This involves pre-determining background check needs for different roles, recognizing that not every seasonal position requires the same level of scrutiny. For instance, a cashier handling money will likely need a more extensive check than a stocker. Categorizing seasonal positions by risk level and defining the specific background checks required for each prevents both over-screening low-risk roles and under-screening high-risk ones.
You should also establish clear hiring criteria. Defining your non-negotiables and preferred qualifications upfront streamlines the screening process and helps quickly identify suitable candidates. It’s crucial to communicate expectations to hiring managers, ensuring all those involved in the hiring process understand the importance of background checks, the process, and their role in facilitating it.
Finally, leveraging technology like Verified First’s seamless integration with ApplicantStack helps create an easy and consistent process by implementing standardized procedures within an application you are already familiar with. This means every applicant goes through the same, defined process, minimizing human error and better ensuring compliance.
Smart Selection of Background Check Services
The effectiveness of your background check process hinges on the quality and capabilities of your screening partner. When facing a seasonal staffing surge, you need a partner that offers thoroughness alongside speed, accuracy, and scalability. Consider the different types of checks available and how they apply to your seasonal roles. Verified First’s screening packages and a la carte products allow you to tailor services to your unique hiring strategy:
Criminal background checks: A nationwide database search including millions of state and county records to identify past convictions.
Drug testing: Required for roles involving machinery, driving, or public interaction, ensuring a drug-free workplace.
Motor vehicle records: Providing real-time insight into an applicant’s driving history.
An experienced and reliable partner, like Verified First, will guide you in selecting the most appropriate and compliant checks for your seasonal workforce, ensuring you get the right information without unnecessary delays. They understand the nuances of various industries and can advise on best practices to achieve both speed and thoroughness.
The Power of Technology and Integration
In high-volume hiring scenarios, manual processes become bottlenecks you simply can’t afford. This is where technology becomes your greatest ally, particularly through seamless integration between your HR tech stack and your background screening provider. For ApplicantStack users, there’s a powerful synergy available to streamline seasonal hiring: Verified First’s seamless integration with ApplicantStack. The integration is designed precisely to address the challenges of high-volume seasonal hiring. When you leverage Verified First within ApplicantStack, you unlock capabilities that truly accelerate your screening process.
You can order background checks directly from ApplicantStack with a single click, meaning no more navigating to separate portals or manually re-entering data. Status updates allow you to track the progress of each background check within your ApplicantStack dashboard, so you know exactly where each candidate stands, enabling faster decision-making. Streamlined consent forms mean Verified First automates the consent process, sending clear, compliant forms directly to candidates, reducing friction and speeding up turnaround times.
Ultimately, by eliminating manual steps and leveraging a robust, efficient screening engine, the Verified First integration helps deliver results faster, so you can make quicker, informed hiring decisions. This powerful partnership ensures that you’re not just moving quickly, but that you’re doing so with the backing of a comprehensive, compliant, and accurate screening solution. It allows your team to focus on talent acquisition rather than administrative burdens, making your seasonal staffing surge manageable and successful.
Maintaining Compliance Throughout the Process
Speed cannot override your legal obligations. Maintaining compliance with regulations is paramount, especially when handling sensitive applicant data and making hiring decisions based on background check results. Key areas to be aware of include the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA). This federal law governs how consumer reporting agencies (like background screening providers) collect, disseminate, and use consumer information, including background checks, outlining strict requirements for disclosure, consent, and adverse action procedures. Businesses must also be aware of “Ban the Box” laws, as many states and localities have regulations that restrict when employers can ask about an applicant’s criminal history during the hiring process, and your background check process must align with these.
Beyond federal laws, state and local regulations often have specific requirements regarding background checks, drug testing, and pre-employment screening. Proper consent and disclosure are vital. Always ensure you obtain proper written consent from applicants before conducting a background check and provide them with the necessary disclosures as required by law.
If you decide not to hire an applicant based, in whole or in part, on information in their background check report, you must follow the FCRA’s adverse action process. This includes a pre-adverse action notice, a reasonable waiting period, and a final adverse action notice. A trusted background screening partner will provide the necessary reports and offer expert guidance and tools to help you navigate these complex compliance requirements, protecting your business from potential legal pitfalls.
