How to Better Engage Hiring Managers in your Recruiting Process

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One of the most common challenges I hear from the HR professionals I talk with is how to better engage their hiring managers in the recruiting process.  The hiring manager is one of the most important stakeholders in the recruiting process, but they are often the hardest to effectively engage in the process.  It really isn’t that surprising, since most hiring managers are primarily focused on the operations of their unit and often don’t have a great deal of time to devote to recruiting.

Here are some tips on how to better engage your hiring managers in the recruiting process.

Collaborate with Managers up-front to determine good initial screening questions and criteria

Especially in today’s economy the chances are good that you will receive a flood of applicants to any job you post online.  In many processes the recruiter screens the initial applicants and only passes the top candidates on to the manager for feedback.  In order to find the best candidates and make sure top candidates don’t slip through the cracks, you should set up some good screening questions and criteria for the recruiter to use.

Some questions can be pulled directly from the job posting you created, which you carefully composed such that it attracted the right type of candidate. For example:

  • Do you have a Bachelors degree?
  • How many years experience do you have in direct sales?
  • Are you willing to travel up to 50%?

Other questions may require deeper analysis and a discussion with the manager about what makes an ideal candidate or who has succeeded in this role in the past.  For example:

  • What do you like most about being a salesperson?
  • Please describe your home office equipment and environment (i.e. for a telecommute position)
  • Describe a recent time when you had to respond to a customer issue and what steps you took to solve the problem.

These questions can be asked during an initial phone screen or interview.  But many Applicant Tracking Systems are able to streamline the process by asking applicants to answer these questions during their online application.  For example, with our ApplicantStack system the recruiter is able to create any number of screening questions to pre-screen job applicants, and even score the responses automatically and “knock-out” applicants who are unqualified.

Make it easy for Managers to review candidates

A few years ago I was the manager at a company that used an Applicant Tracking System to streamline their recruiting process.  Everything worked great – recruiters posted jobs online, applicants applied and were pre-screened and scored, and everything was stored in a central database which both the recruiter and manager could access.

The problem was when it came time for me to go in and review applicants to my job, it was so cumbersome that the process would grind to a halt.  Each person I had to review took 5-10 clicks to get to their information, the system was sluggish and unresponsive, and it was difficult to submit and view feedback on the candidate.  I remember wishing for the “good old days” when I would just get a paper resume on my desk!

Managers are busy just like the rest of us and if you don’t make the review process simple and quick they won’t use it, or it will delay your time to hire.

Here are some questions to ask to make sure your review process is easy for managers to use:

  • How many people will the manager need to review?  Will they be receiving every single applicant to your job or only the top candidates that the recruiter sends them?
  • If managers will only be reviewing top candidates, how easy is it for the manager to find and view their information?  How many clicks does it take before they are viewing the candidate’s resume.  How many clicks to move to the next resume to review?
  • How easy is it for the candidate to submit feedback on a candidate, and view the feedback of others?
  • Does the process require the manager to login to your recruiting system to view candidates, or are you able to send them resumes through email to collect reviews?  Many managers don’t want to memorize another login to another system and would greatly prefer to receive candidates via email.

Collect better feedback through forms and questionnaires

Many applicant review processes consist of the recruiter emailing a resume to a manager with the single question “What do you think?”  While there’s nothing wrong with this simple approach, there are advantages to collecting more structured feedback from managers through a questionnaire or form.

When you ask somebody what they think of a particular movie, you’ll likely get back a black-or-white answer like “it was great!” or “it was awful”.  But if you ask them to rate a movie on a scale of 1-5 on some key criteria (story, acting, music, costumes, etc) you’ll get a much richer review and separation between other movies they may have reviewed.

The same applies to reviewing candidates.  When you ask a manager to answer structured questions and provide numeric rating on a candidate, you’ll force them to think broadly about the candidate and not just provide their first-impression.

