Test Your ATS Is It Helping or Hindering Recruitment

Test Your ATS Is It Helping or Hindering Recruitment This post is sponsored by Lever, a new breed of applicant tracking system that emphasizes speed, collaboration and building candidate relationships. Great news! Youve been given the green light on all those grand hiring plans.  Before you start  hunting hot talent, you need to give your software  a  real  health check. A user-friendly yet sophisticated  applicant tracking system is where your success can start.  Take a good look at that ATS of yours, is it helping or hindering your recruitment efforts? Your ATS should promote internal collaboration, save you loads of time  and give candidates a frustration-free  experience. With technology moving at lightning fast speed, it pays to keep up with the times.  If your ATS isnt  capable of these  7 things, its time to shop around: 1.  Syncing centralisation All recruitment data should be stored in one place, with  all recruitment activity  driven out of the one system. Forget cross-checking multiple calendars, directories and  databases, your ATS should be updated in real time by multiple users and promotes information sharing among decision makers.  The best systems complement centralisation  with  instant messaging, to allow for  quick and easy commentary and communication. As we know, time kills deals! 2. Sourcing  referrals The best recruitment occurs when everyone within the company is committed to talent attraction. Your ATS should allow  all staff members to access open vacancies, and follow simple steps  to  pass on job leads to their wider network. Good people tend to know good people, so you should be making the most of your 2nd-degree connections! The best ATS will also make sourcing candidates easier, using a browser  extension to import contacts from social site and CV databases, without the manual labour! 3. Interviews feedback Your ATS should take care of scheduling interviews for you, matching candidate preferences with available time slots. Exit  arduous admin, and enter  clever  automation.  Your ATS should also facilitate the taking of feedback, making it easier for hiring managers and interviewers to  record and measure  skills and performance. Creating custom scorecards allows benchmarking and comparison between candidates, helping you translate  those  sloppy scribbles on the side of a CV into useful comments. 4. Tracking following up Just because  a candidate  isnt  the right  fit for your current vacancy doesnt mean they wont be exactly the person youre looking for  in a couple of  months time. Its important to keep tabs on passive candidates and unsuccessful applicants who have the potential to become employees down the track.  Dont undo all your hard recruitment work by letting them slip through the cracks.  Your ATS should make it easy for you to set reminders for  yourself so you dont have to scribble follow-up notes in your diary. Levers snooze capability allows you to  postpone action on a candidate to a later date, so you dont forget about them. 5. Saving searching When a new vacancy opens up, you shouldnt have to start your search from scratch. An  ATS that builds detailed candidate profiles becomes an invaluable database of future prospects a goldmine of warm leads, acting more like a CRM.  Your software should allow you to perform advanced, specific searches that yield high-quality  results, to save you sorting through hundreds of resumes. 6. User-friendly navigation There is nothing more frustrating than filling out a  confusing application form full of blank fields and generic drop-down options that arent applicable to you. Needless to say, your candidates dont want to be clicking through 70 pages of blandness, only to have the system crash on page 68. Your ATS should offer a streamlined application process, that is easy to use. Likewise, if you want existing staff members to adopt a collaborative approach to recruitment,  you need a system that is straight forward, self-explanatory and efficient. 7. Top-notch reporting Brilliant recruitment takes time and effort. Companies that understand the value of having good people take talent attraction and retention seriously, and constantly work at their strategy. Your ATS should have a sound reporting function that allows measurement  of all recruitment  activity. TAKE ACTION How did your ATS perform? Anything less than 7 out of 7 isnt worth your time or money. Invest in something that makes recruitment  exciting  and manageable! About the author: Leela Srinivasan is  Levers Chief Marketing Officer. Check out their website to learn  how your recruitment processes could be transformed.