Benefits of a Streamlined, Secure Process
Implementing an optimized background check process for your seasonal staffing surge yields significant advantages. You’ll experience faster time-to-hire, as eliminating bottlenecks and leveraging technology allows you to get qualified seasonal staff onboarded quicker, ensuring you’re adequately staffed to meet demand. This process reduces risk by mitigating negligent hiring claims, lessening instances of theft or fraud, and contributing to a safer working environment for everyone.
A smooth, professional background check process improves candidate experience and strengthens your employer brand, making you more attractive to future talent. This efficiency also frees your team from administrative burdens, allowing them to focus on strategic talent acquisition. The result is peace of mind, knowing your seasonal workforce is thoroughly vetted and meets your standards, so you can concentrate on operational demands. The seasonal staffing surge doesn’t have to be a trade-off between speed and security. By adopting a proactive, technology-driven approach, leveraging smart background screening solutions, and maintaining strict compliance, businesses can achieve both.
To learn more about optimizing your background screening process, especially with solutions designed for efficiency and compliance, explore partnerships like Verified First’s seamless integration with ApplicantStack. Ensure your next staffing surge is powered by speed and security.
Guest Post by Maddy Atwater
Maddy Atwater is a Content Marketing Specialist at Verified First with over five years of copywriting and marketing experience. Her other published work includes short stories, features, and reviews. Her writing and marketing experience spans various industries including technology, B2B, healthcare, consumer packaged goods, retail, and more. Maddy has produced and edited content for all digital platforms and across various print media. She is originally from San Francisco, California, and currently lives in Denver, Colorado. Maddy holds a Bachelor of Science in Strategic Communication from the University of Colorado Boulder.
Candidate management covers any strategies companies use to organize, categorize, prioritize and track applicants for their available positions. With the right tools, managing candidates can be an efficient and effective process, helping organizations hire the best applicants without investing too much time or resources.
Candidate Management: An Overview
Candidate management, sometimes called candidate relationship management, might involve sourcing and attracting applicants, screening resumes and cover letters, conducting interviews, assessing skills, communicating with candidates and hiring the most qualified individuals. All of these efforts can help those involved in the hiring process identify and prioritize top jobseekers while maintaining relationships and creating a pool for future opportunities.
What’s a Candidate Management System?
A candidate management system, sometimes shortened to CMS, is typically a software solution that enables hiring managers, human resources teams and recruiters to take control of the hiring process in a way that works for them. Candidate management software stores candidate data and assists in making hiring decisions. With effective candidate management software, you can track candidates, implement knockout questions and keep your recruitment team on the same page.
The Benefits of Candidate Management
A candidate management system offers many benefits, including:
Task automation
Enhanced collaboration
Improved internal and external communication
Reduced time-to-hire
Insights into the hiring process
Remote hiring facilitation
7 Core Components of Candidate Management
An effective candidate management system should facilitate myriad tasks, including:
Candidate Sourcing and Tracking
A candidate management system can help you source the most qualified job seekers for your available position(s). By carefully crafting your job description, posting it on the right job websites and establishing candidate criteria, you can create a system that makes it easier to attract and identify high-quality applicants.
Keeping track of all the candidates who apply can be its own chore, however. That’s why candidate management solutions often have applicant tracking features. These systems enable hiring managers and recruiters to track candidates’ progress and help with scheduling interviews. Applicant tracking systems help human resources and recruitment teams get on the same page and make smart decisions about which candidates to hire.
Communication
The importance of communication during the recruitment and hiring process cannot be overstated. Companies must clearly communicate their expectations and criteria. They need to communicate with candidates promptly in whom they are interested. It’s also prudent to have good communication with the candidates companies don’t select to keep the door open for potential future opportunities. This creates a positive candidate experience, and a helpful way to do this is through automation.
A good candidate management system includes automation features that improve communication efficiency. This effort might involve using automated email templates, scheduling tools and status notifications.
Data Gathering
Even for small organizations, the talent acquisition process involves a great deal of data. This includes the number of applicants and their individual skills, working experience, diplomas and certifications, references and personal information. For organizations that grade their candidates internally based on predetermined criteria, this data is even more important to collect and track.
A candidate management system with effective data gathering and display options is key. A solution that can capture and store candidate information in a centralized candidate database that’s easy for HR staff or recruiters to access boosts efficiency and reduces the risk of data loss.