Ideally if you are going to use manager review forms and questionnaires in your process, you will want to streamline the collection of the data with online questionnaires, ideally in an Applicant Tracking System.  And once again, it needs to be easy for the manager to complete the questionnaire or they won’t use it.

In our ApplicantStack system, you can create Manager Feedback Questionnaires and have them asked directly on the page where the manager views the candidate’s resume and other information.  For a more information and examples see Faith Bliga’s previous post on Manager Feedback and Interview Evaluations.

Support different levels of involvement from your managers

Finally, every manager will have his or her own style and will likely want a different level of involvement in the recruiting process.  Some managers are very “hands-off” and just want the recruiter to find a good candidate for their department with the least amount of work on their part.  Others are very “hands-on” and want to see every single candidate that comes in and decide themselves which ones meet the initial qualifications.

As such, you should keep in mind that whatever process you put in place should be flexible enough to accommodate the requests of different hiring managers.  For a manager who wants to delegate to the recruiting group, you should be able to send them only top-candidates, already pre-screened, for them to interview.  For a manager who wants to be more involved, you should be able to set it up so that person can see all applicants and see everything that’s happening in the system.

If you are implementing an Applicant Tracking System, make sure it has flexible workflow support to allow you to implement these types of different processes efficiently.

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Are Your Job Postings Attracting the Right Candidates?

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As you read through the backgrounds of hundreds of people who apply for your open jobs, do you find yourself scratching your head and thinking…. “Why in the world would this person apply for this job? He’s a mail clerk and I’m looking for a Technical Writer or she’s been working for McDonalds for three years right out of high school and this position requires a BS degree and five years of sales experience!”  If this is happening more than you would expect, it might be a good idea to revisit your job postings.

I know, you’re going to say, “it states right here—BS degree required.”  Could it be that maybe to save time, your job posting was copied and pasted from a two page job description and the information is buried in there somewhere?  At the other extreme, maybe you just posted a few brief and vague lines from the job summary?  While your professional time is important and limited, you’ll either “pay now or pay later”.  It’s probably more prudent to take the time now to create an effective job posting than wasting your time later reading resumes and responding all those unqualified applicants.

I doubt the applicants who are looking for employment now, are going to take the time to read through two pages of text? And if the summary you posted is too broad and general, there’s a chance everybody may think they could do the job! Keep in mind that job seekers may be reviewing hundreds of job postings to decide where they want to apply.

Think of your job posting as an advertisement—a communication tool that describes why your company is a great place to work and who will be successful in the job.  You don’t have to include every last detail but rather be sure to include the primary responsibilities, and the “must have” credentials and experience.  Try to avoid long paragraphs and run on sentences by using bullets to list what it is you want to convey. Your job title should indicate what level you are looking for—senior, associate, entry level,  lead, etc. Make sure your job posting is concise, interesting, and informative.  While reviewing your job posting, try putting on your job seeker’s hat and ask yourself…. Did I give too much, too little, or just enough information for the job seeker to say…this job is right for me?

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Get your head into the Cloud

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Get your head into the Cloud

ApplicantStack is a cloud computing application. ‘Cloud computing’: most of us have heard the term; maybe even used it. Do we know what it means?

Actually, it is a semi-technical term meaning that the internet is ‘like’ a cloud. A real cloud is zillions of tiny raindrops caught up in turbulent, swirling winds, going first this direction, then that direction. Together these raindrops on their chaotic paths obscure our vision and form what we see as a cloud.

That’s the way the internet looks to a computer engineer. On the internet the ‘droplets’ are called packets and they appear to travel in chaotic fashion, much like the rain droplets, along with billions of other packets swirling in an electromagnetic wind.

Beyond that, the analogy breaks down. We never know where raindrops are going to land. Packets have an assigned destination. Packets are guided to their destinations but not necessarily the way most would think. Packets rarely take the shortest route. Depending on traffic conditions, broken down or out of service equipment, or other issues, they may travel thousands of miles out of their way.

