It is common sense that an Applicant Tracking System (ATS allows recruiters to build a more efficient hiring process. However, not everyone is aware of the fact that it can also be leveraged to provide a winning candidate experience, which is key to run a successful recruiting process.
Regardless of whether a candidate gets hired or not for a position in your company, the candidate experience you provide has a great impact on your company’s employer branding. In fact, it can affect your company’s ability to attract talent. Therefore, as a recruiter, your mission is not only to hire the best people but you also to turn as many candidates as possible into future ambassadors, right?
To be able to do so, you definitely need to update your recruitment strategy and implement HR tech solutions that enable better and faster hiring while enhancing the candidate experience. Implementing an ATS is crucial to develop a modern and digital recruitment process that can make the new generation of job seekers feel drawn to apply to your company.
An ATS is more than a software that you use to gather and organise the candidates’ information. The right ATS offers you essential features that improve your productivity and allow you to better match your candidates’ expectations throughout every stage of your company’s recruitment process.
Leveraging Your ATS to Provide a Top Candidate Experience
Here are 3 steps that you should follow to leverage your Applicant Tracking System to provide an enhanced candidate experience:
1. Provide a Simple, Mobile-Friendly Application Process
Most job seekers aren’t willing to participate in long and exhausting application processes and they use mobile devices to search for and apply to a job. According to comScore, an Internet analytics company, mobile-only internet users have outnumbered desktop-only users. Not surprisingly, 9 out of 10 job seekers conduct their search from their mobile devices and 70% of job seekers want to apply to jobs directly from their phones.
Adding to this, the more qualified a candidate is, the less likely he is to finish extensive job applications says job search engine Indeed. That’s why your application process must be intuitive, simple and fast to prevent dropouts. Candidates expect you to parse their resumes and limit the remaining fields to relevant, application-related information that is not on their CVs.
To be able to deliver such a short but efficient process, you must rethink your recruitment strategy. With an ATS, you can make sure that mobile users can apply for a job in your company seamlessly on their mobile devices.
The easier you make it for candidates to apply, the more they’ll finish the application process. Thus, having an optimised and mobile-friendly application process is mandatory to attract more and better candidates.
2. Speed up the Recruitment Process
Oftentimes, recruitment processes take long due to disorganised workflows and the use of multiple software and tools. If it is hard for recruiting teams to know where they're standing at each stage of the recruitment cycle, they’ll certainly take more time to complete their tasks.
Implementing an ATS can be a good solution to manage all the steps of your recruitment process efficiently. Having all of the candidates’ information centralised and organised in one single platform allows recruiters to have a clearer overview of the hiring process.
Moreover, recruiters can use the ATS to perform most of their tasks: post job offers, receive and screen applications, assess candidates, send personalised email communications, rank and comment on each candidate’s profile and make collaborative hiring decisions.
Automated communication features also shorten the recruitment cycle, making it quicker to provide general follow up and to move candidates forward to the next steps. Overall, an Applicant Tracking System allows recruiters to develop and execute a more efficient workflow, which directly impacts the candidate journey.
3. Provide Follow-up and Maintain Continuous Engagement
Most candidates agree that their biggest frustration during the hiring process is the lack of communication and feedback. According to research from Talent Board, 47% of job seekers were still waiting for feedback from employers two months after they applied for a job. The same research also pointed out that only 20% of unsuccessful applicants were notified by email and even less, 8%, received a phone call.
Maintaining constant communication and providing feedback at every stage of the process is crucial to avoid a poor candidate experience and strengthen your company’s employer branding.
Using ATS communication tools, such as email automation, integrated email templates and self-schedule interview calendar sure facilitates and expedites communication with candidates. By planning your recruitment process touchpoints you can leverage this software automation tools to keep candidates in the loop regarding where they stand in the process and provide them with winning candidate experience.
Skeeled offers you the perfect opportunity to bring innovation and digitalisation to your hiring. Check our website or our LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook pages for further information.
Thanks for reading and see you next time!
Your team here at skeeled