Feedback Management
The recruitment process isn’t a one-way street; an effective strategy incorporates candidate feedback. This helps employers learn more about how job seekers view their company—their employer brand—and can help them refine their hiring process to increase candidate engagement.
A candidate management or applicant tracking system might include a feedback management module that documents candidate feedback, as well as notes from recruiters, interviewers and hiring managers. Storing this data in accessible places helps organizations continually improve how they hire.
Interviewing
A candidate management solution should include an interview scheduling feature so all parties involved can easily find a time that works for everyone. With data sharing, hiring teams can share documents internally and with interviewees so everybody has the information they need.
Resume and CV Management
Candidate management systems may also feature tools that make reviewing and understanding resumes and CVs easier. For example, resume parsing technology can automatically extract relevant information, such as skills and credentials, and store them in candidate profiles for quick review.
Segmentation
The candidate segmentation feature of a candidate management or applicant tracking system can affix different tags to profiles. These tags might indicate different titles, specializations or other candidate attributes. This allows a recruiter or hiring manager to search for candidates by these tags and then create personalized messages accordingly.
Candidate Management Best Practices To Boost Recruitment Outcomes
Some best practices of managing candidates effectively include:
Customizing Your System
Candidate management works best when organizations tailor their strategies based on unique needs and circumstances. The best applicant tracking systems have customization capabilities, such as branded careers pages to create consistency and strengthen the employer brand. Such features also enable recruiters and hiring teams to personalize their communications.
Employing a Candidate-Centric Approach
A major focus of candidate relationship management is cultivating a better candidate experience. It’s often beneficial for organizations to approach talent acquisition similarly to how they approach marketing their products or services. Effective candidate outreach centers on candidate needs and preferences, helping organizations to better understand the motivations and career goals of the talent they attract. This understanding can help organizations refine, fine-tune and personalize their hiring campaigns to find the perfect available talent for their needs.
Measuring and Tracking Metrics
Another similarity between candidate management strategies and marketing plans is that both require a clear definition of success. It’s important to establish metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) before beginning or revamping a candidate engagement or talent acquisition strategy.
It’s also critical to measure and track those KPIs and metrics. An effective applicant tracking solution can help you track and store all this data, to which you can add notes for contextualization. Some hiring metrics and KPIs you may want to track include:
Number of applications: How many candidates applied
Candidate engagement: How many candidates interacted, such as by responding to emails or coming in for interviews
Candidate satisfaction scores: Scores derive from email feedback surveys
Time to hire: How long it took to fill a position
Nurturing Candidate Relationships
It can be valuable to nurture candidate relationships over time. Many employers find they have numerous qualified candidates applying for one job. This is great for a company, but it can be frustrating for job seekers.
The job market is forever changing, however, and there’s no guarantee that an organization will always have a surplus of talented candidates applying to every position. Businesses can also find themselves having to fill one or more positions suddenly. Keeping in touch with previous candidates who impressed, but ultimately didn’t receive an offer, can pay off in the form of a faster hiring process and a lower cost to fill an open role.
This communication includes notifying previous applicants when new positions become available, but you can do more than this. You can send periodic messages about your company and its plans for future growth while checking in and inquiring about past applicants’ professional lives. You can also ask to include them on email newsletters so they automatically receive company updates.
Prioritizing Data Privacy
When looking at candidate management software, it’s crucial to pick a solution that has security and data privacy guardrails. A trustworthy solution has security protocols that can encrypt data when it’s in transit and at rest. Look for a candidate management software provider that will house your data—and the data of your applicants—in a state-of-the-art data center.
Understanding the Importance of Integration
Integration is another key feature to look for in software tools. If an applicant tracking tool is excellent on its own, but it makes transferring information to the other platforms and software you use difficult and unwieldy, it’s not a good option. You can’t upset your whole tech ecosystem to accommodate one tool for managing candidates. Look for a solution that can integrate with your payroll modules, virtual interview platform, and background check tools.
Turn to ApplicantStack for Your Candidate Management Needs
ApplicantStack features all the candidate management functionalities and benefits mentioned in this article and more. Start a free trial today to discover how ApplicantStack can improve your hiring process.
