The Benefits and Drawbacks of Using Applicant Tracking Systems for Recruitment

Applicant tracking systems used to facilitate a number of different processes of recruitment, however many companies implement them to aid HR staff in the RESUME evaluation process. In the past they tended to be used by big companies, but over the last couple of years, more and more SMEs have been using them to improve the process of finding employees too. Here we will take a look at some of the benefits and drawbacks of using applicant tracking systems for recruitment.

STREAMLINE THE RESUME SORTING PROCESS

Today many companies often receive thousands of RESUMEs and applications for vacancies they advertise, as the job market is competitive and the use of internet advertising spreads the word far and fast. One of the benefits of applicant tracking systems is that they can streamline the resume sorting process so HR employees do not have to spend weeks going through every single one. Basically they are configured to look out for certain elements of a CV which will mean it either goes in the ‘yes’ lot or the ‘no’ lot.

MATCH CANDIDATES TO JOBS

Something applicant tracking systems can also help with is matching candidates to jobs. For example, if a candidate was turned down for a particular role, as their resume did not fit the criteria, the applicant tracking system will hold it on file and flag any positive matches it has to future job vacancies. This means that the HR employee can then simply contact the candidate and ask if they would like to interview for a different role with the company.

SAVE TIME AND MONEY

Basically applicant tracking systems are designed to help businesses save time and money. By automating processes, they reduce the amount of paperwork HR staff have to do, helping to save time and lower administrative costs. Applicant tracking systems can also save on the cost of advertising by automatically publishing job vacancy ads to sites and finding potential candidates already ‘on file’ to contact.

MISS OUT ON POTENTIALLY GREAT CANDIDATES

One of the problems with applicant tracking systems is that they are designed to look for RESUMEs and applications that meet the exact requirements of the position advertised. Whilst this may not sound like a bad thing, it often means that candidates that could have valuable experience, yet are switching careers and therefore have a varied Resume, do not even get considered for the role.

INACCURATE AND UNRELIABLE

Another drawback of applicant tracking systems is that at times they can be inaccurate and unreliable. For example, applicant tracking systems often reject resumes for invalid reasons, such as the scanner not being able to read them properly. If a resume is a little more complex than others, this may also cause the system to reject it. This is not only unfair on candidates, but unproductive for businesses too.

ELIMINATING PERFECTLY GOOD CANDIDATES

Applicant tracking systems often have a limit for the applicant’s information. This often means that organizations end up eliminating perfectly suitable candidates, which is very counterproductive.

CONCLUSION

Like with all technology, there are benefits and drawbacks to using applicant tracking systems. Whilst they can help businesses to save time and money by reducing admin, at the at the same time they can be unreliable and responsible for businesses losing out on the chance to hire good candidates. If you are considering using an applicant tracking system to aid you in the recruitment process, we highly recommend weighing the pros and cons to check it is the right decision for your business and at the same time we would highly recommend AppliView for it best resume parsing service which will solve major part of these drawback.

Things needs to keep in mind as a New Recruiters

The world of recruiting can be a lot of fun and make you very successful early on in your career. However it of course comes with its own challenges. As a new recruiter you have to be prepared for the world you are about to enter because while it can be very fruitful at the same time it is quite demanding.

 

1. Take notes and suggestions

It goes without saying that taking notes on anything new you learn is primary thing. You may think you retain everything in your mind, but it will not work. Taking notes will help you down the line, while you want to refer the things quickly. Take notes while screening candidates or taking a requirement from a client is a part of recruitment no matter how much experienced you are. 

2. Reach out to others

There’s no one way to be successful in recruiting. The path to success in recruiting can come from thousands of different roads. Before starting your journey, talk to the successful senior recruiters in your office and ask them how they work. Don’t stop there, you should also look into getting a trainer. Some of the major recruiting companies have some basic training program, but make sure to reach out to one on your own. Also, use social media to your advantage. Get on LinkedIn or Twitter (some areas of Facebook work too) and start connecting with successful people in the industry. The one good thing about recruiters is they are not shy about being active on social media so they won’t be hard to find. 

3. Have a strong work ethic

The old way of thinking in recruiting when it came to work ethic was you had to be willing to work 7 am to 10 pm. Honestly this is a very outdated way of thinking. There are some amazingly successful people that made a 9-5 schedule look like a joke. However that does not mean you shouldn’t have a strong work ethic. There will still be times you don’t leave the office until 8:00 at night regularly. Work ethic isn’t about the hours you put in as much as it is about the dedication you have. You need to have a “do whatever it takes” mentality. Whether that means working until dark, working on the weekends or not giving up until the job gets done. You need to have the mentality that you will do whatever is required of you to find success.

