Choosing the right recruitment software can positively impact your recruitment success. In this insight, we share some areas for thought when evaluating Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS), Recruitment CRM, or Talent Management Platforms to select the most appropriate solution.
Here are some areas for thought from a candidate’s perspective
A candidate portal is an opportunity to build a positive brand and candidate experience. There is the option to provide candidates with more reasons to engage with you if using a candidate portal to add employee stories, what it’s like to work for you, employee benefits, link with social media pages and the opportunity to sign up for job alerts.
Not all ATS vendors provide a candidate portal that can enhance the experience, making it less transactional. It is crucial to have a secure location where candidates can self-serve and apply, monitor and manage their applications, and update data preferences to stay GDPR compliant. In addition, a dedicated candidate portal builds brand engagement to help convert your prospects to candidates and eliminates a reactive approach to keeping candidates informed.
Another point to consider is how easy it is for a candidate to apply for a role. Enabling automatic extraction of all key information into the candidate’s profile, with no re-keying required, will improve converting visitors to candidates.
Some sectors, such as retail, care and hospitality, have candidates applying for multiple positions. Having a form to fill out numerous times as part of the application process is a barrier that detracts from getting the best talent to apply for suitable roles.
A candidate portal can be accessed by the candidate to update their CV, respond to requests, and easily apply for multiple roles, bringing added value to an end-to-end applicant tracking system.
Can candidates easily save applications and come back to them at a convenient point? Some applicant tracking solutions do this using an email link rather than a dedicated candidate portal, but this falls short on brand experience. Using an email link to go back to complete the application using the ATS vendor’s email address rather than from the company email can cause confusion.
The candidate journey
When evaluating Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS), check the journey a candidate will follow. For example, if a candidate arrives at your website, what is their journey to view current vacancies? Is there a seamless integration into your careers site that promotes your brand and suggests the best positions for each candidate based on job type/location? Being able to instantly connect candidates with your career opportunities or sign up to receive relevant job alerts as part of a secure candidate self-service will positively impact your recruitment success and candidate engagement.
How will an ATS support business changes?
An area often overlooked when evaluating and implementing recruitment software is the ability to adapt to change. Change is inevitable, yet it is something many buyers rarely look at during decision-making. The concept of recruitment technology supporting change is a topic of its own. We’ve got a blog that shares what recruitment technology needs to support change, but at a high level:
Customising recruitment data you can drill down into should always be the preferred choice to a standard set of reports with little or no customisation.
Check who can make system changes and if this is instant. System changes that need to be made by a vendor as a chargeable activity are rarely considered during the decision-making process and a bugbear once a system is implemented.
Understand the capability of applicant tracking software and how this will support evolving and linking with other systems, e.g. a comprehensive set of APIs to link with other systems.
As recruitment evolves over time, you should be confident that your evaluation of a suitable Applicant Tracking System (ATS), Recruitment CRM, or Talent Management Platform can support change and delivers on candidate engagement.
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Case Study: Travelodge understood its target candidate audiences and personalised the content and profiles on its careers website to foster engagement from the beginning of the journey, highlighting the individual needs of these segments.
