How to hire employees using an applicant tracking system?

Applicant tracking system are a great way to save time, reduce stress, and find the best talent for your company. They also make it easy to hire the right people.

An applicant tracking system sometimes called a Candidate Relation Management System is one such tool. It acts as a customer relationship management (CRM) software for hiring.

The U.S. has witnessed a rise in employees leaving their jobs to find more fulfilling work. This trend has been evident since 2020 and for most of 2021. It is just one example of the skilled labor shortfall growing steadily in the U.S. for the past three to five years.

Today’s job market is very different from just a few years ago. It has prompted employees to pay more attention, especially those with niche or valuable skills.

Companies have needed to employ a wider range of techniques and tools to increase their ability to hire and retain talented employees.

My company implemented an applicant tracking system to help them hire more employees with valuable skills. It has helped reduce (or even eliminate) some of the stress associated with traditional recruiting and hiring methods.

Using applicant tracking system to improve your hiring process

Many HR professionals and managers are familiar with the difficulty of finding qualified and talented candidates for key roles within their companies.

This process can become more difficult and expensive if there is no efficient hiring system. It was a problem that my team and I became familiar with within our first year of operation. It was even more difficult when the pandemic hit.

My team and I have seen a huge improvement in the company’s internal recruitment process since implementing an ATS. The applicant tracking system allows us to receive all applications for open positions in our company and place them into one single pipeline.

An example is how integrating an applicant tracking system in our hiring process has allowed us to post job listings for any open position at the company to multiple job boards online. We were able to post advertisements on the boards that saw the most movement and traction.

This further strengthened our recruitment efforts. Whenever a candidate applied for one of our open jobs through a job hunting platform such as Indeed or ZipRecruiter, their application was automatically integrated into our ATS.

The ATS began populating our aggregated hire pipeline with every applicant’s information.

We then identified the most promising applications for each role by using a series of interviews and assessments and using our ATS as a guide through the rest of the hiring and recruitment process.

How an ATS can improve your recruitment pipeline

To give you an idea of how an applicant tracking system can help your company’s recruitment efforts, let me show you how my team and myself have used it in our organization.

No matter what role a candidate is applying for, they will receive an automated thank you email. The ATS system also integrates third party assessment tools.

If a candidate’s resume closely matches the job they are applying for; an automated email will send a link to their first round assessment. These questions include questions about personality and emotional intelligence. We also ask for a writing sample to further assess the candidate’s writing skills.

Our ATS notifies the team once a candidate has completed their initial assessment. We then begin reviewing the answers. We signal approval within the ATS and move them up the application queue if their answers are positive.

A first round interview is conducted with the candidate. It includes a discussion about the specific job and any questions. The HR director also gives the candidate a brief overview of our company culture to ensure they are still a good match for the role.

If the candidate does well in the first round of interviews, they will move to the next section of our ATS. It sends them a second assessment.

The second assessment is more focused on specific job functions. It often includes a second, longer, more detailed writing sample on niche topics. Much of our company’s work focuses on pitching press articles for clients.

The applicant tracking system will send an additional email to alert them that they have been invited for a second round interview with a hiring manager if a candidate passes their second assessment. This stage of the process is where the manager takes a quality control role.

They review the applicants’ assessments and ensure they are still suitable for the job. If the hiring manager believes that the candidate is a good match, they will conduct the third assessment. It includes another personality and intelligence test to confirm that the candidate’s values align with ours.

Once the candidate has been hired, they will move to the end of our ATS pipeline. Then, they can begin their official onboarding process.

An applicant tracking system can use to eliminate bias in the hiring process.

It is essential to use multiple job hunting platforms and sites to maximize the potential value of any applicant tracking system program for your company’s recruitment process.

It will allow you to expand your talent pool. You can then identify the best platforms and start placing targeted ads on those sites for the positions you need to be filled with qualified talent.

After this, your ATS will start aggregating all incoming candidates into one unified place. It allows you and your HR team to build a strong candidate pool and ensure that you truly review and assess all applicants equally.

Integrating assessments should be to eliminate biases in the hiring process. It means that messaging should be tailored to your company’s culture and operational processes. The removal of bias will allow you to evaluate and hire candidates based on their resumes, skills, personality, and assessments.

Implementing an applicant tracking system in your organization’s hiring process will be easy. It will allow you to attract more qualified candidates and position your company to capitalize on the diversity of talent and hire the best candidates for each job.