4. Work smarter, not harder

This saying is pretty old but it applies here. There's saying “cast a wide net” , it means is that you need to be able to find the candidates you are looking for as soon as possible. You should be developing the contacts in your industry to get you in front of candidates immediately. Cold calling candidates to fill a requirement takes more the time as it would if you are connected in the industry so well that the candidates are at least aware of who you are immediately. If you are going to focus on a specific industry you need to make sure your name is commonly known in that community.

5. Be ready to fail

Recruiting operates under similar conditions. We are dealing with an unstable product: people. People are going to make the decisions they want that won’t always be in your favor (accept a counter offer and not the position you are offering). You have to be ready to face this kind of rejection head on and continue to be successful. If you aren’t ready to hear the word “No” a long term career in recruiting may not be for you.

AppliView is always there to help you like a constant companion. Try it!!!

Things which Recruiters don't like to see in Resume

Your resume is the key to build a nice impression in-front of unknown person no matter if it's recruiter or any other person. It will reflect your achievements, records and experiences. It will help them to understand if you can do their job or not.
Sometimes, people slip few things when they think about their resume as a reflection of who they are.
Let me point out the things which employers or recruiters don't like to see

Gaps in between two jobs

There are many valid reasons why gaps may exist on the resume. Being unemployed isn’t always a sign of a bad candidate, though this assumption can sometimes be made.
Employers like to see where all your time went for at least the last few years. If gaps exist, you may need to add a little things for example, like family health problem, traveled for some reason or personal time of. You can also put the years of employment rather then specific month and year. 

Social media links

Recruiters or employers don't like social media links. It's bit annoying in major of the cases. Sometimes they don't have access to the social media at work place like Facebook, Linked In or Instagram. This kind of things will only work if you are submitting some portfolio of your creative work. Try to hide your personal life from your would be employers. 

Your photo

In some countries, there's a trend to send resume with head shot but in many cases it doesn’t considered as a good habit. It may come across as inappropriate and naïve to the general business culture. Apart from anything else, employers aren’t allowed to discriminate, positively or negatively, based on factors such as race and age, factors that your picture would likely reveal. 

False information

Many of us would understand the urge to fudge the details of the resume a little, especially as weeks of unemployment pass and the situation starts to get desperate. It would seem so easy to expand that three-month training into a year-long position, or manipulate a project or two.
But this can lead to serious problems in all kinds of ways: at interview, these applicants can expect to be quizzed on experience they don’t have, and their references won’t be able to back them up. They might even find they can’t do the job in question as it requires experience that they lack.
Lie on a resume is also morally wrong as they can be exposed at any time. 

References

It’s very common to include references with an application, but this isn’t actually the right stage at which to do it. If an employer wants to get in touch with your former colleagues, they will ask you for contact details but this normally doesn’t happen until after at least the first interview.

Empty words

Are you hard-working, honest, successful and intelligent? All fine qualities, but unfortunately they don’t mean much on your resume. Anyone can throw these words out there. Employers much prefer statements that are actually proved with some kind of evidence.
So rather than writing you’re a ‘great leader’, write ‘headed up a team of twenty, increasing departmental productivity 60% within one year of my appointment.’ It’s measurable, specific and can make sense in the reader’s mind to how you could bring the same success to their organization.

Too long

If you’re frequent job changer or working on several short term projects, or have had a particularly long career, your resume could potentially go on for several pages. That’s a big turn off to recruiters under pressure however, who really don’t have time in the day to read novel-length resumes from every candidate.
Some trimming will be necessary if your resume is longer than two pages of A4. You don’t need to provide full details of every job you’ve had going back decades – just short summaries will do. All education before undergraduate level, and the less significant or recent roles, can be cut altogether. 

Too short

A resume really should cover at least an A4 page, even for somebody just starting their career. Any less than that, and the recruiter will feel they really don’t know you at all.
Avoid the temptation to pad the document out with double spacing or large font or margins but instead focus on making the content go as far as possible without relying on filler.
If you’ve just left high school or collage, consider how the skills and experience you developed will help you in the workplace. 