The hiring process typically involves a lot of steps. And when you’re trying to get the best person in to fill the position, you want to make sure you’re checking all the boxes. One way to weed out candidates who may not fit is to conduct a prescreening questionnaire. This tool can reduce the number of candidates who move on to the interview phase. Learn more about the value of a prescreening questionnaire, as well as what questions to include.
What Is a Prescreening Questionnaire?
A prescreening questionnaire is a set of questions used early in the hiring process to determine whether an individual meets the basic criteria and qualifications for a job. It serves as a quick filter to avoid moving people forward who aren’t good fits for the position. You may use a prescreening questionnaire to verify salary expectations, current responsibilities, or specific skills or certifications.
The Importance of Asking the Right Questions
Implementing a prescreening questionnaire as part of your hiring process can streamline efforts. Considering that the average time to hire across all industries is 44 days, shaving even a couple of days off that number can help keep things moving within your organization.
Hiring is also an expensive undertaking, with the average cost coming in close to $5,000 per new employee. Other estimates suggest that a more accurate cost is up to four times the new hire’s salary when factoring in soft costs, including the time spent by all involved in the recruiting process. Streamlining efforts can only help when it comes to lowering the cost and reducing the hours invested in reviewing applications and conducting interviews.
Asking questions that weed out unqualified candidates also allows your team to focus on those who are a good fit, both in terms of alignment with the culture and skills needed to excel in the role. Interviews become more targeted and productive, further saving time.
From a legal standpoint, a prescreening questionnaire can help your company avoid bias in hiring. Various laws are in effect that restrict against discrimination based on protected characteristics. You can review the laws in your state here. When every applicant faces the same set of questions, the initial filtering phase becomes much more fair and consistent. You can also confirm upfront that each candidate has any required licensure and has legal authorization to work for your company.
Questions to Include on a Prescreening Questionnaire
Now that you understand the value of including a prescreening questionnaire in your hiring process, you may be wondering what to ask. Review these three categories of questions you may want to include.
General prescreening questions
Are you legally authorized to work in the U.S.?
Will you require sponsorship now or in the future to work in the U.S.?
Do you speak [required language] fluently?
Can you read and understand [required language]?
Are you available to work [shift hours]?
Are you willing to undergo a [background check, drug screening] as part of the hiring process?
Have you worked for [company name] in the past?
Can you start work on or before [specific date]?
Skill-specific prescreening questions
Do you have at least [number] of years of experience in customer service?
Have you worked in [industry] in the past?
Are you proficient in [software or tool]?
Have you worked with [programming language]?
Do you hold a [necessary license or certification] that is valid and not expired?
Can you troubleshoot issues in [technology or system]?
Experience prescreening questions
How long have you worked in [industry]?
Have you ever earned a certification in [industry]?
Do you have experience working as a [job title or role]?
Do you have experience in [specific task or responsibility]?
ApplicantStack Simplifies Prescreening
With ApplicantStack, you can easily set up a prescreening questionnaire that ensures you get the answers you need from every applicant. With qualifying and knockout capabilities, you can prevent non-qualified candidates from moving through the hiring process, saving time and effort. Explore how setting up a prescreening questionnaire can benefit your organization.
Many organizations use an applicant tracking system, or ATS, to help their hiring processes. Why are these systems popular and what do they offer? Let’s find out more about ATS recruiting and its advantages.
What Is an Applicant Tracking System and Why Is It Important?
An applicant tracking system (ATS) is a recruiting software solution that can enhance an organization’s hiring process. An organization can funnel its entire recruitment process through its ATS, using it as a central hub for all job openings and applications. By tracking candidates from when they first apply to the hiring stage, an ATS enables hiring managers and recruiters to identify and engage the best available talent efficiently.
How ATS Recruiting Benefits Companies of Different Sizes
An automatic tracking system can make for an easier and more efficient hiring and recruiting process for any organization. From small not-for-profits to multinational corporations, an ATS can help find the best job candidate without expending too many resources.
Key Features to Look for in an ATS
A highly effective applicant tracking system offers features such as:
Analytics and Reporting
Analytics allow for deep dives into each candidate’s qualifications. Recruiters and hiring managers can use an ATS to track certain analytics, such as degrees, certifications, skills and work experience. But all this data can be overwhelming, especially for positions with many applicants.That’s why reporting is helpful. The best applicant tracking systems offer reports that help categorize candidates. They may also include easy-to-access dashboards with real-time insights and data visualizations.