Their pathways can be tracked. Let’s say I am in Atlanta and connected to a website in Boston. It would not surprise me to find that my connection passes through places like Chicago, Denver, Phoenix or other far away locations. The internet is not concerned with sending my signal packets on the most direct route because packets travel at the speed of light which is 186,000 miles per second. Yes that’s PER SECOND. At that speed, a few thousand extra miles here, a few thousand extra miles there; who will notice?

Cloud computing has a number of advantages and a few disadvantages which we will discuss later. First lets talk about a major advantage of cloud computing: efficient use of resources.

Another term most of us have become familiar with is VOIP. VOIP(Voice Over Internet Protocol, like Vonage, Skype, cable phone service etc) is making a telephone call using the cloud. Let’s compare this with making a land line, or conventional, telephone call.

Again, I imagine I am in Atlanta making a land line call to Boston. When I do this, I get a direct connection to Boston. This connection may pass through many switches but ultimately, I end up with the equivalent of a continuous wire running from Atlanta to Boston devoted exclusively to my phone call.

When I think of one of my phone conversations, I realize I don’t talk all the time. I may be asked a question and have to pause to think of an answer. Someone may ring my doorbell and I have to put the phone down and go to the door. There may be any number or short or long breaks in the conversations because that is the way most conversations go. During those breaks the phone line is left with nothing to do.

I may not be using it much but as long as I am connected, that direct line between Atlanta and Boston is mine, all mine, and dedicated to my conversation.

On a VOIP call, packets are sent between Atlanta and Boston ‘in the cloud’. This means that the same wire or cable that connects me to Boston also connects perhaps hundreds of people in Atlanta to hundreds of people in Boston. My voice is sent as packets and these packets are identified as mine and their destination is the person in Boston. All packets are that way. So all these thousands, millions, or billions of packets can use the same cable because the internet equipment can, it seems like magically, figure out which are mine and which are theirs and where the various packets have to end up. With VOIP, hundreds of calls are made using the same resources it takes to make a single land line call.

That’s why internet phone calls are cheap, or even free.

Going back to the real cloud, we don’t see the droplets, we see the result of the droplets; which is the cotton-like thing floating in the sky. On the internet, we don’t see the packets, we see the results of the packets in the form of a phone call, an email, a web site, or a movie. From that perspective it is not hard to see why computer engineers envision the internet as a cloud.

In a future article I will discuss the implications of the cloud, and cloud computing, for individuals and businesses.

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How an Applicant Tracking System can help you Prescreen Candidates

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Frustrated by reading a lot of resumes of unqualified candidates?  Is narrowing your qualified applicant pool taking up most of your recruiting time?

You are not alone!  Most of the prospective customers I talk to ask if our applicant tracking system can assist with prescreening applicants.

It’s no surprise that as an employer in today’s job market, with relatively scarce jobs and large numbers of available candidates, you are inundated with applicants who don’t meet your requirements. You may have to sift through hundreds of resumes to find qualified candidates for a job.

While the applicant’s cover letter may include a well-crafted overview of their most relevant work experience and their resume may reflect the skills, experience and buzz words listed in your job posting–anyone can look good on paper!

So if the candidate has represented themselves pretty well on paper, your next step is probably going to be a telephone screen.  This stage in your process can take days just to connect by telephone or email delaying your process and adding additional expense to your company.  Now on top of everything else, you’ve got a frustrated hiring manager!

Why not consider an automated step before you ever get to the prescreening methods mentioned above?  During the application process, online prescreening questions can be used to filter through unqualified job seekers, enabling employers to spend their time looking at a short list of the most qualified candidates. If executed properly, prescreening can save recruiters and hiring managers as much as 30% to 50% of their time.