AppliView will parse your resume for recruiter's batter view.

Top 10 Recruitment Problems You Can Avoid With AppliView

There are many factors that can cause delays in your hiring process, and delays can sometimes lead to lost candidates or rejected offer letters. Below you will see 10 of the most common recruitment process problems that organizations have but they haven't done anything about it.

Candidates have to leave your careers page to apply

Candidates play a big role in online applicant tracking system but sometime their experience is not good with employer's ATS.

         Sometimes they have to download the application form and fill that manually, which the worst thing in modern days. It causes so many issues like unavailability of printing devices, Need to send it by post, fax or scan copy in email. Sometimes they can't open the application page because it requires some additional plug ins. Sometimes, when they click on apply button, it will redirect them to other site, which is awkward thing. Let them apply at your website.

These type of reasons will create the drop ratio of candidates, who are willing to work for you and they left the portal.

You’re using too many job boards

Use appropriate ATS which has integration of enough job boards and social media apart from using multiple job boards. It will reduce your efforts and save your money.

You aren’t storing great applicants

Sometimes, you get very strong candidates through emails or any other sources but you don't have position for them. Store those applications carefully and easily accessible so when you get the position open, you can contact them by putting couple of key words. Doing this you will save lots of time, money and it will reduce your time-to-hire, and also improve your recruitment brand.

You’re ignoring social media

Social media is a free platform for you to use for the recruiting. Many organizations already have a pre-established community of followers on social media, whether that’s on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or even on YouTube and many other social sites, so if you can post the blogs, product updates so you can also post jobs there. Think about it!!!

You’re depending on recruiting agencies

Agencies can be very helpful when you have a specific role, or you just don’t have the resource to find suitable candidates – however, they are bit costly.

Using job boards is also a better option, you get a large choice for candidates, You have same access like agency recruiter but still you need so the process manually to find the suitable candidate, however it's little cost effective.

Your hiring process is not linked internally

The ideal situation would be to get a product that has recruiting, interviewing and all type of recruiting modules within their system, so that you can access everything from one location, and each candidate has a specific id that collates all information relevant to their application automatically.

You aren’t talking to your candidates

You should contact every candidate that applies to your company so that they know you have received their application and what the process to follow will be. You should then contact every candidate who is unsuccessful to let them know that they haven’t been selected. It is equally important to communicate effectively with the candidates that you are interested in employing, as all too often candidates will accept another job offer as a result of poor communication, or a delayed contract of employment. Automating your emails and introducing text messaging is a great solution for this, not only does it solve the communication problem completely, but it requires no additional administrative work.

You don’t know where the best candidates are coming from

You should be able to see the report on where the best candidates are coming from, whether it’s a specific job board, an agency, a social media site, a referral or a direct application from your careers page – having this information will enable you to invest more in the areas that deliver the best results. Using data from your reports will enable you to recruit better candidates, faster, and for less money.

You’re interviewing too many candidates

Each interview, on average, takes about an hour, if you interview 8 people per role, that’s a whole working day lost to interviewing, not to mention the time it took to arrange the interviews, perhaps  rearrange the interviews, or even when you have a candidate who doesn’t turn up when you’ve set an hour aside – you can quickly lose a lot of time.

      Skills-based tests will allow you to filter down your chosen candidates from the original resume filter; you can choose the top 3 to 5 scores and decline the rest. You can then look at Psychometric tests to find the best personality fit for your organization, and again, reject a further 2 or 3.

In total, it would take you no more than 10 minutes, per candidate, to go through all 3 of these filtering stages, and then you can allow for an hour for the face to face interview should you see that it is necessary.

You accept Resumes in multiple formats

One of the most time-consuming parts of the recruitment process is the initial filter of all CVs. The best way to remove this problem is to digitalise your entire application process and create a standardized way of submitting an application. You can get an application form that covers all of the questions you would normally ask on a paper application, and you can also allow for word documents of the candidates CV to be uploaded; this would then be ‘parsed’ and the information would be stripped out into sections. The candidate could then fill in unanswered sections to complete their application.

 

Conclusion

There are many areas in the recruitment process that can become costly, especially if you recruit 15 – 20 times a year or more.

           There are specialist products designed to help you completely streamline your recruitment process, giving you the control to manage any level of recruitment in-house, comfortably and efficiently, attracting the best candidates, building a reputable employer brand and driving associated costs right down.

 

You must try the AppliView.