Candidate Tracking
Innovative candidate data management is crucial to an effective ATS. You need to be able to see, track and sort the candidates for an available position. A system with advanced search, tags, candidate pools and other features enables recruiters to find the right potential candidate with a few clicks of a button.
Furthermore, how the ATS displays all the candidate information is key. A visually confusing dashboard won’t convey this data very well and might require too much time and effort to decipher the data. A comprehensive, easy-to-read and easy-to-use candidate tracking interface is highly beneficial.
Collaboration Tools
Most organizations have more than one person handling hiring and recruiting. Seeking new staff, reviewing their resumes and cover letters, and interviewing, hiring and onboarding them is often a team process. It’s collaborative work that requires sharing information and opinions. An ATS that offers tools and features to make hiring team collaboration and candidate communication easier can boost efficiency and reduce misunderstandings.
Customizability
xYou want to hire a candidate for your organization (or for your client’s organization if you work at a recruitment firm). Not for just any company, but one specific business or agency. Ultimately, every organization, position and candidate is unique, and a good ATS for recruiting should reflect this.
You want to be able to customize your system to meet the needs of your organization and find the right applicants. A flexible ATS can help you build processes that work perfectly for you and your team rather than trying to shoehorn your operations into a predetermined workflow. It’s better to create custom pipelines and save customized views enabling you to understand candidates’ details that matter most to you.
Integrability
Presumably, you do more at your work than just candidate sourcing. And these other tasks and responsibilities require you to use other software and solutions, right? Wouldn’t it be great if your ATS integrated with them easily?
One of the big barriers to adopting new technologies is the worry that they won’t work with the platforms you already use. There are few things more aggravating than fighting with two otherwise well-designed solutions that just refuse to cooperate. This is especially true of an ATS platform and various job boards, such as Indeed, LinkedIn, Monster and ZipRecruiter. ATS integration should enable you to quickly post available positions on a job board and source candidate details from them. And it’s a big bonus if it can integrate with the other apps and programs you use.
Interview Scheduling
A big part of hiring and collaboration is scheduling. If you’re hiring for a position that has 10 or more qualified and interesting candidates, you owe it to your company to interview them all. But that’s a lot of scheduling. It requires a great deal of work — often frustrating and repetitive work—trying to nail down when everyone is available. An ATS that makes scheduling interviews easy is a true time-saver.
Resume Parsing
For any job opening with even a modest level of candidate engagement, reading myriad resumes, CVs and cover letters can be quite time-consuming. Furthermore, just about any job posting is likely to receive applications from candidates who are underqualified or don’t really understand what the hiring manager or recruiter is looking for.
Reading resume after resume from applicants who aren’t suitable for interviewing, let alone hiring, is not an efficient usage of time. An effective ATS can provide a major efficiency boost by parsing resumes. Set the ATS to automatically look for certain qualifications or skills and then pull highlight resumes that meet the given criteria.
Screening Automation
Many benefits of a productive ATS platform come down to automation. You want your applicant tracking software to handle the more repetitive and menial tasks of the talent acquisition and hiring process.
ATS solutions that efficiently automate the initial screening process will filter out unqualified candidates and allow hiring managers and recruiters to focus on the top talent who have applied. One example of this is a “knock-out question” — a query about an essential requirement that, if answered incorrectly, effectively ends the applicant’s process.
It may seem harsh, but why invest unnecessary time reading the application of a candidate who genuinely seems like an interesting person with the right attitude if they don’t have the basic skills or qualifications you need? Ultimately, humans make the best hiring decisions. But we can take too long to do it because we get caught up in information that doesn’t really matter. It’s in everyone’s best interest to sort through qualified and unqualified candidates quickly.
User-Friendliness
The best applicant tracking system doesn’t just have all these wonderful features, it also makes these features easy to use. Recruitment can be tough enough as it is; your ATS software should be straightforward and intuitive.
Furthermore, it’s important to consider the candidate experience. A poorly designed applicant tracking system might make the application process too complicated for job applicants and it might let a qualified candidate slip through the cracks. An ATS platform that considers how it interacts with each applicant is beneficial to all parties involved.
Applicant Tracking System FAQs
Here are some frequently asked questions about applicant tracking system technology.
How Does ATS Recruiting Improve the Candidate Experience?
