Competition is fierce out there when it comes to attracting the best and the brightest talent. And candidate experience starts with providing a seamless job application experience to the job seekers. As an employer, having the right Applicant Tracking System in place can make or break the seamless job application experience for your applicants and the hiring process for you as an employer.

We are in an industry where there is no lack of recruitment technologies. But when it comes to recruiters, using a wrong recruitment technology can burn you out, I know your pain when you are challenged with recruiting softwares that doesn’t take bulk of your daily work. It starts snow bowling when you have multiple technologies that doesn’t talk to each other, requires job seekers to enter same information multiple times on various softwares and not being able to track or analyse any report that makes sense for you.

Choosing a right recruiting technology is totally based on what your needs and goals are. It varies from employer to employer based on the size of the organization, budget that you have etc. But using an applicant tracking system that doesn't meet the necessary standards will be a waste of time and money.

Below are a few points that tell you that your recruiting technology is failing

(1) It requires job applicants to enter the same data several times

A time consuming job application process can turn off your candidates. Believe it or not, candidates would choose to work with an employer where their job search was seamless and easier, verses with an employer where the job search was cumbersome and time consuming. If the candidates have to enter the same information again and again and if it takes hours long to submit a job application then you will see a sudden drop in the application rates.

(2) It cannot be integrated with your current recruiting/interviewing software

The whole point of having an applicant tracking system is to maintain the entire details of your candidate’s job application history in one place. Be it their job application eform, resume, any assessment results, video interview response, interview schedules, offer details, reference check, background check etc. One of the challenges that I personally had with one of the Applicant Tracking Systems that I had used was that it couldn’t integrate with outlook for scheduling interviews, video interview platform, reference check and background check. So as a recruiter, it was time consuming when you didn’t have all the details in one place. Ideally you should be able to trigger different steps in your recruiting process through your applicant tracking system and don’t have to log off and log back in if you integrate it with other recruiting softwares that you have in place.

You should be able to stay on your applicant tracking system for initiating each step in the hiring process and don’t have to log in to another website/softwares for scheduling, video interviewing, reference check etc.

(3) You can’t automate and it makes a recruiter's job complicated

Many of the standard recruiting emails can be automated and it helps you build some momentum, keeps the candidates informed throughout the process, and helps you maintain the candidate’s expectation. If your applicant tracking system doesn’t have the feature to automate some of most standard emails like receiving an acknowledgment of the job application, letting the candidates know that their job application has been received, or if they are not being selected then getting a ‘Thank you’ email for the interest, with a rejection notice will give them a closure yet provides a great experience.

Manually going through hundreds and thousands of resume can be time consuming rather your applicant tracking system should auto disqualify the candidates that don’t meet the necessary requirements. That way as a recruiter you can focus your time on qualified candidates and not have to go through unqualified profiles.

Your ATS should be able to auto disqualify profiles that are not a match and your ATS should let you detect duplicate profiles of one candidate.

(4) It doesn’t let you personalize or customize

Any tool is of no worth if it doesn’t let you tweak and personalize based on the user’s preference. If you, as a recruiter are not able to personalize based on your preference in communicating or when and how you need some reports, then you will work based on what technology tells you. But it should be the other way where you should drive the technology.

(5) Bulk resume upload and resume collection from emails

If you are not able to do bulk uploading of resumes that you sourced over a period of time or the resumes that you received via email over a period of time then you're losing the candidates who you had already built a connection with. You should be able to do bulk resume upload in order to save time. The recruiters who were using excel spreadsheets and emails have had many candidates sitting in their inbox who might be a great match for one of your open positions. Having those contacts/resumes added to your application tracking system can help you search easily and connect with the right ones.

(6) It doesn’t give you any reports to make informed decision

When your senior leaders wanted specific reports that help them make decisions on budgets, forecasting the time and cost per hire, understanding diversity metrics or even any compliance reports and if you can’t track and report those analytics then you are using a wrong recruitment technology. Having a dashboard on your applicant tracking system that shows the metrics that matter to you will help you keep an eye on it and work towards improving your recruiting results.

What other features would you say are important for you and can’t use an ATS without it?