If you’re fortunate enough to have chosen an applicant tracking system that has this functionality, you can develop a list of questions that include the “must have” experience for the job.  They can be yes/no, multiple choice, or text answers that can actually be scored.  You can give value to different answers and even add knockout scores!

Customer feedback about the ApplicantStack pre-screening feature includes comments like:

  • “Eliminates undesirable or unqualified applicants”
  • “Dramatically reduced our time to hire”
  • “Allows our recruiting staff and hiring managers to spend their time focusing on the most qualified candidates”
  • “Reduced our cost of hiring by eliminating extra hours spent conducting phone and personal interviews, using costly assessment tools and doing unnecessary  background checks”
  • “We were able to communicate more quickly with applicants who didn’t meet minimum qualifications, reducing phone calls to check on their status”
  • “Reduces legal liability because all applicants for the same position are asked the same prescreening questions”

Don’t ignore this valuable feature of your applicant tracking system.  Once you get comfortable with creating appropriate questions and scoring the answers, you will be amazed at the benefits!

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Not all Technical Support plans are created equal

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If you ask any software company whether they provide technical support for their product, the answer is just about always an enthusiastic “Yes!”.  But technical support is more than just a box that you can check off when doing a product evaluation.  And what a vendor means when they say they “provide technical support” can be the difference between a successful and unsuccessful implementation.

For example, there is a popular web survey product which we use quite often to run customer surveys.  By looking at their website you would get the impression that they offer outstanding technical support.  They describe their technical support team as “passionate experts” who are “highly responsive”, which gives the image of an office of technical experts just waiting by the phone or the computer to help a customer out.

But every time I’ve submitted a request for support, I’ve received back at most a link to an online knowledge base article.  At least 24 hours after my request.  Never sooner.

And phone support?  Maybe I just never had the patience to wait long enough in the queue when I called.

In contrast, there is another software we use to run some web marketing campaigns, and this company also says they provide technical support.  In fact from their website it looks exactly the same as the web survey product. But in this case, I can call a number and reach a real person, not a phone queue.  I can ask specific questions about our account and he’ll go in to see what I’m talking about.  And if I can’t reach this person right away he will always call me back within 4 hours.

Two very different practices but both vendors call it “technical support”.

The point being that when evaluating an applicant tracking software vendor, or any software vendor for that matter, it’s important to dig deep to figure out what they mean when they say they provide “technical support”.  Here are some criteria to consider:

  • Are you able to talk to a real, live person with a question or can you only ask questions via email?
  • If you are able to talk with a live person, is that person a technical expert on the product? Note that many companies say they offer live phone support but it’s really just a call center where your question will be taken and passed along to another person to answer, so it’s not really “live” support.
  • Do you have a single Account Manager who you can contact, or do you need to contact a general support line for each issue?
  • Will the support team answer specific questions about your account configuration, or just provide general guidance and links to online help articles?
  • How quickly are you able to get an answer to a question?  Companies often will provide a response time estimate, but the only way to really know is to either try it out for yourself in a Trial period, or a no-contract SaaS plan, or talk with some current customers.
  • If you need help that goes beyond product support, like configuration help, feature customization, special training or custom reports, is the vendor willing to provide that service (usually for an additional fee)?

Whenever we talk with a person who is evaluating our ApplicantStack Applicant Tracking System, we often get the standard questions about technical support – what are your support hours? does support cost extra? do you offer phone and email support?  While these are all great questions, it is worthwhile to dig a little deeper to determine what exactly a vendor means when they say they provide technical support.  It’s one of the most important evaluation criteria and what sets apart vendors who may look the same from a website.

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The Difference between Configuration and Customization

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Interested in the SaaS model for a new Applicant Tracking System? The difference between “Configuration” and “Customization” can add thousands of dollars to what you thought you would pay!

As a purchaser and user of applicant tracking software, I learned the hard way that many people use the terms configuration and customization interchangeably. To us users and usually non-technical people, the terms often mean the same thing. However, software developers– those creative people behind the scenes who are developing these helpful recruiting tools– think of them quite differently. So I’m writing today to try to clear up the difference and help you avoid a major mistake when choosing an applicant tracking system.

