Just How Beneficial is Applicant Tracking?

1. Just How Beneficial is Applicant Tracking? Recruiters have all sorts of tools to work with. Some enhance the recruiting process and simultaneously increase the chances of success. For example, consider something known as 'applicant tracking'. This is a tool that leverages big data, artificial intelligence, and automation to change the recruiting game. The question is, how beneficial is it? The people who make applicant tracking systems will tell you that their technology is life changing. They will all but guarantee that HR departments will win the recruiting game if they just buy and install their systems. Here's the thing: we would expect software developers to say that. It is marketing 101. The only way to know is to test drive a system. Whether or not applicant tracking would benefit your business is for you to decide. If you are interested in finding out, keep in mind that applicant tracking systems are designed to do the following: Identify Suitable Applicants Imagine sitting in your office and manually wading through dozens of job applications. You only have until noon to work through the stack, and it's already 9 AM. What are you likely to do? If you are like most people, you are going to peruse each application looking for certain clues that the applicant is worth investigating further. Any applications that do not contain those clues will ultimately find their way to the circular filing cabinet. It turns out that applicant tracking does the same thing. It just does so a lot faster and with virtually no errors. You program the parameters the system should look for and it scans each application accordingly. Between data analysis and artificial intelligence, the system can do in seconds what would take you hours.

2. Meet Applicants in Their World By and large, applicant tracking systems are designed to meet applicants in their world. Rather than forcing them to come to you and work through an antiquated application process, you use your system to take the process to them. You meet them in a space that is comfortable and familiar to them: the mobile arena. In this way, applicant tracking engages applicants rather than recruiting them. This is an important distinction. Today's applicants don't want to be recruited. They don't want you to try to convince them to choose your company over the competition. They want to engage with you to pursue a common direction and goals. Streamline the Process The biggest benefit to applicant tracking is arguably its ability to streamline the recruiting and hiring process. Because everything is done online and in the cloud, your recruitment portal becomes the hub that makes everything else work. Single-point data entry is a good example to illustrate what we're talking about here. Say an applicant logs on to your portal to apply for an open position. He enters all his information before attaching a resume and uploading everything to your system. He will never have to do that again. All the pertinent information from his application is automatically populated across the system wherever it's needed. In the event of hire, for example, he doesn't have to repeat the input process with the HR department. Onboarding into the system is automatic. There's a lot more we can say about applicant tracking that space just won't allow for. If you are wondering how valuable it really is, the only way to know for sure is to give it a try. We would say that applicant tracking is as valuable as your desire to improve recruiting and hiring through modern technology. If you're into efficiency, automation, and ease- of-use, you might want to give applicant tracking a serious look.