A well-designed ATS doesn’t just help an organization with sourcing candidates, it also makes things easier for job seekers. It enables talent to upload their resumes and it can autofill application forms, reducing the effort and time required to submit a job application.
What Are Some Applicant Tracking System Security and Compliance Considerations?
An ATS solution worth your consideration must have built-in security and compliance features. Each dataset and candidate profile a hiring team shares must be secure and accessible by only appropriate stakeholders. This level of security matters to candidates and it’s important for compliance with various data regulations.
How Does an Applicant Tracking System Reduce Bias?
Hiring bias can affect every organization and recruiting team, usually subconsciously. From the wording of a job description to how we interpret a candidate’s resume, bias can creep into hiring operations in numerous ways.
An ATS should foster fairness and objectivity in hiring by standardizing application reviews. With predefined criteria, an ATS can minimize the potential for human bias, enabling diverse talent to succeed in a merit-based recruitment process.
Benefit From ATS Recruiting With ApplicantStack
ApplicantStack offers the applicant tracking system features mentioned in this blog. With ApplicantStack, you can:
Post and amplify job openings.
Improve collaboration and reduce time-to-hire.
Increase candidate engagement.
Get new employees up to speed quickly.
To learn more about how your organization can benefit from ApplicantStack’s ATS features, start your free trial today!
We recently shared insights from Indeed research that indicated the challenges hiring managers are facing. Between low unemployment rates and economic uncertainty, it’s not easy to find and bring on top talent right now. A recruitment strategy encompasses the actions taken by anyone involved in identifying, attracting, and hiring candidates to fill open roles. Basic methods might include posting open roles on job boards and sharing on social media, while more advanced strategies could include implementing an employee referral program or leveraging automation for sourcing and screening candidates.
The following five recruitment strategies can help you craft a plan that helps your company stand out as a top place to work and attract more candidates.
Improve Your Job Descriptions
It’s no secret that the job listing is typically the first interaction between a potential candidate and your organization. But when the description isn’t very enticing or fails to give an accurate representation of the duties of the job, you may not see a large number of applicants. It’s difficult to find the best person to fill a job when you only have a handful of people to choose from, so improving the descriptions can make a big difference.
When creating job listings, make the titles highly specific and tailored to the various roles. Include the responsibilities, expected soft and hard skills, and how the role fits into the company overall. Make sure to include some information about the company culture to help a potential employee envision themselves working there.
Do a Little Digging
A low unemployment rate often goes hand-in-hand with fewer applications for open roles. Passive candidates are individuals who aren’t actively seeking new opportunities yet might be interested if the right one came along. This means that the ideal candidate may not fall right into your lap. Instead, you will need to do a little legwork on your end to identify people who have the skills and experience needed to perform well in the job.
Within ApplicantStack, you can also check back on candidates who didn’t end up getting hired for the roles they applied for, yet might be a good fit for others. Keep an eye on your recruitment pool to determine whether any previous applicants are worth a second look.
Attend In-Person Events
In many regions, in-person recruitment events take place regularly. Job fairs can be useful for recruiting employees, but events that aren’t specifically tailored to recruiting can help you build a network and find motivated professionals in your industry.
If you can’t find events in your area or don’t have the time to attend, consider joining industry-focused groups on social media platforms. You may be able to source your next top candidate simply by monitoring the forums or chats and identifying people who have the skills you’re looking for.
Treat a Candidate Like a Customer
Making a positive impression is crucial in successful recruitment. When interacting with a potential new hire, be sure to create good experiences that leave them feeling excited about their prospective future.
One good technique to incorporate into your recruiting strategy is to treat every job candidate like a customer. Respect them and their time, help them feel comfortable and welcome, and offer contact information so they can reach out to you directly with questions.
It’s not easy to change the way you do things, especially if your hiring process has remained similar for years. But today’s jobseeker is looking for something different than those seeking employment previously, so it’s worth meeting them where they are and offering a positive experience.
By taking steps and utilizing all available tools, you can enhance your recruitment strategies and improve key performance indicators, like time-to-fill, cost-to-hire, and application completion rate. ApplicantStack is your secret weapon when it comes to recruiting. It’s an all-in-one applicant-tracking system that takes candidates from initial interest to onboarding, seamlessly. You can start a free trial and post your first job today!
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