SaaS (Software as a service) is becoming very popular because “technically” speaking it is a software delivery model in which software and its associated data are hosted centrally (typically in the (Internet) cloud) and are accessed by users using a thin client, normally using a web browser over the Internet.

Okay, so to us non-technical users, this simply means that the SaaS model is a web-based solution that only requires an internet browser to use and requires little or no internal IT support. The system and data are securely stored on the SaaS vendor’s server.

If the SaaS vendor describes their system as “configurable” they typically mean that the software is complete and that we only need to fine tune it for our specific needs. We can change the behavior of a feature by pressing a few buttons. The benefits of the configurable system are:

  • The application is hosted centrally, so new releases can be put in place without requiring customers to physically install new software.
  • The application configurations can be tested and corrected faster.
  • The solution provider has access to user behavior within the application (usually via web analytics), making it easier to identify areas of improvement.

After all, that’s what we all want, right?

On the other hand, “customization” technically means that the product is only half way done or incomplete, which will require secondary development to meet our needs. Writing new code by a software developer typically equates to added expense and a lot more time. The cost of a professional developer and the time it takes to test the new code can often add up to spending considerably more money and taking a lot longer to implement. Additional changes to the customized system will continue to add to the cost of the system.

My advice is read the fine print, ask the right questions and get clarification on the whether the system you are interested in is configurable or customizable!

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HR and Recruiting Software – Ten Steps to Making the Right Selection

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Bringing on a new HR and Recruiting Software product is an important decision.  You want to make sure it does the job, is easy to use, and fits within the budget.  Here are 10 Steps that will help you make the right decision.

  1. Define the Recruiting Process and Workflow – map out the steps in your company’s recruiting process.  This is often called a workflow, but you can simply think of it as a flowchart that maps out the steps you normally follow.  Since there are several different recruiting tasks that need to be performed, it may be helpful to create several different flowcharts.
  2. Define Your HR and Recruiting Needs – think through what needs to be accomplished at each step in the process and write it down.  For example, after you create a job description, if it needs to be posted on a company website and also to job boards, make sure both of those requirements are captured.  If you need to collect resumes into a searchable database, put that down as a requirement in collecting resumes.  And if you need automated follow-up emails upon receipt of each job application, capture that.
  3. Review Several HR and Recruiting Software Applications – there are many products available and you can learn about their capabilities online.   Read through the product features list, read what customers have to say.  Also, you try to find independent product reviews for objective sources.  Of course, it is also helpful to see examples and testimonials from customers in a similar business to yours.
  4. Evaluate the Candidates – Based the requirements you defined; see how good a fit each product is for the capabilities that you need.  Make a list of a handful of products that meet your criteria and go to the next step.
  5. Define a Short List – After verifying the product has the right capabilities, narrow down the list to the top 2 or 3 candidates by making sure it has the right ease-of-use and cost.  Ease-of-use is critically important because if people can’t easily learn how to use the application, they will quickly return to the old, manual, and inefficient ways of doing business.  This means your company will not get the desired benefit.  Finally, make sure the pricing model is within your budget
  6. See a Product Demonstration – it is always good to see the product in action.  You can either get a live product demo, or view an online video demonstration.  Make sure you pay special attention to what is most important to your company.
  7. Get a Free Trial of the Product – the “Proof is in the Pudding” so take a test drive of the product.  If companies offer a Free Trial, take advantage of it to learn how it works, test the features, and verify the usability.  If a company doesn’t offer a free trial, ask them for one.  And, if they are hesitant, it begs the question of why they are reluctant to have you try it before buying it.
  8. Verify Good Customer Support – no matter how good a product is, there are always questions about how to get up and running or how to get the most from the product.  Ask the company about their support policy and see what other customers have to say about their responsiveness.
  9. Confirm the Terms of the Deal are a Good Fit – Make sure there are “No Surprises” or hidden risks such as the cost of adding new users or switching to a new application if this one doesn’t work out like you had planned.   Some agreements may have “exit costs” that make it painful to make a change down the road.  A key reason Software-as-a-Service business models are becoming more popular is that there is often little to no cost associated with starting-up or stopping the service.
  10. Make a Final Selection – Enough said.  Once you have gone through these key steps, you should fell confident in making your final product selection.
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How to Create a Smooth Online Application Process

