Recruitment with Applicant Tracking System - Guide
Applicant Tracking System can cover the whole hiring process and can be customized as the hiring process may vary from organization to organization.
What is Recruitment?
Recruitment is a process in which a company seeks to fill a vacant position or hire a candidate that can drive the business forward with his/her abilities, skills, (and experience).
The human resource department is fully responsible for this complete process; however, departmental managers may have a role while recruiting future employees for their team.
How can Applicant Tracking System impact an organization’s hiring process?
Applicant Tracking System can cover every single step of the hiring process. As the hiring process may vary from organization to organization. According to research, most companies that use Applicant Tracking Systems saw a significant improvement in their hiring process.
Here are the must-have features and stages an Applicant tracking must have to create an impact so that recruiters can hire a potential star in the 9 Box Grid,
- Job Posts
- Job Portal
- Candidates
- Screening
- Onboarding
Creating Job Posts
Job Posts are the 1st stage of the Recruitment Process, in which team leaders request HR to initiate the hiring process so that the workload can be divided. This stage can be also triggered after an employee is offboarded.
While creating a job post HR professionals mentions,
- Job type - Permanent, Contract, or Intern
- Job post opening and closing date
- Number of positions
- Job post description
- Candidate’s qualification
- Candidate’s experience
In the Applicant tracking systems, these fields are pre-defined and ready to be filled out. After that, the job posts can be auto-forwarded to the higher management or authority for approval.
Publishing the jobs on the jobs portal and social media
After job posts are created, then we move on to the 2nd stage of the Recruitment process, in which the jobs are published to Job Portals. With the Applicant Tracking System, those jobs can be auto-published to the company website’s careers page from where an employee can fill out the job application, and send the cv/resume to the recruiting team.
With the modern Applicant Tracking System, the HR team can also share those jobs to different websites such as,
Many companies also make Job Specific posters to share on social media platforms to attract high-potential candidates.
Candidates applying for the jobs
Once jobs are published on the careers page of the website and spread all over the internet, in the 3rd stage of the recruitment process, the candidates can apply for the job or share it with people they know. The interested candidate’s information will be then saved within the Applicant and tracking system which makes hiring managers’ and contributors’ jobs a lot easier.
Reviewing and shortlisting the candidates
An advanced applicant tracking system can sort candidates based on shortlisting scores. That shortlisting scores will reflect what recruiters are looking for and how it can be beneficial for the current job opening, which is ideally,
- Candidate’s qualification
- Candidate’s work experience
- Candidate’s skill
- And sometimes candidates that can speak multiple languages.
Screening
The 4th stage of the recruitment process is Screening, where employees go through three steps after they have been shortlisted. An applicant tracking system compiles these stages to make it much easier and more effective.
Step 1 - Candidate tests
To ensure that the candidates know enough about the vacant position, many organizations conduct candidate tests. The test score can play a vital role during the screening process. If a candidate is having high test scores, he/she might have a better chance to get hired.
Step 2 - Scheduling the interviews
Recruiters then send an email or give a call to the qualified candidates, sharing the interview date, time, venue, and any other additional information.
A job interview is very crucial as we know the first impression is the last impression. Interviewers ask several interview questions that can help the HR team and departmental managers to evaluate the candidates.
Step 3 - Evaluating the candidates
After job interviews, employees who were responsible for the interviewing evaluate the candidates on certain parameters and score them. Scoring on parameters can be done mutually or can be divided within the hiring team.
The evaluation is the final stage of screening as it gives a clear picture of candidates who needs to be recruited and onboarded.
Recruiting and Onboarding
The 5th stage and last stage of the recruitment process is the most crucial of all as the human resource team needs to look at every single detail to ensure that they are compliant with the laws while making the employee’s onboarding experience the smooth as possible.
A combination of ATS and HR Software can be the key to success. Candidate’s data provided during the application process for job posts can be utilized while onboarding since it contains the following information,
- Employee’s personal information
- Employee’s additional information
- Employment information
- And employee’s reporting line
With the modern HR software integrated with an Applicant Tracking System, an onboarding checklist can be created for the things HR needs to take care of such as,
- Basic documents collection
- Finalizing tax documents
- Creating an employment letter
- Arranging work equipment for employee
There are many things to do for the new onboarded employee, right? You can also create a task list of things the employee has to do on his/her first day,
- Fill compliance documents
- Read and acknowledge the company’s policies
- Add the dependent’s information
- Select the benefit plans
- Upload documents, etc.