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As any recruiter or HR professional will tell you, one of the primary considerations you should make with any new recruitment technology is the experience of the candidate. Process automation is great, but first you have to get good, qualified candidates to apply for your positions.  And it all starts with having a robust, smooth and easy-to-use online application process.

We’ve worked with hundreds of companies to set up their online career site, job board and online application. We also talk with candidates who are applying on these sites, so we hear first-hand the ways that they can get frustrated and tripped up. The following are some of our suggestions for a great online application process.

Brand your employment site to match your website

The first thing a candidate will notice when they hit your employment portal is the overall look and feel of the site.  Having your company name and logo is an excellent start, but even better is having a site that matches your main website’s design and navigation, to give a consistent, professional impression to the candidate.

For example, here are a few ApplicantStack customer employment sites that we think provide a consistent, clean brand image to the candidate:

Keep in mind that having an employment site that matches your website doesn’t require that your existing website administrator create the site.  Many third-party systems for employment sites are able to create a “skin” which matches the website, so it will appear consistent to the candidate even though it’s running on a different system.

Make sure your job information is up-to-date and complete

You want to make sure the list of jobs and job descriptions on your site are complete and up-to-date.  One of the primary benefits of an employment site is to enable candidate self-service so they are not calling up your company to inquire about your jobs.  But if you have out-of-date jobs on your site or don’t provide all the details of your jobs, you will be missing one of the primary benefits of an employment site.

Having a good applicant tracking system is an excellent way to make sure the information on your employment site stays up-to-date and complete.  When you post a new job you can push it automatically to your employment site. Similarly, if you modify the details of a job or close a job, the change can be made automatically in real-time. This sure beats having to submit a request to your website administrator to update your site each time your jobs change.

Decide how much you want to ask of candidates when they apply

When designing your online application you should consider how many fields you will ask the candidate to fill out in order to apply.  Many organizations just ask for basic contact information (Name, Address, Phone, Email) and a Resume, while others may ask the candidate to fill out a complete Employment Application with separate sections for Personal Information, Education, Employment History, References, etc.  Still others will ask for basic contact information and then ask some job-specific screening questions.

There is no right or wrong size for an online application, but you should weigh the trade-offs.  In general, the more fields you ask in an online form, the less people you will have complete the form.  However, it is often advantageous to collect all the information you need in your hiring process up-front, rather than having to request it later in the process. Also, many companies, such as those under OFCCP regulation, are required to review each application and document the review, so it may be advantageous to restrict applications to only those most serious candidates.

Keep the application simple

Many forms on the web these days, especially those designed by us web developers, tend to be a bit “too clever”.  Developers have this nasty habit of trying to take advantage of every technology at their disposal, even if it doesn’t improve the user’s experience. You want to project a modern image to your candidates, but if you try to make your application too fancy it can make it hard for the candidate to fill out.

For example, scripts and animations during the application can look cool but can also get in the way of the basic task of filling out the fields.  This is especially true of longer applications such as a complete employment application.  Web technology was built with a very simple, but robust way to capture data through forms, and often just sticking to these web standards will result in the most usable forms.

Any web site should keep in mind that users will be coming from multiple environments and browsers, which is even more reason to keep the application simple and stick with standards.  The animation where the screen scrolls up and prompts the user to fill out a missing field may look great on your browser, but someone on another (older?) browser may find it prevents them from completing the application.  Better to just do the validation when the user clicks Submit and come back with a prompt for any missing data.

Don’t make the candidate re-enter data

There’s nothing more frustrating than being asked to fill out questions in an application process that you’ve already answered somewhere else.  For example, you provide your Contact Information when you register with the system, but then when you go to apply to a job the system asks you to fill it out again.  Or even worse is when you apply for one job, then go and apply for a second job and the system asks you to fill out the complete application again.

A good application system should be able to save an applicant’s information and re-use it later in the process to prevent duplicate (or triplicate!) data entry.

Be careful of data loss resulting from timeouts and lost sessions

Actually, there is something more frustrating than having to enter data you’ve already entered somewhere else, and that is having the data you’ve spent so much time entering suddenly lost.  We’ve all had the experience of filling out a form, entering a comment or composing an email, and then clicking Submit only to lose the data entirely. Sometimes a person will take the time to enter the information again, but more often they will just leave in frustration.

The usual culprit in these situations is system timeouts and lost sessions in your application system.  For example, if a candidate has the Apply page up and partially filled out, then is called away from her computer suddenly, when she comes back to Submit the application she may find that her session with the system has timed out and the data she entered on previous pages is lost.

Most good application systems will be engineered to prevent this type of data loss, but you should definitely test it out.  For a simple test, just start an application and go half-way through, then leave the screen up over night and in the morning try to submit.  If the page comes back with a “Your session has ended” message and you can’t get back to your data, there is session timeout problem and there’s a good chance it will affect your candidates.

Single page or multiple page?

When designing your online application you will need to decide whether you want to have all fields on a single page, with the Submit button at the bottom, or broken up into multiple pages with Next and Back buttons.  There are advantages to either method, but you need to consider the trade-offs:

Single Page Application:

  • Allows the candidate to see everything they are being asked to submit and thus determine if they have time to complete it in this sitting
  • Keeps the application process simple (less moving parts)
  • Prevents data loss because all information is submitted at once, rather than kept in session memory (see session timeout issue above)

Multiple Page Application:

  • For very long applications, breaking it up into multiple pages can make it not seem as long to the candidate
  • The system can validate the information page by page and provide more immediate feedback, rather than all at once at the end
  • You can use questions on previous pages to trigger logic on later pages (i.e. skip questions), although this does make developing the application quite a bit more complex

For most cases we prefer single-page applications because of the simplicity and ease-of-use.  But either method can be implemented successfully.

Provide confirmation and information on next steps

Finally, after the candidate has submitted his or her application you should provide a confirmation message that the application was received.  Along with a general confirmation message, you may also want to consider providing some additional information to help the candidate understand the next steps in the process.  For example:

  • If you will be sending email communication from a central email address (i.e. careers@yourcompany.com), you can ask the candidate to add this email address to their address book / white list so your emails won’t be accidentally caught as spam.
  • Tell the user when they should expect to hear from you, for example, “We will review all applications within 2 weeks.”
  • Tell the user the next step to expect in the process, such as a phone screen or skills assessment test.
  • If you don’t want the candidate to call you to ask about the status of their application, you should probably tell them so

Moving from a manual application process to an online process has the potential to drastically improve your recruiting workflow and provide a great first impression to your candidates.  But you need to make sure that the process you set up isn’t going to result in frustration on the part of your internal users OR candidates.

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Not just for jobs: Using an ATS to streamline Program Applications, Scholarships, Grant Applications, etc

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While working with several of our customers this past week, it occurred to me how many things people apply for other than jobs!  Things like school admissions, societies and organizations, loans and grants, military branches, awards, scholarships, photo contests, etc. We have several customers–well respected universities and private school systems that are using our applicant tracking system in very creative ways!  They are using the system to accept, track and manage student admission applications online for special programs like Nursing and International Development.

We have converted their long and detailed admissions forms into online versions that collect data like undergraduate GPA and test scores and detailed essays explaining why they are a suitable candidate for the program.  All the questions can be scored which helps the Admissions Department focus on the strongest applicants. This is especially helpful when they receive over 1,000 applicants for only 25 available course seats!

We’re also working with another major university who is about to accept applications from companies applying for a special annual monetary award based on their contributions to global social challenges—Wow, how special is it to be part of that?

The unique ways our applicant tracking system is being utilized made me realize how valuable a web-based, affordable , and customizable system really is!  Even more exciting for me is how much we can learn from our customers, if we take the time to listen and make their ideas a reality!   Please comment if you’ve been looking for an effective way to collect data on line and have never thought about configuring a “job” applicant tracking system to fit your needs.

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Posting to Job Boards: How and where most businesses are posting their jobs

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Recently we asked our ApplicantStack customers some questions about their current job posting processes, and what new features they would most like to see in ApplicantStack to help streamline their company’s posting process. We heard back from 73 of our active customers and the following is a summary of what we learned.

We were somewhat surprised that so many of our customers said that they would not use one-click posting to paid job boards.  The rational seems to be split between those who don’t currently use paid job boards, and those who feel that the current method of manually copying a job to a paid job board isn’t really much of a hassle.

The reason I say we were somewhat surprised with this result is that one-click job posting is the #1 question that we get asked in product demos, which makes us think that everybody (or at least the majority) of companies need this feature.  Even those customers to told us that they would definitely use a one-click job posting function, also said that it’s not really that time consuming to post their jobs to each website separately.  Much less time consuming then, say, the time it takes to review and communicate with the candidates who apply to their jobs.

In fact, many customers who do post to multiple third-party job boards said they would like to continue doing it this way, because it gives them more control over their posting process and allows them to negotiate discounted fees with each job board individually.

Of those who said they would use one-click job posting, a common qualifier was that it would need to have automatic source tracking in order for it to be useful, so they can evaluate whether the money they spend advertising on a particular job board has an acceptable ROI.

Not really surprising that 70% of our customers were interested in sending jobs to Indeed and SimplyHired. After all – it’s free publicity! But one recurring statement we heard is that publicity, and thus more applications to a job, is not always desired. For example, many people told us that they hire only local candidates or have highly specialized positions, and thus don’t want the flood of unqualified applicants that would result from posting to a large free job site.

Even among those customers who liked this option, many said they wanted to maintain control over which jobs get posted to the free sites and which do not.  We also heard some suggestions of other free niche job sites that we could include such as idealist.org and flexjobs.com.

We were actually a little surprised that many of our customers weren’t all that interested in one-click posting to social media sites. Many people said that they don’t currently incorporate social media in their job posting process, and aren’t entirely sure how to do so effectively. There was even some concern that posting to social media sites could be used inappropriately and attract the wrong type of person.

Of the three major social media sites we asked about, LinkedIn was by far the one people were interested in most. Not all that surprising, as LinkedIn is viewed as more of a professional networking site than Facebook or Twitter.

Finally, among those who said they wanted to be able to one-click post to paid job boards, we asked the question which job board(s)? The results here aren’t that surprising, with Monster and Careerbuilder coming in as the most popular sites, followed by Dice (mostly for tech jobs) and then Jobing (a relative new comer).

As far as an update on our development roadmap, as current customers are aware we have launched the Indeed/SimplyHired posting and Social Media posting functionality. We appreciate the wonderful feedback we’ve received on these new functions and are thrilled to hear that they are resulting in wider distribution of our customer’s jobs and more qualified applicants.

The development team is just about done with the function to post to paid job boards, starting with Monster and CareerBuilder.  We are planning to make this available in mid-August. If you would like more details regarding getting this in place for your account, please contact us.

What do you think?  Do any of the survey results above surprise you or validate your current thinking on effective use of recruiting technology?

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